Imagination Announces PowerVR Insider SDK 2.10 and PVRTC2™

SAN FRANCISCO, March 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Game Developers Conference -- Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia chip technologies company, has released version 2.10 of its industry leading PowerVR Insider SDK (software development kit). Free and fully featured copies of the SDK will be available for download soon following a brief period where preview copies will be exclusively given away on DVD by Imagination at GDC 2012 in San Francisco.

Imagination's PowerVR Insider SDK is the leading SDK and toolset for mobile 3D graphics development. The PowerVR Insider SDK fully supports the development of applications using the Khronos OpenGL® ES 1.1 and 2.0 APIs. An established favourite with more than 28,000 developers world-wide, the PowerVR Insider SDK includes tutorials, source code, extensive documentation, platform abstraction frameworks and a highly integrated suite of tools. Developers can join up, download the SDK for free and interact with the community through dynamic online forums at www.powervrinsider.com.

Says Bryce Johnstone, senior manager of ecosystems, Imagination: "Our rich and mature SDK and tools are the heart of our ecosystem offering, backed up by extensive technical support, co-marketing and education. We are delighted to be back again at GDC in 2012 alongside developers who are using PowerVR to deliver the best 3D gaming content for smartphones, tablets, embedded devices, mobile computing and handheld games consoles."

Release v2.10 of the PowerVR Insider SDK includes new versions of the PowerVR Toolchain including: PVRShaman with post-processing support and enhanced shader profiling; 'IntroducingPrint3D', a new training course demonstrating the much more fine grained control now available in the Print3D tools; PVRTrace with recording and graphical scene analysis; PVRTune with optimised GUI and support for custom counters; PVRScope, a new performance analysis tool that enables developers to embed the power of PVRTune in their own software; and PVRTexTool and PVRTexLib with support for PVRTC2, the new texture compression format being introduced for PowerVR at GDC 2012. 

PVRTC2

The highly acclaimed PVRTC texture compression (TC) format is one of the most widely used texture compression formats in the mobile industry today, implemented in more than 600m devices. PVRTC2 is a major upgrade of this technology, adding a wide range of new features.

Says Tony King-Smith, Vice President marketing for Imagination: "Our PVRTC format has for many years led the way for mobile and embedded devices. Indeed the PVRTC 2bpp (bits per pixel) format is widely acknowledged as the most advanced TC format in mainstream use today, enabling compression of textures stored within an application by up to 16x compared to their uncompressed form.

"PVRTC2 raises the bar yet again for mobile and embedded TC to further strengthen PowerVR PVRTC – and now PVRTC2 - as the leading format of choice for cross-platform, cross-OS textures in leading mobile and embedded platforms, and embedded in the industry's leading applications."

Partner demos at GDC 2012 (Imagination Technologies, booth 618)

The latest game, middleware and applications content from PowerVR Insider partners, including Remedy, String, Paper Mountain, Epic, Guild Software, Unity, Allegorithmic, Digital Legends/Adidas, Havok and Geomerics, and the latest PowerVR enabled devices from Intel, MediaTek, Renesas, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments will be on display on Imagination's booth, #618, at GDC Expo (Moscone Center, San Francisco, 7-9th March).

Following last year's 'sell out' standing room only session Imagination will be delivering two masterclass sessions at GDC 2012.

• Getting Great Graphics Performance with the PowerVR Insider SDK (Wednesday 17:00-18:00 Room 2010, West Hall, 2nd floor)
• Masterclass in Graphics Technology and Optimization (Thursday 14:30-15:30
Room 2014, West Hall, 2nd floor)

PowerVR Insiders and mobile developers may also be interested in the session:

• Bringing AAA Graphics to Mobile Platforms by Niklas Smedberg of Epic Games (Thursday 10:00-11:00 Room 2002, West Hall, 2nd floor)

Developers can also book time with Imagination engineers at booth 618 for a personalised tour of the PowerVR Insider SDK and toolchain.

Demonstrations of advanced OpenGL ES 2.0 shader-graphics content created with Imagination's development tools are available as binary downloads from Imagination's website at http://www.imgtec.com/demo_room/index.asp

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia and communication technologies – creates and licenses market-leading multimedia IP cores for graphics, video, and display processing, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP cores and multi-standard communications and connectivity processors. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by platform level IP and services, a strong array of software tools and drivers and extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, handheld multimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, and in-car electronics. Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.

SOURCE Imagination Technologies