Imagination Technologies announced that Nanjing SemiDrive Technology (SemiDrive) is using Imagination’s PowerVR Series9XM GPU in its smart cockpit chip X9. SemiDrive focuses on automotive grade chips and providing connected vehicles with automotive SoC products used in smart cockpit and core gateways.

According to the company, the chip has been taped out successfully in a new smart cockpit chip and is part of SemiDrive’s vehicle on chip strategy. It meets the demands of automotive electronic cockpits for computing power and multimedia performance. The next-generation chip has hardware virtualization capability for the smart cockpit. In the virtualization mode of full HD multi-screen, its hardware virtualized accelerating unit DriveBoost shows ideal performance. With the support provided by Imagination’s PowerVR GPU, the display efficiency of the virtual subsystem has been improved, being close to the efficiency of hardware transparent invocation.

The PowerVR 9XM GPU used by SemiDrive's smart cockpit chip is part of Imagination's PowerVR Series9 GPU family. This GPU series implements comprehensive optimization of power, performance, and area (PPA), and its high-performance density makes it the ideal solution for automotive market.

Imagination's GPUs can provide the following performance or supports for automotive chips:

• QM process and traceability for all cores enabling customers’ ISO 26262 and ASIL SoC implementations.
• Extended support for hypervisors, automotive OS, and safety critical APIs.
• Documentation for ASIL and other certifications, and automotive specific documentation.
• Hardware virtualization for Quality of Service and security. ECC and BIST support for reliability and recovery.
• Long-term support including support for fixed software versions and assistance for chip companies to support OEMs.

SemiDrive has passed the ISO 26262 functional safety management system certification, receiving the ISO 26262:2018 functional safety management system certificate from TÜV Rheinland. SemiDrive’s products can meet the national automotive grade and risk control standards.

According to the company, Imagination will also collaborate with SemiDrive on more application such as AI acceleration and high-performance hybrid computing, and smart cockpit chips in the future.

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