Leaders in Semiconductor IP

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Inside Imagination
Imagination is one of the most successful design IP companies in the world. Our customers
include the world’s leading semiconductor companies, leading specialist fabless chip
companies, and famous consumer electronics brands.
In an age of profound technological change, where everything is becoming increasingly
connected, digital and converged, we specialize in the technologies that touch everyone:
multimedia and communications.
By delivering the broadest range of proven, intellectual property (IP) cores, each of them
outstanding in its abilities to accelerate a wide range of industry standards at the lowest
power and smallest silicon area, our technology has won its place in some of the world’s best
selling and most iconic consumer electronics products.
Our success is built on creating technologies for new and changing markets. Because
we tackle difficult areas of chip design, and focus on providing complete IP solutions, our
technologies are in demand by leading manufacturers and have increasingly become a key
part of our partners’ long-term product roadmaps.
Our technology is ideally suited to the four markets, or four ‘screens’ that define the modern
consumer electronics experience: home, PC, mobile and in-car. These four screens define
the primary gateways to consumers ­­– so it is increasingly essential for consumer electronics
companies and applications developers to retain consumers when they move from one
screen to another.
PURE, our consumer products division, showcases our technologies and helps us to drive
emerging markets, all while creating award-winning products which are increasingly loved
and respected by consumers worldwide.
Imagination believes in quietly making big things happen. Today there are over 350 million
people using our technologies who may not know our name, but whose need for innovation,
entertainment and connectivity is enabled by Imagination.

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 Foundations
Imagination Technologies Group plc is an international leader in the creation and licensing
of multimedia and communications technology for use in semiconductors and in the
development and manufacture of advanced digital radio and connected consumer audio
visual products.
We create new technologies in the form of licensable hardware and software IP which form
the basis of the market-leading solutions we deliver to customers. These we license to leading
semiconductor companies who manufacture and sell chips with our technology inside.
The Group consists of two divisions:
Technology – creates market-leading semiconductor cores for adding graphics, video
and audio acceleration, display enhancement, embedded processing and multi-
standard communications and connectivity technologies into chip designs. This is
complemented by extensive software and tools, as well as dynamic developer support
programmes and ecosystems.
PURE – develops market-leading and innovative consumer products. It consistently
delivers products with an acclaimed mix of high performance and ease of use which
not only dominate in PURE’s target markets but also showcase the capabilities of
Imagination’s technologies and stimulate new and emerging markets. PURE is the
creator and manufacturer of the world’s most popular digital radios and internet-
connected audio devices.
Everything we do is underpinned by our fundamental belief that for any market of sufficiently
high volume the most successful solution will be a single SoC.
Imagination today has a highly skilled workforce of over 650 people from more than 25
different nationalities, of which over 80% are qualified engineers. We recruit the very best
engineers from around the world from many disciplines including systems architecture,
hardware, software, SoC methodology, verification and apps design.

Headquarters R&D Sales

UK Technology Technology
UK and India UK, Japan, Korea,
Taiwan and USA
PURE PURE
UK, India and China UK, Australia, France,
Germany, Ireland and USA

Imagination worldwide

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Our sales teams and local management are strategically located in the key regional markets
we serve to ensure that customers always have access to someone who speaks their
language in their time zone.
Our divisions now have operations in twelve countries. Our headquarters are in Kings Langley,
near London, UK, with technology R&D centres in Chepstow and Leeds in the UK and Pune,
India. We keep close to our technology customers and partners worldwide, with sales offices
in Japan, the USA , Europe, Korea and Taiwan. PURE has sales offices in Australia, Ireland, the
USA , France and Germany and operations and R&D in China.
Imagination continues to deliver on a strategy of innovation and diversification that has
created a globally recognized technology company, based in the heart of England.
We have achieved this thanks to the close participation of our partners and millions of
consumers around the world, many of whom are unaware of how their lives are being
enriched by Imagination.

