Lead in Mobile Graphics

11 February 2008


Imagination Technologies Extends its Lead in Mobile Graphics




MWC, Barcelona, February 11th 2008: At MWC 2008 Imagination Technologies a leader in mobile multimedia technologies says that the uptake of graphics technology is continuing strongly in the mobile market, a fact born out by this year’s Mobile World Congress where dozens of phones and semiconductors containing Imagination’s POWERVR graphics acceleration technology are on show.


Imagination forecasts that as much as 40% of all mobile phones shipped (that is, more than 400m) will incorporate graphics acceleration hardware by 2012.


Imagination’s technologies are the de facto standard for mobile graphics and are continuing to set the pace in this exciting new device segment. Licensees of POWERVR graphics technology include leaders in mobile semiconductors including: Centrality/SiRF, Freescale, Intel, Marvell, NEC, NXP, Renesas, Samsung, Sunplus, Texas Instruments and others.


POWERVR MBX already enables multimedia applications including gaming, Flash and SVG players, camera viewfinders, navigation and user interfaces while the next-generation POWERVR SGX is being widely adopted for the ‘OpenGL ES 2.0 generation’ of products in advanced development now.


Says Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination Technologies: "POWERVR graphics is now being specified by name by both semiconductor companies and OEMs. Graphics is becoming an essential for mid-range as well as high-end phones. POWERVR MBX is shipping in volume now and will continue to dominate in mobile and consumer globally for several years to come. The new generation POWERVR SGX is already established as the industry’s leading OpenGL ES 2.0 implementation this will be the future, with the first ground breaking devices shipping later in 2008. There is no doubt that mobile graphics is developing at a serious pace and that pace is driven by POWERVR."


Imagination’s family of POWERVR graphics cores address the feature set and performance requirements of all key mobile and consumer market segments. Designed to enable the emerging OpenGL ES 2.0 generation of 3D devices, as well as OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenVG, the next-generation POWERVR SGX is already being used in the development of over 20 devices from Imagination’s partners including Intel, Texas Instruments, NEC, Renesas and others.


Imagination’s POWERVR MBX leads the range of currently available 3D-enabled handsets, with over 75 current models using the technology, and is widely accepted as the de facto standard for mobile hardware graphics acceleration.


With the market demonstrating growing recognition of the importance of graphics for mobile devices, Imagination is seeing increased engagements with customers for the high performance cores that make up its POWERVR SGX family, from the base-line SGX520, through the high-performance SGX530 and SGX535 to the performance leading SGX540. With significant architectural performance scalability across the POWERVR SGX520, SGX530, SGX535 and SGX540, and process node clock speed enhancements, Imagination’s partners have significant flexibility enabling them to target all the key market segments with optimal designs.


Imagination Technologies was recently first to announce a conformant OpenVG 1.0.1 implementation when Texas Instruments’ OMAP2420 processor, which incorporates the POWERVR MBX graphics accelerator IP core, completed the Khronos Group-defined conformance test suite and process.


Concludes Yassaie: "As a hardware graphics acceleration company it is to be expected that we already have a strong line-up of licensees for POWERVR SGX but we are also now a strategic partner for development and promotion of accelerated 3D, 2D and vector graphics based applications through our SDKs, tools and other middleware. The industry is learning from the success of the ‘OpenGL ES 1.1 generation’ of phones that it is important to get onboard quickly or risk missing key engagements."

David2008-03-11 11:22:20