Vivante Corporation
| Founded | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Semiconductor intellectual property |
| Website | www |
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.
| Model | Date | Cores | Die size (mm2) | Config core[3] | Fillrate (@600 MHz) | Bus width (bit) |
HSA-features | API (version) | Video codecs | GFLOPS (@600 MHz) | Usage | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MPolygons/s | (GP/s) | (GT/s) | OpenGL ES | OpenVG | OpenCL | OpenGL | Direct3D | MPEG-2 | H.264 | HEVC | VP8 | VP9 | Daala | |||||||||
| GC200 | 32/16 | ? | 2.0 | 1.1 | — | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | |||||||||||||||
| GC400 | 1 (VEC-4) 4 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 6 (High) 12 (Medium) |
||||||||||||||||
| GC600 | 1 (VEC-4) 4 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 1.2/1.1 | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | CuBox | |||||||||||||||
| GC800 | 1 (VEC-4) 4 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.1[3] | optional | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | RK291x, ATM7013, ATM7019 | ||||||||||||||
| GC860 | 1 (VEC-4) 4 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | Jz4770: GCW Zero NOVO7 | ||||||||||||||||
| GC880 | 1 (VEC-4) 4 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | i.MX6 Solo and DualLite | ||||||||||||||||
| GC1000 | 2 (VEC-4) 8 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 16 (High) | ATM7029, Marvell PXA986[4] | |||||||||||||||
| GC2000 | 4 (VEC-4) 16 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 1.2 | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 32 (High) | i.MX6 Dual and Quad | ||||||||||||||
| GC3000 | 4/8 (VEC-4) 32 (VEC-1) |
8/4 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 64 (High) | ||||||||||||||||
| GC4000 | 8 (VEC-4) 32 (VEC-1) |
8 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 64 (High) | HiSilicon K3V2 | |||||||||||||||
| GC5000 | 8/16 (VEC-4) 32/64 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 64 (High) 128 (Medium) |
Marvell PXA1928[5] | |||||||||||||||
| GC6000 | 16/32 (VEC-4) 64/128 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 128 (High) 256 (Medium) |
||||||||||||||||
| GC7000 | 32/64 (VEC-4) 128/256 (VEC-1) |
32/16 | ? | 3.0/2.1 | 11 | 256 (High) 512 (Medium) |
Marvell PXA1908[6] | |||||||||||||||
| GC8000 | ? | |||||||||||||||||||||
Adoption
They have announced that as of 2009 they have at least fifteen licensees who have used their GPUs in twenty embedded designs.[7] Application processors using Vivante GPU technology:
- Marvell ARMADA range of SoCs[8]
- Freescale i.MX6 Series[9]
- Ingenic Semiconductor Jz4770[10]
- ICT Godson-2H[11][12]
- Rockchip RK2918
- Actions Semiconductor ATM7029
- HiSilicon K3V2
- InfoTM iMAP×210[13]
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.[citation needed] It supports Vivante's product line of GC400 Series, GC800 Series, GC1000 Series, GC2000 Series and GC4000 Series.[14]
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
- ^ http://hsafoundation.com/ HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation
- ^ "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.
- ^ "Vivante shipping GPU cores designed to support the latest OpenGL ES 3.0 specification". Retrieved September 13, 2014.
- ^ http://system-on-a-chip.findthedata.org/l/161/Marvell-PXA986
- ^ http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/02/26/marvell-armada-mobile-pxa1928-soc-features-four-cortex-a53-cores-vivante-gc5000-gpu-and-lte/
- ^ http://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx30&os=Android&api=gl&D=Samsung+SM-J100F&testgroup=info
- ^ "Vivante Corporation Signs 15th GPU Licensee" (Press release). June 8, 2009. Retrieved July 8, 2009.
- ^ "Vivante GPUs Power Marvell ARMADA Application Processors" (Press release). October 27, 2009. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
- ^ "Vivante GPU IP Cores Power the Latest Freescale i.MX 6 Series of Application Processors" (Press release). April 26, 2011. Retrieved July 31, 2011.
- ^ "Vivante GPU Core Brings Android 3.0 Honeycomb Support to Ingenic's Latest JZ4770 Application Processor" (Press release). June 13, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
- ^ "Chinese Academy of Sciences Selects Vivante as GPU Partner for Netbooks" (Press release). June 29, 2009. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
- ^ "Guess what is ready for tape out: It has a MIPS core and a GPU from Vivante". April 28, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
- ^ "盈方微电子股份有限公司". InfoTM. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
- ^ "etna_pipe is currently compatible with at least the following GC chips".