Business Models
Our Technology business is based on IP licensing with up-front license fees plus royalties when
silicon devices which use our technologies are shipped.
IP licensing makes sound commercial sense for semiconductor companies, who are freed
from the punitive cost of developing all their required technology in-house, enabling them to
concentrate on the competencies at the heart of their businesses such as SoC integration,
range development, supply chain logistics, support, application platform development and
of course their own unique IP.
Because our IP is designed to be high performance with very low power requirements
and small silicon area (so it is low cost to manufacture) it is enabling the most advanced
multimedia and communications technologies to reach every consumer.
PURE is not only a sales and innovation leader in key new markets but also helps us to better
understand the needs of the market, pathfind in new areas, develop new technologies, and
directly engage with consumers.

Innovation
Imagination’s ideas and technologies enable the latest chips and consumer electronics
devices to deliver advanced multimedia and communication features.
More than this, we create the unexpected: disruptive technologies which expand markets
and excite users.
Our solutions are scalable, programmable and multi-standard so they can be used across a
wide range of applications and markets.
Increasingly consumer electronics (CE) devices have to deliver the internet, PC capabilities,
TV, music, navigation and more in one platform. We think of it as four screens – TV, PC, mobile
and in-car – each increasingly capable of being connected to the ‘cloud’, an abstract
internet server space from which common business and entertainment applications are
accessed via web browsers or connected devices.

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 Imagination is a key part of a cycle which drives the constant innovation that fuels the
electronics and semiconductor industry.
It is our role to create technologies which enable better delivery of the features that
consumers want now, and new features which will enrich the consumer experience in the
future. Our IP is amongst the very best and this has won us many of the world’s leading
semiconductor companies as partners.

Semiconductor Partners

Equipment
Technology Manufacturers
Including

Consumers The technology cycle

The chips our partners create with our technologies inside innovate in their integration of
features and the ability to deliver comprehensive application platforms. Those chips are used
by the world’s best known CE companies. These companies are amongst the biggest and
best known brands in the world.
The most innovative CE companies are also choosing to engage directly with us, thereby
getting ever closer to the technologies from Imagination which will be strategically important
to their next generations of products. With each new product, users expect better content
and implementation of current features, lower power consumption and cost, and new
features and capabilities too. The demand for products to constantly improve in these areas
creates the demand for ever more advanced and efficient IP. This is what drives our business.
Many CE companies now focus on delivering complete application platforms which include
‘App Stores’ or connected services. A consistent hardware and software platform makes it
possible to guarantee a wide user base to third-party applications developers. Imagination’s
IP offerings are fundamental building blocks in many of the most innovative and extensive
platforms, addressing the key needs of application platform developers by delivering class-
leading compatible technologies which are also scalable to allow the platforms to evolve
and grow in performance and across market segments.

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Partners
Each of our major IP families is the result of hundreds of man years of experience and effort,
resulting in innovations and capabilities that attract partners of the very highest quality. We
have four main types of partner: IP core licensees, who are our main customers; industry
partners, who include the alliances and organizations which help set the pace for technology
change; technology partners, representing the most innovative and successful technology
businesses; and OEM and ODM consumer electronics manufacturers, including some of the
world’s most recognized brands.
Our business is not built on achieving the highest number of partners, but rather working
closely with the very best in the industry and in step with their long-term strategies. Our
engagements are designed to be strategic and deep.
Our ‘lead’ partners innovate in their focus markets, help define our longer term IP roadmap
and ensure that our technologies remain at the forefront. We typically engage with one or
more lead partners while still in the process of refining the specification of new IP. This enables
us to align our IP with the leading edge of technology development, as well as providing
lead partners with the opportunity to get to market with our latest technologies in the shortest
possible time. After thse initial engagements the IP is more widely licensed.
We also foster new business by providing access to our IP for start-up and niche companies
through a range of flexible and innovative commercial arrangements.
Imagination has a dynamic industry presence, working alongside many industry bodies and
other leading technology organizations. Our involvement in standards and research groups is
helping to specify the products of tomorrow, and to make sure that key open standards are
in line with our technology offerings.
More and more software developers are engaging with us to benefit from our expertise and
industry contacts. They frequently use our software development kits (SDKs) and tools and
many ship our tools as part of their own offerings.

