Vivante Shipping GPU Cores Designed to Support the Latest OpenGL ES 3.0 Specification

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SIGGRAPH 2012- Vivante Corporation, a world-wide leader in graphics and GPU Compute technologies for handheld, consumer, and embedded devices, today announced the industry's first shipping products designed* to support the Khronos™ Group's next generation OpenGL® ES 3.0 API (application programming interface). Support of the new API will be offered in all GC Cores starting with the GC800 Series and higher. Vivante GC technology in mass production supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 can be found in Freescale's (NYSE: FSL) i.MX6 Quad application processor. Upcoming releases from Marvell's (NASDAQ: MRVL) PXA and Armada product lines and other previously announced Vivante licensees will also support the latest API.  

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OpenGL ES is an open, royalty-free, cross-platform 3D graphics API that is used in the majority of smartphones, tablets, and embedded systems. It is based on a subset of desktop OpenGL, enabling developers to create the latest and greatest 3D graphics effects across a wide range of operating systems and platforms. With support of the next generation OpenGL ES API, Vivante powered products balance leading graphics innovations with demands of application developers creating the next wave of captive content.

"As a promoter and contributor in the Khronos OpenGL ES Working Group, Freescale worked closely with Vivante and committee members to define the next generation graphics API, which is expected to offer highly advanced graphics innovations to current and upcoming mobile and consumer devices," said Rajeev Kumar, i.MX product line manager for Freescale Semiconductor. "With the official release of OpenGL ES 3.0 at SIGGRAPH 2012, we are pleased to announce that our i.MX6 Quad processor supports the new API feature set. Platforms built around i.MX6 Quad are available from many of our board partners for developers to start work on their ES 3.0 applications." 

Vivante GC Core features built around the OpenGL ES 3.0 specification include:

• Updating the shader and GPU pipelines to include support of occlusion queries, transform feedback, instanced rendering, support of four / eight render targets, and OpenCL – ES3.0 interoperability to simultaneously support multiple contexts of graphics and GPU compute.
• Support of new texture compression (ETC2 / EAC) and pixel formats included in the specification.
• Support of the latest GLSL ES shading language including signed / unsigned 32-bit and 16-bit INT and FP operations based on IEEE-754 precision requirements.
• Additional features include support for 3D textures, texture arrays, sRGB textures, R/RG textures, NPOT textures, FP textures, depth textures, vertex textures, seamless cube maps, and sampler objects.

"Vivante is a major supporter of OpenGL ES and other open standards that help drive GPU innovation across all market segments. With major momentum in OpenGL ES adoption as the graphics standard in smartphones and tablets, we will continue to invest heavily in research and development to make sure our architecture is forward looking as the standard progresses," said Wei-Jin Dai, President and CEO of Vivante. "With the announcement of OpenGL ES 3.0, we became the first GPU IP vendor to support the API, which is a critical milestone as the ecosystem takes shape and developers port their applications to the new standard."

About Vivante GC (Graphics and Compute) Cores

Vivante offers a comprehensive set of GPU IP solutions for cutting-edge applications in the mobile, consumer, automotive, embedded, real time/mission critical, and home entertainment markets. With support of our customers and partners, we have rapidly grown our IP licensing business over the last four years to become the worldwide number two volume leader in GPU shipments. You can find products powered by Vivante in various form factors in your hand, home, office, or car, using the latest versions of Android, Linux, GreenHills, QNX, VxWorks, and Microsoft Windows.

Our product portfolio includes mass market, performance leading technologies in 3D, 2D/Composition Processors, GPGPU, and vector graphics. Vivante cores offer robust support in a unified driver architecture for industry-standard application programming interfaces like OpenGL® ES 3.0/2.0, desktop OpenGL®, OpenCL®, OpenVG®, Microsoft® DirectX® 11, DirectFB, BLTsville™, XWindows, Google Renderscript™ Compute, and other standard APIs.

New features built into our latest products include:

• Unified Scalable Shader Architecture: Multi-core GPUs with parallel shaders for optimal load balancing and concurrent GPU – GPGPU context support
• GPU Compute: OpenCL, Rendersript, GLSL, and HLSL API and language support for unrestricted programmability
• Single / Double Precision Arithmetic Formats: Pipelined FP (IEEE-754) and INT 32-bit and 64-bit formats for high precision Compute and HDR graphics
• Scalable Compute Performance: Cores designed to run from hundreds of GFLOPS up to 1 TFLOP in various multicore versions
• Battery Saving Innovations: Extreme low power microarchitecture for leading mW per MHz/GHz
• New Compression Formats: Support of the latest compression standards including the recently announced Khronos ASTC™ – Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression extension
• Heterogeneous Platform Architecture: GC cores designed for hybrid computing systems using AMBA® ACE-Lite™ (CPU – GPU cache coherency) and the latest Stream Interface  

About Vivante Corporation

Vivante Corporation, a leader in multi-core GPU, OpenCL™, and 2D Composition IP solutions, provides the highest performance and lowest power characteristics across a range of Khronos™ Group API conformant standards based on the ScalarMorphic™ architecture. Vivante GPUs are integrated into customer silicon solutions in mass market products including smartphones, tablets, HDTVs, consumer electronics and embedded devices, running thousands of graphics applications across multiple operating systems and software platforms. Vivante is a privately held company incorporated and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with multiple R&D centers in China and Europe. For more information, visit http://www.vivantecorp.com

*Product is based on a published Khronos OpenGL ES 3.0 Specification, and is expected to pass the Khronos Conformance Testing Process. Current conformance status can be found at www.khronos.org/conformance.

Vivante and the Vivante logo are trademarks of Vivante. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. 

SOURCE Vivante Corporation