PowerVR

PowerVR is a family of graphics processing units (GPUs) developed by Imagination Technologies. The PowerVR name originated in the mid-1990s with chips marketed by VideoLogic and later by Imagination Technologies after acquiring the IP. It is known for pioneering tile-based deferred rendering (TBDR), a pipeline design that renders 3D scenes in small tiles and defers shading to reduce memory bandwidth and power consumption, making it well suited to mobile and embedded devices.

PowerVR GPUs have been widely used in mobile devices and embedded systems. The architecture has evolved through multiple generations, including early series and the SGX and later Rogue lines. In addition to geometry processing and shading, PowerVR includes dedicated texture compression technology PVRTC, introduced to reduce texture memory bandwidth in mobile GPUs. PowerVR licenses its GPU IP to original equipment manufacturers, who integrate the cores into SoCs, set-top boxes, automotive systems, and handheld gaming devices.

Competition has included ARM's Mali, Qualcomm's Adreno, and NVIDIA's Tegra/Jetson lines in the mobile and embedded markets. Imagination Technologies has continued to develop PowerVR with improvements in performance, energy efficiency, and support for modern graphics APIs such as OpenGL ES, Vulkan, and DirectX via portability layers.