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 Ecosystems
The success of our technologies naturally gives rise to ecosystems of companies working with
us to create software or hardware using our IP, or creating devices with our IP inside.
Our ecosystem programmes provide our licensees and partners with everything they need to
ensure success and rapid time to market.
For example, our graphics-focused POWERVR Insider programme is the leading 3D ecosystem
in the mobile and embedded markets, with over 20,000 members (as at September 2010),
including many leading application developers, which enables us to showcase apps
demonstrating the best use of our technology.
We help our licensees and key partners meet and communicate with developers, middleware
providers and third-party support teams and provide extensive co-marketing opportunities for
product manufacturers, content developers and semiconductor companies.
As use of our technologies grows and our licensees increasingly combine more than one
of our IP offerings we are rapidly expanding our ecosystems and strategic partnership
programmes making them ever more valuable, comprehensive and rewarding.

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Why choose Imagination?
1 Performance
Our technologies are designed to be the best in their class, delivering industry-leading
performance at lowest power consumption and system overhead. By combining unique
innovations, multi-standard capability, multi-threading and multicore approaches, the
technology we offer does the job better than anything else on the market.

2 Proven
We reduce our partner’s exposure to risk. Our IP is proven in volume shipments and numerous
successful products. By choosing Imagination, our partners know that their designs will work
correctly in volume production.

3 Low Power
By delivering fundamentally power-efficient architectures which provide the best
performance at the lowest power we enable longer battery life in mobile devices, as well as
eco-friendly, fan-free, mains powered products.

4 Roadmaps
Our complete roadmaps and scalable architectures mean customers can use the IP
from low to high end devices, over multiple products and markets for maximum return on
investment. Our roadmaps complement each other, which makes it easy for our partners to
combine our IP and create fully featured SoCs.

5 Solutions
We think about SoC-based solutions first and foremost so that our IP is easy to integrate.
We have strong ecosystem programmes with members who create everything from end
products to middleware and applications.

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 Technologies
Our unique, patented technologies are embodied in our POWERVR, ENSIGMA and META
families, which, whether delivered individually or as platform IP, deliver flexible solutions to
some of the most difficult challenges of modern semiconductors.
We focus on supporting open standards, and making our IP achieve an optimum
combination of programmability and highly optimized hardware engines. This ensures we
achieve uncompromised performance while supporting flexibility and a wider and growing
range of open standards.
We also concentrate on delivering the highest performance and most comprehensive
features sets at the lowest possible power for any given silicon area.
POWERVR graphics uses a unique tile-based, deferred rendering (TBDR), shader-based
architecture which allows a very small die size to deliver higher performance and higher
image quality at lower power consumption than all competing technologies.
As computing becomes more and more visual, graphics are fundamental to the user
experience. The evolution of user interfaces, games, navigation and location based services
is progressing in tandem with improvements in graphics technology, many of which are
being driven by Imagination.
All of our graphics cores use TBDR architectures to enable low-power and high-performance
for 2D, 3D and general purpose (GP-GPU) processing in either single core or scalable multi-
processor (MP) solutions.
All popular APIs are supported including OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, OpenCL and
DirectX on every major embedded, mobile and destop OS including, Linux, Android,
Symbian, Nucleus, WinCE /Windows Mobile and Windows 7/Vista/XP.
POWERVR video technology builds on the underlying architectural philosophies of POWERVR
graphics using the lowest power and memory by only processing what is absolutely necessary.
The proliferation of new ways of delivering video content means that systems need to be
able to cope more flexibly with differing and evolving video standards. Our video technology
is an exceptional balance of hardcoded and programmable elements which combine to
deliver the most efficient multi-standard and multi-stream video decoders and encoders.
All VXD and VXE cores fully accelerate decode and encode of all the major standards
including H.264 (High, Mid, Base profiles), MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC -1 and AVS , as well as providing
support for other popular standards such as Sorenson Spark, Real, VP6/8, and more.
POWERVR display technology delivers an unrivalled range of display enhancement
technologies for any media to high-resolution displays. Imagination has an unrivalled range of
display enhancement technologies for HDTV. From skin tone and blue/black stretch engines
to state-of-the-art interlace-to-progressive scan conversion technologies; from frame rate
conversion to TV output capabilities – POWERVR display technologies have it covered.

