ARM Holdings (ARMH) is the undisputed leader in licensing the intellectual property used to create chips for mobile devices, but now another British IP company is preparing to challenge ARM. Imagination Technologies (IMG), a leading designer of graphics processor cores, plans to launch CPU cores later this year that will compete directly with the ARM cores found inside most mobile processors.
Like ARM, Imagination will produce cores based on the low power, high-speed RISC architecture that has proven to be so well-suited for smartphones and tablets. In the world of servers and personal computing, RISC was overtaken by Intel’s x86 architecture, but in the mobile world Intel finds itself trying to catch up with ARM.
Earlier this year Imagination Technologies bought the business operations of MIPS, one of the original pioneers of the RISC architecture. Now the company says it is preparing to launch a new generation of MIPS CPUs called Warrior, including 32-bit and 64-bit cores.
“We have frequently noted the lack of a licensable 64-bit MIPS CPU core — today, architecture licensees must design their own — but Imagination is closing this chink in its armor as it sends Warrior into battle,” said J. Scott Gardner, senior analyst at The Linley Group. Gardner says Warrior is aptly named, as the newcomer cores will have to fight hard for market share. “ARM already has over two dozen licensees for its 64-bit cores, including AMD, Broadcom, Freescale, LG Electron- ics, Samsung, and others,” said Gardner.
ARM added 64-bit architectures and cores to its portfolio within the last five years; MIPS on the other hand has licensed 64-bit architectures for more than 20 years. So even though MIPS has not offered an off-the-shelf 64-bit core until now, many 64-bit cores shipping today are based on its architecture. “There is a large ecosystem that exists around these cores,” said Imagination’s Jen Bernier-Santarini, director of technology communications. “Because of the true 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set compatibility of MIPS, 64-bit Warrior cores will easily execute 32-bit MIPS code, and tools/applications built for the 64-bit MIPS architecture will seamlessly work across the range of Warrior cores.”
Licensees
Imagination says it worked directly with licensees in designing the Warrior family of products. “We worked with some of our lead licensees in the definition of the original specs, and some of those companies have already gone public with their own MIPS-compatible products, Cavium and Broadcom being two of those companies,” said Imagination’s Mark Throndson, director of processor technology marketing.
Throndson said he can’t yet talk in detail about the new cores, except to note two important “firsts” for MIPS cores. “This generation of devices raises the performance bar and introduces hardware virtualization technology and high performance advanced SIMD (single instruction multiple data) extension into MIPS cores for the first time,” said Throndson.
Imagination may also work to integrate the new CPU cores with its existing GPU cores, something ARM has already started to do. “Imagination has a fierce battle ahead as it maneuvers to slow the advance of ARM’s army of CPUs and GPUs into virtually every market for licensable cores,” said Gardner. And the markets are many, from cars to cameras.
M2M
Imagination’s MIPS cores may be getting a late start in the smartphone market, but the M2M market could eventually be even bigger. “Many of our vendors … are already basically in that space,” said Kevin Kitagawa, Imagination’s director of segment marketing. “Microchip is actually a great example, being able to actually put 32-bit processing in all these different devices.” Kitagawa said that the makers of consumer electronics like cameras, less complex products like parking meters, and highly complex systems like cars are all demanding more intelligence and the “end node.” Scalable cores enable chipmakers to provide this.
“This is the beauty of the MIPS architecture,” said Kitagawa. “We’re able to scale up and down from these very, very low cost type of devices, but still basically have that power … all the way to sort of the massively 64-bit parallel computing, and a single set of tools, set of instructions, to… be able to run across all these different devices. So all of our licensees are starting to look at this [question]: What is the next step beyond standard mobile?”
Watch the full RCR Wireless interview with Imagination Technologies.
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