Imagination and Rightware enter multi-year strategic partnership

Collaboration to drive best practices for mobile benchmarks and deliver optimized, visually stunning user interfaces

London, UK – 7 October 2013 – Imagination Technologies (IMG.L), a leading multimedia, processor, communications and cloud technologies company, and Rightware, a leader in user interface (UI) design and benchmarking software, have entered into a new multi-year strategic agreement. The partnership is aimed at driving best practices for mobile benchmark development and also delivering application-optimized, visually stunning user experiences through Rightware’s Kanzi-based UIs on Imagination’s industry-leading processors, including PowerVR GPUs and MIPS CPUs.

Imagination has committed to a multi-year membership in Rightware’s industry standard Benchmark Development Program. This strategic relationship enables the two companies to collaborate closely on the development and improvement of next-generation mobile benchmarks. Rightware’s graphics and system benchmarks, including Basemark products and Browsermark, are already widely used and adopted by many leading OEMs and semiconductor vendors for gaming and internet browsing performance on mobile devices.

Through this collaboration, Imagination and Rightware will work together through the Benchmark Development Program on future benchmarks that measure not only appropriate workloads reflecting true real-world performance, but also address power efficiency by taking into account the realities of low power and thermal requirements in end user products running real software.

Says Tony King-Smith, EVP of marketing for Imagination: “The industry needs credible and objective system-wide benchmarks that measure real-world performance taking into account the latest applications used on today’s smartphones and tablets, as well as power and thermal constraints, because that is what consumers ultimately want: a realistic evaluation of the devices they are using. Rightware is a leader in driving benchmark development, and we look forward to working with them through the Benchmark Development Program on furthering this important next generation of industry benchmarks.”

With a focus on ensuring the best possible user experience in automotive and consumer devices integrating Imagination’s GPUs, CPUs and other key processors, the companies are also working together to optimize Rightware’s Kanzi UI tools to take maximum advantage of the latest unique features of Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 Rogue architecture and drivers, such as lossless image and geometry compression, PVRTC/PVRTC2 texture compression, scalar processing, API extensions, GPU compute and more.

Continued King-Smith: “We are delighted to work with Rightware to optimize its Kanzi UI solution for the ever-growing range of SoC devices using Imagination’s IP cores. As we continue to see increasing demand for advanced graphics-rich, intelligently interactive user experiences in consumer products across a wide range of markets, it’s important for us to help our partners create UIs that can take advantage of the powerful underlying hardware that we provide. We look forward to working with Rightware to evolve their Kanzi UI tools to make best use of everything that our GPUs, CPUs and VPUs have to offer. ”

Says Jonas Geust, CEO of Rightware: “Imagination is a respected leader in GPUs, CPUs and a range of other semiconductor IP found in many of the world’s most popular products. We welcome Imagination’s multi-year commitment to our Benchmark Development Program, and look forward to continuing to deliver products that objectively measure the performance and efficiency of the latest hardware IP, as well as addressing the issue of power benchmarking demanded by mobile. In addition, optimizing our Kanzi UI Solution for Imagination’s PowerVR GPUs and MIPS CPUs will enable the creation of superior user experiences on a wide range of next-generation mobile and automotive products.”

About Rightware

Rightware® is the market leader in advanced User Interface technology, serving mobile, automotive and other embedded industries with its Kanzi® solution for rapid user interface design and deployment. Rightware also develops industry leading system performance analysis tools and its renowned product portfolio includes the Basemark™ product family for various benchmarking purposes, including industry standard benchmarks for OpenGL ES, OpenVG, OpenCL, Android, Linux, and Windows Mobile performance measurement. Rightware is headquartered in Espoo, Finland and has offices in Saratoga, CA, Shanghai and Munich. More information: www.rightware.com

About Imagination

Imagination Technologies - a global leader in multimedia, processor, communication and cloud technologies - creates and licenses market-leading processor solutions including graphics, video, vision, CPU and embedded processing, multi-standard communications, cross-platform V.VoIP and VoLTE, and cloud connectivity. These silicon and software intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by an extensive portfolio of software, tools and ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, connected home consumer, mobile and tablet computing, in-car electronics, networking, telecoms, health, smart energy and connected sensors. Imagination's licensees include many of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEM/ODMs. Corporate headquarters are located in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.