Imagination Technologies announces POWERVR SGX545 graphics IP core with full DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.2 and OpenCL 1.0 capabilities

New core takes mobile & embedded graphics family to a new level; delivers unrivalled capabilities

Las Vegas, USA, 8th January 2010: Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia chip technologies company, announces POWERVR SGX545, the first and only DirectX10.1 capable embedded graphics IP core available for immediate licensing. SGX545 will also deliver OpenGL ES 2.x and OpenGL 3.2 to deliver class leading 3D graphics performance, and will also support OpenCL 1.0 full profile capability which will enable mobile and embedded applications to take maximum advantage of the capabilities offered by these GPU APIs for both 3D graphics and general purpose applications.

POWERVR SGX545 is available for licensing now. The IP is already proven in silicon in a test chip from Imagination and licensed by a lead partner.

Says Tony King-Smith, VP Marketing, Imagination: "Combining our many years of experience in the embedded, mobile and PC-based DirectX graphics worlds, POWERVR SGX 545 takes the possibilities of hand-held graphics to a new level by delivering a full DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.x feature set as well as delivering GPU powered OpenCL heterogeneous parallel processing capabilities for the mobile and embedded markets. This makes POWERVR SGX545 a compelling solution for application processor SoC designers targeting the next generation of netbook and MID mobile products demanding exceptional graphics capabilities."

The debut of POWERVR SGX545 reinforces the SGX family’s outstanding scalability which ranges from ultra-small OpenGL ES 2.0 mobile cores through solutions for feature-rich mobile and HDTV platforms, to high-performance gaming and computing solutions. The SGX family supports a wide range of APIs including DirectX9 & 10, OpenGL ES 2.x, OpenGL 3.x, OpenVG 1.x and OpenCL 1.x.

POWERVR SGX545 delivers real-world performance of 40 million polygons/sec and 1 Gpixels/sec fillrate at 200MHz,* and is capable of driving HD screens with ultra smooth high frame rate 3D graphics content.

New features in POWERVR SGX545 include:

• DirectX10.1 API support
• Enhanced support for DirectX10 Geometry Shaders
• DirectX10 Data assembler support (Vertex, primitive and instance ID generation)
• Render target resource array support
• Full arbitrary non power of two texture support
• Full filtering support for F16 texture types
• Support for all DirectX10 mandated texture formats
• Sampling from unresolved MSAA surfaces
• Support for Gamma on output pixels
• Order dependent coverage based AA (anti-aliased lines)
• Enhanced line rasterisation

SGX545 was also designed to deliver full profile OpenCL 1.0 capabilities, with advanced features including:

• Support of round-to-nearest for floating-point math
• Full 32-bit integer support (includes add, multiply and divide)
• 64-bit integer emulation
• 3D texture support
• Support for the maximum 2D and 3D image sizes specified in the full profile.

Inside POWERVR SGX545

USSE (Universal Scalable Shader Engine), the main programmable processing unit within each POWERVR SGX545 pipeline, is a scalable multi-threaded GPU shader processing engine that efficiently processes graphics as well as many other mathematically-intensive tasks. USSE can be programmed using the GLSL language that forms part of the OpenGL ES 2.0 specification, or in the C-based parallel processing language used in the OpenCL specification – both APIs from the Khronos Group.

POWERVR SGX545 delivers the broadest range of graphics API feature sets in the industry, while also enabling developers to gain greater access to the full capabilities of the USSE-powered GP-GPU in a broad range of applications including digital imaging, video processing, game physics, cryptography, and other general computing tasks that can benefit from parallel processing.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia and communication silicon technologies – creates and licenses market-leading processor cores for graphics, video, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP and multi-standard communications applications. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by strong array of software tools and drivers as well as extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets includemobile 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.