Imagination Technologies releases latest PowerVR MBX Public Software development Kit

Now Includes Symbian OS SDK

: Imagination Technologies, a leader in system-on-chip intellectual property (SoC IP), has announced the public availability of its latest SDK and toolset for PowerVR MBX content development. This latest public PowerVR MBX SDK adds support for Symbian OS, the operating system that powers many of today’s most popular smartphones.

The public SDK enables OpenGL ES 1.x application development for PowerVR MBX enabled mobile devices across a wide range of OS including Windows PC Emulation, PocketPC (including the Dell Axim X50v/X51v), Symbian (Version 8.1 and 9.1) and Linux (2.4 and 2.6 Kernels). Symbian OS is supported across ARM Versatile and Texas Instruments OMAP2420 platforms.

Says David McBrien, VP business development, Imagination Technologies: “Our public SDKs enable developers, professionals and enthusiasts alike, to actively create content using PowerVR MBX technology. The latest in our series of public PowerVR SDK releases increases the platforms supported with the significant inclusion of Symbian OS. The great strength of our SDK is a comprehensive developer’s toolset, which is the rocket-fuel behind content enablement for PowerVR MBX devices.”

Tools in the latest PowerVR SDK include a comprehensive model exporter; exemplar demos; PowerVR Texture compressor and compression library; a 3D Studio Max exporter; VGP Vertex Program compiler with detailed performance information (clock cycle counts); and an extensive tools library (including fixed/float point maths, matrix and vertex maths, tangent space calculation, geometry import, software bounding box/transform library, print3D for rendering 2D text on-screen, and texture utilities.)

PowerVR MBX has rapidly been established as the de facto standard for high performance graphics and video on mobile phones and PDAs. Imagination Technologies, one of the world’s top ten IP companies (source: Gartner), provides PowerVR IP to partners including Freescale, Intel, Philips, Renesas, Samsung, Sunplus and Texas Instruments. Widespread acceptance of PowerVR by the world's top silicon companies is creating a new, pervasive mobile gaming platform. This has been eagerly adopted by leading mobile device manufacturers and service providers including: NEC, Sharp, Panasonic, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, SK Teletech, NTT DoCoMo (FOMA) and Dell.

As well as access to advanced OpenGL ES 3D hardware functionality the SDK provides full details and specifications of the PowerVR MBX specific OpenGL-ES extensions, which open up features such as PVRTC™ texture compression and vertex programs.

The demos included in the SDK feature examples of a wide range of effects enabled by PowerVR MBX. These include: dynamic reflections; different texture filter modes; Polybump technology; spherical harmonics lighting with VGP; physics based particle effects; cell-shading; multiple differently coloured spotlights; morphing (in combination with multi-texturing); and matrix skinned characters in combination with DOT3 per pixel lighting.

The public SDK is available now from www.pvrdev.com. Further SDKs are available to professional developers, manufacturers and operators under NDA. For more information about PowerVR MBX see: www.powervr.com. For further information about OpenGL ES see: www.khronos.org.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc - a leader in SoC IP - develops, licenses and supplies market-leading graphics, video and display cores, real-time multi-threaded DSP/RISC processors and communication and broadcast technologies for the mobile, consumer, automotive and PC markets. It supplies licensable IP (Intellectual Property) supported by advanced development tools to leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies worldwide. Imagination Technologies Group plc has its corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE:IMG). See: www.imgtec.com.