Imagination Announces IMG DXT GPU, Enabling Ray Tracing in Mobile Applications

February 15, 2023

News

London, England – Imagination Technologies launched the IMG DXT, a ray tracing GPU providing enhanced graphics for mobile device users by enabling mobile device manufacturers to integrate ray tracing into their SoCs, ranging from simple shadowing in hybrid implementations to high-end graphics.

The GPU scales from an area-efficient half ray acceleration cluster (RAC) configuration up to a high-performance four-RAC design. Also supporting Fragment Shading Rate (FSR) for Vulkan®, the IMG DXT provides increased graphics performance with low influence on visual quality as the FSR decreases the number of fragments processed. The FSR also improves effects with less rays, meaning realistic lights and shadows are enabled in a smaller silicon area.

According to the company, the flagship DXT-72-2304 configuration delivers 72 GTexels/s and 2.5 TFLOPs of FP32 arithmetic performance, with a 50% higher maximum single-core performance compared to the previous generation. DXT cores offer 20% improved performance density per area than the IMG CXT GPUs, while reducing power requirements.

David Harold, Chief Marketing Officer, Imagination says, “Our new scalable IMG DXT cores work at multiple levels of implementation, starting with basic graphics integrations, up to flagship SoCs with desktop-level ray-traced visuals. The mobile GPU launches today, and we have already licensed the IP in multiple segments. We are also speaking with lead partners in automotive, desktop and data center.”

Available in different configurations and performance levels, the IMG DXT GPU provides the area-efficient half-sized ray acceleration cluster (RAC) configuration for mainstream device manufactures, and the single, dual, or quad-RAC configuration for OEMs looking to deliver a suitable mobile visual experience.

Per the company, DXT’s Photon architecture is the only ray tracing design that sits at Level 4 on the Ray Tracing Levels System (RTLS). Imagination’s ray tracing solutions sit at Level 4 regardless of RAC configuration, ensuring DXT offers usable ray tracing at up to 40% lower area cost, compared to the same mobile configuration as CXT.

The IMG DXT GPU also provides 2D dual-rate texturing with a patented special mode located inside its texture processing unit (TPU), which creates a “fast path” for post-processing effects. Additionally, the GPU features a new shader processing unit (SPU) design consisting of a silicon block containing an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) for compute tasks and a texture processing unit (TPU) for shading pixels, geometry processing, and rasterization logic.

Imagination provides advanced software support via its PowerVR SDK and developer tools, enabling ray tracing capabilities with Vulkan RT support. The DXT also supports compression technologies such as the Khronos ASTC HDR for textures with ideal dynamic range between bright and dark areas, while still supporting detail.

Imagination also announced a new RISC-V compliant firmware processor. The IMG DXT benefits from RISC-V power domain features by reducing idle power, turning off parts of the GPU not in use, and extending performance on casual workloads.

For more information, visit: https://www.imaginationtech.com/