Vivante Corporation

Vivante Corporation
Founded 2004 (2004)
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, United States
Products Semiconductor intellectual property
Website www.vivantecorp.com

Vivante Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with an R&D center in Shanghai, China. The company was founded in 2004 as GiQuila and focused on the portable gaming market. The company's first product was a DirectX-compatible graphics processing unit (GPU) capable of playing PC games. In 2007, GiQuila changed its name to Vivante and changed the direction of the company to focus on the design and licensing of embedded graphics processing unit designs. The company is licensing its Mobile Visual Reality to semiconductor solution providers that serve embedded computing markets for mobile gaming, high-definition home entertainment, image processing, and automotive display and entertainment.

Vivante is named as a contributor to the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation.[1]

In 2015, VeriSilicon Holdings Co., Ltd. to acquire Vivante Corporation in All-Stock Transaction.[2]

Products

Since changing directions Vivante has developed a range of GPU cores that are compliant with the OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 standards as well as the OpenVG standard. Created by VeriSilicon support for the Vulkan API 1.0 and for OpenVX 1.0 is provided for at least 6 major desktop and embedded operating systems.[3]

2D graphics products & Vector GPUs, summarized by the vendor under the term "Composition Processing Cores" (CPC),[4] sometimes mentioned with the feature of single pass composition blending capability of 8 or higher, are the GC300,[5] GC320, GC350[6] and GP355 (OpenVG core[7])with the additional listing of GC200 and GC420.[8] NXP further mentions GC255 in a presentation for their i.MX models.[9] The NXP i.MX8 series will come with 2 units of the GC7000Lite or GC7000 vector processor.[10][11] For 3D graphics products please see the table below.

Legend for the notes in below listing:

