Imagination releases new Catapult CPUs, a RISC-V CPU product line

by ·

Imagination Technologies announced the launch of the new Catapult series, which is a processor IP product line based on the RISC-V architecture designed to meet the needs of next-generation heterogeneous computing. Imagination said that its Catapult CPU is based on the RISC-V architecture and is configured for different requirements such as performance, energy efficiency or balance, so as to be suitable for a wider market.


As a veteran of the industry, Imagination has more than 20 years of experience in providing IP solutions. Through the open-source RISC-V architecture ecosystem, Imagination can quickly increase and expand the Catapult series of product lines. There are currently four series under the Catapult product line, including dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and automotive functional safety CPUs. Among them, dynamic microcontrollers have been adopted by customers and are used in high-performance automotive GPUs, real-time embedded CPU is also on the market. High-performance application CPU and automotive functional safety CPU-related products will follow up in 2022. The automotive functional safety CPU-related products are developed in accordance with the ISO 26262 vehicle specification standard and have functional safety and security performance.

According to Imagination, the Catapult series is designed for markets such as 5G modems, storage, ADAS/autonomous vehicles, data centers, and high-performance computing. It has multiple threads and is divided into 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Optional configurations can be provided according to the needs of customer application scenarios, up to eight asymmetric coherent cores per cluster, accelerators can also be customized to add, and can be used with Imagination’s GPU, AI, and neural network accelerator cores.

In addition, Imagination also provides a supporting SDK for the Catapult CPU, which includes enhanced versions of tools such as GCC, LLVM, and GDB, optimized C libraries, and Catapult Studio. Catapult SDK is suitable for Windows, Ubuntu, CentOS, and MacOS, including reference boot loader, kernel, and Yocto-based file system.