Imagination beefs up GPU performance in latest cores

Kristof Beets, director of PowerVR business development, noted: "While our core market remains focused on consumer devices, such as set top boxes and automotive, an emerging market is high end servers and laptops." The main element in Series7 is the cluster. In the 7XT range, this comprises four universal shading clusters (USC), each featuring 16 pipelines, plus a texture unit. Also featured are two FP32 ALU cores, four FP16 cores, a special function unit and an optional FP64 block. "The blocks around this cluster make it a GPU," Beets noted. The 7XE cluster differs in that it boasts a single USC, but no FP64. The 7XT range supports from 2 to 16 clusters (64 to 512 ALUs), with the high end configuration said to offer a level of performance equivalent to that of nVidia's GeForce GT730M. The 7XE can be used in single and half cluster configurations, with 32 and 16 ALUs respectively. Beets said a fundamental change in Series7 is the ability to run special functions in parallel. This has resulted in the 7XT range offering a performance boost of up to 60% over Series6 devices with the same clock and number of clusters. Users of 7XE cores will see a bigger improvement; up to twice the performance of the previous generation.