Imagination brings exciting, innovative apps from POWERVR Insider Partner Ecosystem to MWC 2011

MWC, Barcelona, Spain, February 14th 2011: Imagination Technologies, the leading multimedia chip technologies company is working with partners including Apical, Digital Legends, Natural Motion, NAVTEQ, Pushbutton, Scaleform and Visioglobe to showcase the latest and most innovative and advanced usage of GPUs for graphics, multimedia applications and devices to MWC 20111 in Barcelona from February 14 – 17th.

Imagination’s POWERVR technology is the de facto standard for mobile graphics acceleration, with approaching half a billion products already shipped, making it the choice for developers targeting mobile graphics rich applications. The POWERVR Insider ecosystem includes over 22,000 members from whom Imagination has drawn some of the most innovative and exciting new content and products to show in a dedicated Application Zone on Imagination’s booth at MWC 2011 (Hall1 1D45).

Digital Legends, Barcelona’s international award-winning games studio will debut ‘ExtremeRun’, a new demo custom made for Imagination to show off the capabilities and scalability of POWERVR SGX, which will be running on a variety of platforms throughout Imagination’s stand.

Xavier Carrillo Costa, CEO, Digital Legends says: “The emergence of powerful graphics for mobile phones, tablets and other platforms has led to amazing new opportunities for Digital Legends, We are proud to have worked closely with Imagination for many years now, and as a result of this close collaboration our latest content, which makes full use of POWERVR graphics acceleration, will confirm our position as a leading player in this exciting market.”

NaturalMotion will be demonstrating an innovative and previously unseen demo as well as its Backbreaker 2: Vengeance and Jenga gaming titles, featuring POWERVR enabled highly realistic character animation for Android, iPhone and iPad.

Says Torsten Reil, CEO, NaturalMotion: “POWERVR technology brings console class graphics capabilities to mobile phones delivering the outstanding performance that our applications demand, complemented by outstanding tools and support. Our engineers really appreciate the support from Imagination’s DevTech team, and unique technology features such as PVRTC texture compression enable us to minimise download size while maximising image quality.”

Apical, which specializes in enhancing the performance of cameras and displays, will bring demonstrations to MWC 2011 of technologies utilizing the power of POWERVR SGX GPGPU capabilities for reducing power consumption of mobile devices’ displays by using low-energy GPGPU processing to reduce high-energy backlighting.

Says Michael Tusch, CEO, Apical: “POWERVR SGX is the only GPGPU available in millions of mobile devices today where all of its cores are OpenCL capable. We are excited to be working closely with Imagination to enable Apical to be at the leading edge of mobile GPGPU image processing applications.”

Push Button Ltd, a leading UK-based independent digital agency focused on interactive television content and services for new platforms, will be demonstrating a new advanced multimedia user interface (UI) application specifically targeting tablets and advanced smartphones, exploiting the many capabilities of POWERVR SGX graphics to bring together video and graphics in a seamless, highly responsive UI.

Says Paula Byrne, Managing Director, PushButton: “Everyone knows that UI interactivity and visual impact are major factors when consumers decide on new product, and POWERVR is a key enabler of advanced graphical UI experiences on a vast array of mobile as well as TV and STB devices. With Imagination at MWC we are looking forward to demonstrating our latest tools for advanced UI development, including our new Physics Engine, Spotlight UI and Deform Video Album.”

Visioglobe will demonstrate smarter mobile phone navigation featuring map data and 3D content from NAVTEQ, a leading global provider of digital map, traffic and location data for in-vehicle, portable, wireless and enterprise solutions. Visioglobe will show an immersive 3D geographical and urban visualization engine, which makes it possible to navigate in real-time with an excellent image quality and fluidity, while retaining the possibility to add virtual objects or ads on-demand. Visioglobe will also be showing its innovative new in-building VisioMall app, which demonstrates the potential to take location-based services (LBS) apps for personal navigation to a whole new level.

Says Eric Bernard, CEO, Visioglobe: “Participation in Imagination’s POWERVR Insider ecosystem has been a very positive experience for Visioglobe, not only in terms of the tools and technical support we have received but in the marketing and business opportunities opened up.”

Says Marc Naddell, vice president, partner and developer programs, NAVTEQ: “The NAVTEQ Network for Developers™ has worked closely with Imagination Technologies to include the POWERVR Insider SDK in our developer tools and offerings to maximise 3D content capabilities for our members and ecosystem programs. Imagination’s support in enabling developers to utilize premium NAVTEQ visual content, such as Enhanced 3D City Models, helps our developers to differentiate their app and provide more value to their end users.”

Scaleform, a leading provider of Flash®-based user interface (UI) and graphics solutions for videogame developers, will demonstrate new features and optimizations for Scaleform GFx 4.0 designed specifically to accelerate the development of highly immersive, lightweight applications, interfaces and games for iPhones, iPads, iPods and Android-based phones and tablets.

Says Brendan Iribe, CEO, Scaleform: “Scaleform GFx is a Flash-compatible open, extensible, hardware-accelerated player that makes maximum use of POWERVR OpenGL ES2 graphics acceleration in every aspect of rendering. It has been used in over 800 3D games to create high-performance, graphically rich in-game user interfaces, menus and animated displays. Thanks to our close working relationship with Imagination, POWERVR graphics is a key enabler of Scaleform’s Flash rendering performance.”

Technologies on display

In addition to its Applications Zone showcasing some of its partners’ latest applications, Imagination’s stand in Hall 1 Stand 1D45 will feature a comprehensive Technology Zone showing its full range of graphics, video, display enhancement, demodulation, Wi-Fi and embedded processor IP for SoCs (Systems on Chips). Imagination will also be displaying a large number of OEM partner devices shipping today from many leading brands containing technologies from Imagination, including some of the most iconic phones on the market today.

Imagination’s 100m² stand will showcase POWERVR graphics, video, and display, META processor and ENSIGMA communications technology. These uniquely low power and highly scalable technologies enable Imagination's partners to lead the market for low-power, high performance mobile devices.

Imagination will also be showing technologies from its recent acquisitions Caustic Graphics (advanced 3D ray tracing for cinematic quality imaging) and HelloSoft (comprehensive V.VoIP, Video and Voice over IP, solutions being deployed by a growing number of leading operators and handset manufacturers).