Imagination’s IP can deliver all the

Partner’s SoC
key functions of modern SoCs

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Our POWERVR I2P IP cores achieve exceptional de-interlace performance up to full HD
resolutions, while using innovative new algorithms to deliver the highest performance in far
smaller silicon area than traditional solutions. Our latest POWERVR FRC IP cores enable highly
intelligent up-sampling of up to HD resolution content from 24fps to 100/120 up to 200/240fps,
offering excellent dejudder and motion deblur characteristics.
ENSIGMA UCC solves the problem of proliferating broadcast and connectivity standards
by supporting them all on a single highly programmable engine. The technology features a
unique balance of programmability and hardware configurability, yet occupies equivalent or
less silicon area compared to hard-wired, single-standard hardware demodulation solutions.
Imagination’s ENSIGMA UCCP IP platforms are an exceptional range of low-power solutions
enabling the reception of a wide range of analogue and digital TV, mobile TV, and digital
and analogue radio broadcast standards, as well as Wi-Fi and other connectivity standards,
on a single device.
UCC delivers multi-standard demodulation support for a uniquely diverse set of standards
including the 802.11a/b/g family of Wi-Fi standards, class-leading support for digital TV (ATSC
8VSB, Nordig Unified 2.0 DVB-T, 13-seg ISDB-T), mobile TV (DVB-H, T-DMB, 1-seg ISDB-T), digital
radio reception (ISDB-Tmm, ISDB-Tsb, DAB, DAB+, DMB-R) and FM with RDS.
META builds on Imagination’s strength in hardware multi-threading to deliver all the benefits
of multi-processor solutions but using less silicon resource and development complexity than
conventional multi-processor approaches. Its unified architecture delivers powerful digital
signal processing (DSP) and general-purpose processing while the multi-threading ‘hides’
memory latency in SoC solutions, enabling it to deliver up to three times the performance of
similar conventional CPUs.
Hardware multi-threading is a key technology for Imagination. Most of our IP cores use this
approach to extract the maximum possible processor performance from every clock cycle.
META processors run a wide range of operating systems, including full Linux, both single
processor and Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP), and our own MeOS real-time operating
system (RTOS). SMP Linux enables the benefits of multi-processing and hardware multi-
threading to be brought together under a familiar Linux environment, enabling software
engineers to take advantage of many of the benefits of hardware multi-threading without
having to write any special code.
CODESCAPE is our comprehensive suite of development tools, which supports the advanced
and unique features of Imagination’s IP cores. CODESCAPE streamlines programming,
debugging and application optimization at all stages of SoC development to reduce time-
to-market and ensure the best power consumption and system use.
CODESCAPE already supports heterogeneous multi-processor SoCs making it a unique debug
environment that works on all of the SoC not just parts. We are continuing to expand the
toolchain across all of our IP families.

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 Markets
While our technologies can be found in a wide variety of different product form factors,
the markets we are engaged in can be broadly classified into five categories: mobile
phone multimedia, handheld multimedia, home consumer, mobile computing and
in-car electronics.

