Imagination Technologies enters the CPU field with RISC-V architecture

Imagination Technologies recently announced its financial results for the first half of 2021. The company received $76 million in revenue, compared to $49 million in the same period in 2020, achieving 55% revenue growth and no external third-party debt. With the support of this year’s good performance, Imagination also officially announced its next plan to expand its influence: Develop and launch the RISC-V CPU series to seek new business growth, which will meet the demands of the discrete CPU market and heterogeneous computing fields at the same time. Imagination Technologies is a UK-based semiconductor company founded in 1985. Its main business is to design GPUs for mobile devices based on PowerVR.

The most well-known is that before 2017, Apple’s GPUs used on iPhone/iPad were all PowerVR GPUs designed by Imagination Technologies, and Apple paid Imagination licensing and usage fees for this. The two companies announced the end of their partnership in 2017, but they renewed their cooperation agreement in 2020. In addition to Apple, the PowerVR GPU developed by Imagination is also integrated into other smartphone chips.

Now it seems to be a wise and logical development direction by getting involved in the RISC-V CPU field and integrating its GPUs. According to the report, in order to enter the RISC-V architecture processor design market, Imagination expects to invest $150 million in the next two years. Interestingly, the company has launched a RISC-V training course as early as September 2020, which may be the first expression of the company’s interest in architecture.

Entering the RISC-V field is a decision made recently by Imagination, and we still don’t know when the specific products will be launched.