Catapult

RISC-V CPU IP

Delivering performance at minimum silicon cost

Meet Catapult

Catapult, a RISC-V CPU product line designed from the ground up for deployment in key applications and configurable for any use. Leveraging nearly three decades of experience in delivering complex solutions, Imagination’s new CPU series is backed by the strong and ever-expanding RISC-V ecosystem.

Catapult CPUs are designed for various market applications and also next-generation control, compute and heterogeneous compute needs.

Introducing APXM-6200 CPU

Imagination APXM-6200 is a 64-bit, highly efficient application RISC-V CPU with market leading performance density for consumer and industrial applications. The 11-stage, dual issue pipeline CPU includes Vector extensions and multi-core support to deliver high performance into a wide range of use-cases.
Find out more

Built on RISC-V

design icon

Design

Ground-up design based on RISC-V that can be configured for performance, efficiency, or balanced profiles, making them suitable for a wide range of markets.
patents icon

Patents

Protected by a rich portfolio of hundreds of fundamental CPU patents, giving you peace of mind when you ship.

Security

With seamless integration into industry standard security systems, and multi-supplier SoCs, our Catapult CPUs ensure uncompromised security.
functional safe icon

IP integration

Discover a seamless blend of power by integrating our RISC-V CPU with our Imagination GPU—a fully compatible RISC-V GPU IP.
gpu

Support

Full hardware and software support for customer SoCs using Imagination IP cores.
expertise icon

Expertise

Established and proven over nearly three decades of expertise to deliver very complex IP solutions reinforced by a strong support function.

Exemplary quality

Catapult CPUs are fully optimised, characterised and tested extensively before reaching the market. This is built on a legacy of thirty years in IP design, delivery, and support with quality at the forefront of our business model.

In addition, Catapult CPUs are designed to be compliant with ratified RISC-V standards. Resulting in a solution that is fully supported by a broad and increasing ecosystem.

Catapult CPUs offer full hardware, software and debug support for SoCs using Imagination IP. This allows SoC manufacturers to increase energy efficiency, free up system resources and improve the performance of their designs.

Accelerating AI compute

Imagination’s Catapult IP is ready to support customers across their AI needs. The Catapult IP includes the latest AI workload data formats, vector support, software libraries, features for improved accelerator integration, and optimum performance with Imagination’s RISC-V compatible GPUs.

However customers are looking to deliver their AI compute demands, the Catapult range supports comprehensive solutions across a range of applications and use-cases.

Catapult SDK and Catapult Studio extension

Catapult CPUs are delivered with a fully-featured SDK, built on carefully curated open-source foundations, gives developers a world class user experience. The SDK includes GCC, LLVM-based compiler and C run-time libraries, optimised by our team of engineers to get the best out of our hardware for either bare-metal or linux-based systems. In addition to industry-standard build and debug tools such as GDB and OpenOCD. It is available for Windows, Ubuntu, CentOS, and MacOS.

Catapult Studio Extension extends Microsoft's widely used Visual Studio Code Integrated Development Environment (IDE). A Visual Studio user can integrate the Catapult studio Extension into their standard development environment directly from the Marketplace. Moreover, developers gain access to QEMU (Quick Emulator) and Catapult software models, enabling them to commence software development immediately, even prior to hardware availability.

Download our SDK

Imagination CPUs

CPU icon

APXM-6200

Imagination APXM-6200 is a 64-bit, highly efficient application RISC-V CPU with market leading performance density for consumer and industrial applications. The 11-stage, dual issue pipeline CPU includes Vector extensions and multi-core support to deliver high performance into a wide range of use-cases.

Find out more
CPU icon

RTXM-2200

Drawing on Imagination’s decades of experience in CPU, RTXM-2200 is a real-time, highly-scalable, 32-bit embedded design. A design that’s ideal for markets such as cellular base stations and SoC helper cores.

Find out more

Frequently asked questions

A CPU (Central Processing Unit) is a piece of general-purpose hardware that can be triggered by software to enable the execution of a program on a computer or smart device.  The software program is divided into instructions that are stored in the computer’s memory. The CPU fetches these instructions and decodes them into a series of micro-operations that are then executed by the CPU hardware.

Each CPU’s architecture is unique, but they all have one or more cores that process the instruction cycle and a core complex that houses supporting control, power management, chip-to-chip communication, and memory units.

When a program runs, its instructions are loaded into memory, and the CPU pulls them one by one from memory. The core decodes each instruction, decides the operation to be done, executes the operation, and then stores or communicates the result to external memory.

This process is repeated until all the program’s instructions have been performed, at which point the program terminates. CPUs with more cores or more efficient instruction cycles can execute more instructions per second, improving performance.

CPUs and GPUs are both types of processors that perform calculations in a computer, but they are optimised for different types of tasks.

A CPU, or Central Processing Unit, is a general-purpose processor that is responsible for executing most of the instructions that make up a computer program. It is optimised for performing a wide range of tasks, including running operating systems, executing software applications, and performing basic arithmetic and logic operations. CPUs can have one or more cores that are used for sequential processing which is good for programs where the results of a previous instruction feed into subsequent instructions.

A GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit, is a specialised processor that is optimised for handling large numbers of independent calculations in parallel and simultaneously.  Their cores are well-suited for tasks such as rendering 3D graphics, video encoding, and machine learning.

In terms of performance, GPUs are generally faster than CPUs for tasks that require parallel processing, such as rendering 3D graphics or certain artificial intelligence programs. However, CPUs are generally better suited for tasks that require sequential processing, such as running software applications or performing basic arithmetic and logic operations.

CPUs are used in a wide range of products and applications, such as:

  • Desktop and laptop computers: Modern computers include a CPU, which is responsible for executing most of the instructions that make up a computer program.
  • Mobile devices: Modern smartphones and tablets include a CPU, which is responsible for executing the instructions required to run mobile applications and perform other tasks.
  • Gaming consoles: Gaming consoles, such as the Xbox and PlayStation, include specialised CPUs designed to deliver high-performance gaming experiences.
  • Home appliances: Many home appliances, such as smart TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines, include CPUs to power their functionality.
  • Automotive: Modern automobiles include CPUs to power infotainment systems, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and other features. Also CPUs are key to the engine management, electronic vehicle management functionality.