Mobile Phone Multimedia

Smartphones are driving growth in the mobile phone multimedia market. It is increasingly
perceived that graphics and video make a phone ‘smart’ especially as displays on such
devices move towards high-definition (HD).
POWERVR leads the market for 3D graphics acceleration in mobile phones, while our video
cores are increasingly deployed and we see many opportunities for our connectivity solutions.
We have seen the rise of Apps stores create demand for consistent hardware platforms,
a trend which helps make our technology successful in this segment.
The past year has seen a proliferation of new operating systems. Imagination has the
highest level of support for all the key operating systems and APIs. No other IP vendor has
broader support.

Handheld Multimedia
In the broader handheld multimedia market, which includes personal media players (PMP),
digital cameras and mobile TV, there is growing demand for innovative new form factors and
feature sets as media-rich apps become a way of life.
With our class-leading technologies, handheld multimedia products can achieve exceptional
multimedia functionality with long battery life. Our technologies are uniquely positioned to
enable the new generation of media players – with graphics-rich applications, HD video
encode and decode, digital broadcast reception, connectivity and advanced, intuitive user Some of the operating
interfaces as elegant as the products themselves. systems supported by
Imagination

Home Consumer
This segment, including digital TV (DTV), set-top box (STB), digital radio and connected
audio, covers the wide range of media platforms we enjoy in our living rooms, bedrooms
and kitchens.
The DTV and STB market is moving at great speed towards internet connectivity and the
increased use of graphically advanced user-interfaces (UI), widgets and smartphone-
like features.
Our multi-standard receiver and connectivity technologies, complemented by our significant
strengths in HD multimedia (video, audio and graphics) enable us to provide unrivalled
platform solutions in these markets.

Mobile Computing
This segment contains many different device types: mobile internet devices (MID), netbooks,
smartbooks, tablets, slates and laptops amongst them. Yet fundamentally the market is all
about the delivery of desktop-level computing in ultra-low-power highly mobile form factors.
Defining a new segment in consumer computing, tablets are set to become a major new
market segment and our technologies are ideal for this new device type which combines
the low power requirements of the mobile segment and the performance requirements
of computing.

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 In-car Electronics
In-dash navigation, portable navigation devices (PND), in-car entertainment and electronic
dashboards represent significant opportunities for our technologies.
In-car we are seeing dashboards moving rapidly towards electronic displays which unify
instruments and deliver wider options for customization. As navigation, driver information
and media playback become more essential to the latest car designs our relationships in this
market are expanding rapidly.
POWERVR graphics is a key technology for taking navigation, entertainment and dashboard
graphics to the next level in factory fitted, and after-market as well as in stand-alone PNDs.
The low power capabilities of our technologies are a key differentiator in the segment, as it is
vital to prevent in-dash heat build-up for reasons of safety and reliability.
The converged broadcast and connectivity capabilities of our UCCP platforms are also
proving attractive within the automotive market.

Emerging Markets
Beyond these core markets we are increasingly finding new demands for our technology.
From healthcare to security to smart power. An ever-broadening array of new and emerging
markets are now focusing their product evolution on the media-rich and connected
capabilities enabled by Imagination.

Vision
Industry Trends
In order to be cost effective, complex SoCs must integrate a wide range of capabilities
which can be programmed or configured to allow them to be used in many functional and
geographic markets. This has made single chip integration increasingly key to chip-maker’s
PC strategies; integration which can be enabled by our SoC IP. Technology integration trends
mean that many semiconductor companies are choosing not to design every block in their
SoCs from the ground up. Increasingly these companies are concentrating internal efforts on
the areas in which they excel and licensing key technologies in the form of IP from industry
leaders such as Imagination.

Connectivity
A growing trend is for ubiquitous connectivity in all forms of consumer electronics. Our
research suggests that more than 70% of all consumer electronics products, including TVs,
radios, cameras and printers will need to be connected to the internet by 2013. Our IP is
ideally suited to deliver everything needed to drive this key industry trend ― for example,
we have introduced a new Connected Processor concept specifically targetting this
requirement.

