Imagination Technologies Recieves $100 Million To “Rise From The Ashes” & Leverage The Edge AI Hype

Imagination Technologies, the renowned chip designer, has received massive funding to kickstart its operations and develop native technologies to address AI demand.

It won't be wrong to categorize Imagination Technologies as the "NVIDIA" of the late 20th century, since the firm is known for its PowerVR GPUs, which saw massive adoption from both desktop and mobile markets, with the likes of Apple being a key partner for the GPU manufacturer. However, things started to go sideways for the company back in 2017 when Apple decided to ditch the company in favor of its own custom GPU solution. Imagination Technologies was then bought by the Chinese equity firm Canyon Bridge, and after this, the firm saw decent popularity in China.

Imagination Technologies is now set to make strides in the edge AI segment, as the firm has seen a major shift in leadership and has worked its way up from the ground to evolve its GPU IP technologies. Apart from this, they have received $100 million from Fortress Investment Group in an attempt to revive their operators, mainly focusing on AI this time.

To gain leverage in the AI hype, Imagination believes that they need to focus on the software side of things, given that their GPU IPs are already well-refined when it comes to power efficiency and data movement.

There are two ways to approach [AI],” Mamtora said. “Either take something NPU-like and make it more general, sacrificing some PPA, or start with a GPU, which is inherently flexible and then add to its PPA by adding dense, low-precision compute capability.

- Tim Mamtora, Chief of Innovation and Engineering via EE Times

Mamtora says that GPUs have sort of reached their peak when it comes to the capabilities manufacturers can integrate into them, and the only way to be competitive in this segment is through creating a robust AI software ecosystem, and the area of breakthrough here is by achieving some sort of mechanism that Imagination to compete with NVIDIA's CUDA software stack, likely through providing a platform that allows developers to run their hardware on any software stack out there, hinting towards something like ZLUDA.

The key problem we’re trying to solve is to develop something to go up against [Nvidia’s] CUDA. Developers want [their applications] running on a platform, they just want to translate it and for it to work—forget performance to start with, it just has to work. The fundamental problem we had with our AI accelerator was getting things running in the first place.

Imagination Technologies is known for having a decent arsenal of AI products, notable ones being the PowerVR Series 9XE and the firm's Neural Network Accelerator, which is designed specifically for neural network computations. The firm plans to release next-gen products as well, but for now, they are mainly focused on improving their software stacks and waiting to see how the demand evolves in the markets.

While it's early to say whether Imagination will be able to make a comeback here, a rework on both planning and leadership shows that the firm is committed to making a stride in the markets. We will have to wait and see what they have in store for us.

News Source: EE Times