  • Pipelined FP/INT double (64-bit), single/high (32-bit) and half precision/medium (16-bit) precision IEEE formats for GPU Compute and HDR graphics, Source:[12]
Series Model Date Shader Cores
SP/Half (mode)
Silicon area (mm2) Config core[3] Core Clock
Max in MHz
Shader Clock
Max in MHz
Fillrate Bus width
(bit)
HSA-features API (version) Video codecs Shader GFLOPS
(High=SP / Medium=Half)
Usage
M triangles/s G vertices/s (GP/s) (GT/s) OpenGL ES OpenVG OpenCL OpenGL Direct3D MPEG-2 H.264 HEVC VP8 VP9 Daala
GCNanoGCNano Lite1 (VEC-4) 0.3 @ 28 nm400 @ 28HPM400 @ 28HPM40?0.10.2??--3.2?
GCNano1 (VEC-4) 0.5 @ 28 nm400 @ 28HPM400 @ 28HPM400.10.2?2.03.2[13]
GCNano Ultra
(Vega-Lite)
GCNano Ultra (mid)1 (VEC-4) 1 @ 28 nm400 @ 28HPM800 @ 28HPM800.20.4?3.06.4
GCNano Ultra3 (high)1 (VEC-4) 1.6 @ 28 nm400 @ 28HPM800 @ 28HPM800.20.4??6.4?
GC200GC200 0.57 @ 65 nm[14]250 @ 65nmLP
375 @ 65nmG+
0.37532/16? 2.01.1N/A3.0/2.111Jz4760[15]
GC400GC4001 (VEC-4)
4 (VEC-1)
1.4
2 @ 65 nm[16]
250 @ 65nmLP
375 @ 65nmG+
190.0940.18832/16? 3.0/2.1116 / 12NXP i.MX6 SoloX: GC400T
GC500[17] 32/16? PXA920: GC530
GC600GC6001 (VEC-4)
4 (VEC-1)
32/16? 1.2/1.13.0/2.111CuBox
GC800GC8001 (VEC-4)
4 (VEC-1)
2.5
3.38 @ 65 nm[18]
800 @ 28HPM
250 @ 65nmLP
375 @ 65nmG+
1000 @ 28HPM38 @ 65nmG+0.188 @ 65nmG+0.375 @ 65nmG+32/16? 3.1[19]optional3.0/2.1118 / 16[20]RK291x,
ATM7013, ATM7019
GC8601 (VEC-4)
4 (VEC-1)
32/16? 3.0/2.111Jz4770: GCW Zero NOVO7
GC8801 (VEC-4)
4 (VEC-1)
350.10.26632/16? 3.0/2.1113.2[21]NXP i.MX6 Solo and DualLite
GC?000GC1000
(Vega-Lite)
2 (VEC-4)
8 (VEC-1)
3.5
4.26 @ 65 nm[22]
800 @ 28HPM
500 @ 65nmLP
750 @ 65nmG+
1000 @ 28HPM123
58 @ 65nmG+
0.5
0.375 @ 65nmG+
0.8
0.75 @ 65nmG+
32/16? 3.0/2.11116ATM7029: GC1000+,
Marvell PXA986,[23]
PXA988, PXA1088[24]
GC20004 (VEC-4)
16 (VEC-1)
6.9800 @ 28HPM1000 @ 28HPM26711.632/16? 1.23.0/2.11132NXP i.MX6 Dual and Quad
GC40008 (VEC-4)
32 (VEC-1)
12.4[25]800 @ 28HPM1000 @ 28HPM26721.68? 3.0/2.11164HiSilicon K3V2
Vega ?XGC3000
(Vega 1X)
4/8 (VEC-4)
16/32 (VEC-1)
800 @ 28HPM1000 @ 28HPM26711.68/4? 3.0/2.11132 / 64[26]NXP S32V234[27]
GC5000
(Vega 2X)
8/16 (VEC-4)
32/64 (VEC-1)
800 @ 28HPM1000 @ 28HPM26711.632/16? 3.0/2.11164 / 128Marvell PXA1928[28]
GC6000
(Vega 4X)
GC6400?
16/32 (VEC-4)
64/128 (VEC-1)
800 @ 28HPM1000 @ 28HPM53343.232/16? 3.0/2.111128 / 256
GC7000
(Vega 8X)
[29]
GC7000 UltraLite
GC1500?[30]
8 Vega 0.50.832/16? 3.0/2.11116 / 32Marvell PXA1908[31]
GC7000 Lite
GC7000L?
16 Vega 11.632/16? 3.0/2.11132 / 64Marvel PXA1936[32]
NXP i.MX 8QuadPlus
NXP i.MX 8Quad
GC700032 Vega 800 @ 28HPM1000 @ 28HPM106726.43.232/16? 3.0/2.11164 / 128NXP i.MX 8QuadMax
GC720064 Vega 46.432/16? 3.0/2.111128 / 256
GC7400128 Vega 812.832/16? 3.0/2.111256 / 512
GC7600256 Vega 1625.632/16? 3.0/2.111512 / 1024
GC8000GC8000 ?
Series Model Date Shader Cores
SP/Half (mode)
Silicon area (mm2) Config core[3] Core Clock
Max in MHz
Shader Clock
Max in MHz
Fillrate Bus width
(bit)
HSA-features API (version) Video codecs Shader GFLOPS
(High=SP / Medium=Half)
Usage
M triangles/s G vertices/s (GP/s) (GT/s) OpenGL ES OpenVG OpenCL OpenGL Direct3D MPEG-2 H.264 HEVC VP8 VP9 Daala

Adoption

They have announced that as of 2009 they have at least fifteen licensees who have used their GPUs in twenty embedded designs.[33] Application processors using Vivante GPU technology:

GC8000 Series

After Vivante was sold to Verisilicon the Arcturus GC8000 series was released by Verisilicon, which supports newer technologies such as OpenCL 2.0, OpenVX 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenGL 4.0 and Vulkan 1.0.[40]

Linux support

There are no plans on writing a new DRM/KMS driver kernel driver for the Vivante hardware, since Vivante previously put out their Linux kernel component under the GNU General Public License (GPL), instead of maintaining it as a proprietary blob. The free Gallium3D-style device driver etna_viv has surpassed Vivante's own proprietary user-space driver in some benchmarks. It supports Vivante's product line of GC400 Series, GC800 Series, GC1000 Series, GC2000 Series, GC3000 Series, and GC4000 Series.[41]

