Open access

Access Your Innovation

Open Access to AI and GPU IP to enable your innovation.
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Introducing Open Access

Did you think that Imagination’s high-quality IP was out of your reach? If you are a scale-up company you will love how Open Access gives you access to a range of Imagination graphics and AI technology without any licensing costs at all, with support provided on an “at cost” basis.

What’s more, you will only pay a royalty once you ship a product, so you only pay as you succeed. With Open Access, your company can start building differentiated SoC designs with relatively little upfront capital costs.

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Problem solved

Creating a differentiated SoC from the ground up requires significant know-how and resources. Using scalable, state-of-the-art IP through Open Access enables a shorter path to competitive and differentiated SoC designs. It provides access to a choice of excellent, silicon-proven IP, that lowers risk, while also providing the many benefits of working with Imagination in terms of support, verification, patent protection, and ecosystem.
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How Does Open Access Work?

After an initial company evaluation, you will be given access to the IP within the program at no cost. However, there is a requirement to sign up for a two-year support and maintenance package. While royalties will be different from a standard commercial license, customers will not have to take on the initial cost/risk of the licence fee.

Available to All
License cost $0
Support & Maintenance
6 man-months over a max of 2 years that can be used for all Open Access IP		 $270k ($135k/year)
with the option to buy additional support @ $50k per man-month

What IP is available?

Open Access provides access to four PowerVR Series8XE GPUs and three PowerVR Series3NX NNAs. A software driver is supplied by Imagination, but compatible open-source drivers are now also available in the market for GPU, potentially offering even more features, for even greater choice.

IP Block IP Name Description
GPU GE8100, GE8200, GE8300, GE8320 PowerVR Series8XE offering 1, 2 and 4 PPC, Area and fillrate-focused cores, Open GL® ES 3.2x, Vulkan® 1.2, and OpenCL® 3.0
NNA AX3146, AX3386, AX3596 PowerVR Series3NX neural network accelerator (NNA) solution Performance-density focused. 512, 2048, 4,096 MAC/clk or 1, 5, 10 TOPS @ 1.2GHz

Support and Tools Included

All the standard GPU and AI accelerator tools are provided as part of Open Access. The PowerVR SDK and Toolkit are designed to support all aspects of graphics and compute application development and include:
PVR Tune

PVRTune

Imagination’s hardware profiling and analysis tool provides hardware data and performance statistics as an application runs, allowing you to quickly identify performance issues.
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PVRTexTool

Imagination’s texture encoding and pre-processing tool is designed to make it easy to optimise application textures.
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PVR Carbon

PVRCarbon

Imagination’s API tracing and debugging tool for OpenGL ES and Vulkan.
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What Our Partners Are Saying

Zhangxi Tan | Co-Director

“Imagination and RIOS Laboratory have a strong partnership in growing the RISC-V ecosystem, with our PicoRio™ open-source RISC-V computer being the first to benefit from the early stages of the Open Access program. We are also grateful for the consistent support from the Imagination University Program, offering GPU and RISC-V course material that equips the next generation of talent with the tools for success. We look forward to leveraging the Open Access program with major global partners in the PC space.”
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Pete Rodriguez | CEO

“Imagination is a trusted member of our In-Kind Partner (IKP) program, offering access to their high-value PowerVR GPU and AI accelerator design IP for our Silicon Catalyst Portfolio Companies. We are delighted that the Open Access program will lower financial barriers, allowing a range of early-stage semiconductor companies to accelerate their SoC development. Combining our comprehensive IKP ecosystem resources with Imagination’s flexible and scalable IP solutions will help support the accelerated growth and market delivery of the innovations being crafted by companies in our Incubator.”

Why choose Open Access?

Reduce Risk

Reduce Risk

Imagination Open Access provides access to some of our class-leading, high-quality IP with no up-front cost. This IP has the advantage of being silicon-proven so you know it works.
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Leading Software Tools

Open Access gives companies everything they need to get their design right first time, such as our best-in-class software tools and SDKs.
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Outstanding Support

Deep expertise in helping companies integrate our IP into their SoC. Receive training and engineering support from expert engineers that work every day to support customers designing complex IP-based solutions.
API

API of Choice

Our GPU IP supports a wide range of APIs, from OpenGL ES 3.2 to Vulkan 1.2 and OpenCL 3.0. Support for Linux is also included.

Wide CPU Support

Imagination graphics and AI IP is designed to work with a wide range of CPU designs.
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Webinar

Join this webinar to get an overview of why you should choose Open Access. In it, you will learn how Open Access lowers the barriers of entry to SoC design, get a clear understanding of the IP available in the program and discover the tools and world-class support it offers.
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Introducing Open Access

Frequently Asked Questions

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Open Access is open to everyone. We believe it is particularly suited to scale-up companies, that want to create their own silicon.

Yes, other IPs and software packages can be licensed under our standard licensing model.

Open access will include a set of GPU and NNA benchmarks and tools, which will allow you to pick the optimal IP for your platform. 

Arm’s standard Flexible Access package provides access to a range of Arm IP, support, tools and training for an annual $200K fee. Once the customer tapes out their design they pay an additional license and once they reach production a unit-based royalty. 

Open Access provides access to a range of Imagination IP, software, and tools with a $0 license fee. Unlike Arm, there is only a $135K/year fee for engineer support for the first two years. Customers also only pay a royalty once they reach production. This decreases with volume and follows the commercial model after 10Mu. 

Yes, new IP will be added to the programme.

Open Access

Download the overview to discover how you can start building differentiated SoC designs with relatively little upfront capital costs.

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