Imagination launches new specialist division – IMG Labs

Update: March 28, 2021

Imagination launches new specialist division – IMG Labs

Imagination launches new specialist division - IMG Labs

Imagination Technologies is launching a new specialist division – IMG Labs – that will be tasked with the development of breakthrough innovations that are fundamental to new, advanced Semiconductor products.

According to a statement from Imagination, IMG Labs’ mission is to understand and accelerate future trends in the Semiconductor industry, translating these into new licensable technologies that will enable world-leading products for Imagination’s partners.

The unit will be headed up by Tim Mamtora, and the Labs initial focus will be on AI, GPU, heterogeneous compute, and ray tracing.

Commenting Tim Mamtora, Chief of Innovation, Imagination Technologies, said, “IMG Labs is Imagination doubling down on what it does best, core R&D for new technology that our customers want and need. The creation of Labs further demonstrates our long-standing commitment to developing commercial IP products that offer unique differentiation for customers. It enables our partners to be first to market with cutting-edge solutions and the exceptional quality that they have come to expect.”

Senior members of the IMG Labs team include Simon Fenney, Research Fellow, author or co-author of over 50 patents in the field of rendering hardware, texture and image compression, and mathematical operations, alongside other well-known figures including: Clifford Gibson, VP GPU architecture; Steve Mackenzie, VP Systems and SoC Architecture; and Alex Pim, VP of AI Research and Architecture who leads on applied AI and high- performance computing.

Mamtora added, “IMG Labs is comprised of some of the brightest minds at Imagination and continues to grow its pool of world-class engineers across a spectrum of disciplines from graphics and multimedia to AI and neural network acceleration.”

A key part of IMG Labs will be Strategic technology Research, a cross-functional horizon-scanning initiative to anticipate trends and identify disruptive innovations for more detailed investigation.

Second-level research groups will look to contextualise these trends, establishing how to harness the value of new technologies to meet future customer needs.