Hardware-virtualized GPU drives six 4K screens in the car
Thanks to an 80% fillrate density improvement over the previous generation, the Furian Architecture-based four-cluster PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 GPU can simultaneously drive up to six 4K screens with complex UIs at 60fps. Among others, automotive chip and technology providers Renesas and Mobileye are among Imagination’s licensees.
Leveraging its built-in hardware virtualization capability, the PowerVR Series8XT enables automotive OEMs to deliver secure, high-performance graphics capabilities for a vehicle’s many displays. PowerVR hardware virtualization can provide a complete separation of services and applications, ensuring they remain secure against system intrusion or data corruption. The platform can support up to eight applications or services running in separate containers concurrently, enabling automotive OEMs to deploy and remove services at will without affecting others running at the same time.
As more in-car infotainment systems move towards richer operating systems, such as Android which offer capabilities to run Apps, the importance of a GPU capable of full hardware virtualization to contain rogue apps is of increasing importance. Allowing a rich graphical environment for the infotainment system, safe in the knowledge that the dashboard and other critical displays will be unaffected by malware with a single PowerVR GPU, enables higher levels of system integration, reducing costs, whilst maintaining the safety critical requirements of the design.
With enhanced design flexibility over the previous generation, the new GPU enables automotive OEMs to design their systems to prioritize either graphics or compute-based applications. It can support long-running compute workloads on a single Shader Processing Unit (SPU) for ADAS functions such as lane departure warning, blind-spot detection, and surround view, amongst others. Other tasks, such as infotainment and cluster, can run on the second SPU, using prioritizing mechanisms to reach system performance targets.
Dominique Bonte, Managing Director and Vice President, ABI Research, says: “As the automotive industry moves closer to introducing Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles, powerful GPUs will be vital to power multiple high-resolution display. With distraction concerns removed in driverless cars, additional opportunities for advanced infotainment features including 5G-based 4K video streaming will emerge in the longer term. The ability to run multiple workloads over each SPU is a potential game changer for the automotive industry.”
The PowerVR Series 8XT GT8540 is now ready for licensing.
More information: https://www.imgtec.com
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