Mobile
Software
The ratio of software to hardware engineers in the electronics industry is now balanced
more in favour of software engineers than hardware. Indeed this is even higher in OEMs
and steadily climbing across the industry. Our software, typically ranging from drivers for key
application programming interfaces (APIs) over multiple operating systems, to application-
level reference code, tutorial examples and much more is a key part of our offering and a
major differentiator.
Software investment and legacy support increasingly matter to semiconductor companies,
who look for long-term roadmap solutions that don’t require frequent changes in
fundamental hardware architecture. Additionally some of our software offerings have
become so fundamental to new product categories that they can now be licensed on
In-car
their own as well as part of new hardware IP.
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 Platforms
Our ability to combine our technologies into platforms which directly and efficiently provide
solutions to our customers’ key requirements is key to Imagination's philosophy.
Compared to our competitors we place more focus on ‘systems’ solutions, which we can
deliver to manufacturers, enabling them the shortest time from device development to
volume sales.
As system-on-chip (SoC) devices become more heterogeneous, that is, made from very
distinct and specialized processors, rather than homogeneous CPU-centric architectures, our
domain specific processors for graphics, display, video, audio, DSP/RISC, communications
and connectivity are becoming more widely licensed, both individually and as highly
complementary building blocks of complete SoCs.
Imagination's vision of SoCs combines – a multi-threaded central processing unit (CPU) to run
operating systems and signal processing (like audio), a graphics processing unit (GPU) to run
graphics and complex parallel tasks, a video processing unit (VPU) for video and display, and
a radio processing unit (RPU) to run communications and connectivity tasks. With the addition
of memory and input/output (I/O) these blocks can be used to create SoCs to power almost
every modern consumer device.

Customer’s Internal IP Third Party IP IMGworks Customized IP

META POWERVR
Graphics
General Processing
ENSIGMA POWERVR
Communications Signal Processing Display
Audio POWERVR
Video
Real Time
SoC Platform

A di
Audio Display

OpenGL, OpenGL ES,

MeOS,
OS Nucleus
l De-interlace
De interlace
Radio, TV, OpenVG, DirectX, etc.
Linux, Android Frame rate
Mobile TV, Wi-Fi conversion
Audio, SW Stackss
Bluetooth, etc. Noise reduction
etc. MPEG1/2/4, H264
etc.
VC1, etc.

Our IP provides the key building blocks for

modern consumer electronics devices
Green
Energy efficiency is now a key factor in any product design. Low power consumption is
essential, whether mobile, mains-powered or in-car. Not only do consumers demand sound
environmental technologies and low-cost approaches to power use but also new form
factors such as net tops or flat-screen TVs need low power technologies without noisy fans,
heavy transformers and ungainly shapes.
Because we design all our IP for low power operation, our technologies are outstanding at
delivering both low active and standby power draw on mains-powered devices.

Future
Our business is not just about our ability to deliver proven and well-supported IP. It is
fundamentally driven by our capability to create a roadmap of future technologies, with
the support and increasing involvement of our partners, which accurately anticipates the
requirements of tomorrow’s consumers.
We work by continually identifying markets which are either emerging, or about to undergo
significant changes, and creating exceptional technology to exploit those opportunities.
Our partnerships with the world’s most innovative semiconductor companies and OEMs,
when combined with our compelling IP roadmaps, will continue to enable us, alongside our
partners, to lead the future of electronics.
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Imagination Technologies, the Imagination Technologies logo, POWERVR, META, ENSIGMA, CODESCAPE and PURE Digital are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Imagination Technologies Ltd. All other logos, products, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective manufacturers.
Copyright ©
­ 2010 Imagination Technologies Limited, an Imagination Technologies Group plc company. October 2010 13
Find out more about Imagination at:
Technology
www.imgtec.com
www.powervrinsider.com
enquiries@imgtec.com
PURE
www.pure.com
Corporate
www.imgtec.com/corporate

UK – Headquarters USA Japan Korea Taiwan China

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