See also

  • PowerVR – available as SIP block to 3rd parties
  • Mali – available as SIP block to 3rd parties
  • Adreno – found only on Qualcomm Snapdragon, could be available as SIP block to 3rd parties
  • Tegra – family of SoCs for mobile computers, the graphics core could be available as SIP block to 3rd parties
  • Atom family of SoCs – with Intel graphics core, not licensed to 3rd parties
  • AMD mobile APUs – with AMD graphics core, not licensed to 3rd parties

References

  1. http://hsafoundation.com/ HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation
  2. "VeriSilicon to Acquire Vivante Corporation in All-Stock Transaction". Vivante Corporation. October 12, 2015. Archived from the original on October 14, 2015. Retrieved October 14, 2015.
  3. VeriSilicon: Embedded Vivante Dedicated Vision IP
  4. Composition Processing Cores (CPC)
  5. chipestimate.com: GC300
  6. chipestimate.com: GC350
  7. Vector Graphics GPUs
  8. GPUs Comparison: ARM Mali vs Vivante GCxxx vs PowerVR SGX vs Nvidia Geforce ULP
  9. 2D and 3D Graphics in Freescale Devices
  10. Linder, Brad (6 October 2016). "NXP's 64-bit i.MX8 chips coming in Q1, 2017". Liliputing. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  11. "i.MX8 Factsheet" (PDF). NXP. NXP. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  12. "Vivante Vega 3D Technology", section "Unified Shader Architecture"
  13. GC Nano Overview
  14. chipestimate.com: GC200
  15. Mobile GPU (Vivante Graphics ...)
  16. chipestimate.com GC400
  17. Business Wire: Company Profile for Vivante Corporation
  18. chipestimate.com: GC800
  19. "Vivante shipping GPU cores designed to support the latest OpenGL ES 3.0 specification". Retrieved September 13, 2014.
  20. StreamComputing > Knowledge > SDKs > Vivante GPU (Freescale i.MX6)
  21. NXP response on forum topic "i.MX6SDL GC880 performance."
  22. chipestimate.com: GC1000
  23. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on September 25, 2013. Retrieved September 25, 2013.
  24. Mobile GPU (Vivante Graphics ...)
  25. GPUs Comparison: ARM Mali vs Vivante GCxxx vs PowerVR SGX vs Nvidia Geforce ULP
  26. Vivante Vega Cores for GPGPU/3D
  27. NXP S32V230 Family of Processors for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
  28. http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/02/26/marvell-armada-mobile-pxa1928-soc-features-four-cortex-a53-cores-vivante-gc5000-gpu-and-lte/
  29. Vivante Unveils Details About GC7000 Series GPU IP Family
  30. Marvell Extends LTE Lineup
  31. http://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx30&os=Android&api=gl&D=Samsung+SM-J100F&testgroup=info
  32. Marvell Extends LTE Lineup
  33. "Vivante Corporation Signs 15th GPU Licensee" (Press release). June 8, 2009. Retrieved July 8, 2009.
  34. "Vivante GPUs Power Marvell ARMADA Application Processors" (Press release). October 27, 2009. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
  35. "Vivante GPU IP Cores Power the Latest Freescale i.MX 6 Series of Application Processors" (Press release). April 26, 2011. Retrieved July 31, 2011.
  36. "Vivante GPU Core Brings Android 3.0 Honeycomb Support to Ingenic's Latest JZ4770 Application Processor" (Press release). June 13, 2011. Archived from the original on January 19, 2013. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
  37. "Chinese Academy of Sciences Selects Vivante as GPU Partner for Netbooks" (Press release). June 29, 2009. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
  38. "Guess what is ready for tape out: It has a MIPS core and a GPU from Vivante". April 28, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
  39. "盈方微电子股份有限公司". InfoTM. Retrieved 2015-10-06.
  40. "Verisilicon Arcturus GC8000 series".
  41. "etna_pipe is currently compatible with at least the following GC chips".
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