ARM opens Mali developer center

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND: ARM, a provider in digital products technology, on Wednesday announced at ARM TechCon, the launch of the ARM Mali developer center – a comprehensive suite of resources for graphics and embedded applications developers working with the Khronos OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0, OpenVG 1.0 and 1.1, as well as other APIs.

Accessing these resources, as members of the Mali ecosystem would enable developers targeting Mali graphics processing unit (GPU) platforms to bring best-in-class content to market.

With 24 hardware licensees including Broadcom, LG Electronics, Mediatek, ST-Ericsson and STMicroelectronics, Mali technology is the most widely-licensed GPU architecture in the world, said a press release.

Developers and middleware providers within the expanding Mali ecosystem are working closely with ARM and its OEM and silicon Partners to reduce the time-to-market and total cost of bringing advanced graphics content to a wide variety of digital devices, from feature phones and smartphones, through to netbooks, game consoles, personal navigation devices, automotive dashboards, set-top boxes and digital TVs.

The center would encourage innovation and is set to be the catalyst for the proliferation of high-quality content and applications to meet demands for the next generation of devices.

Developers would be provided with early access to advanced Mali hardware, enabling compelling graphics content to run across multiple OEM platforms and through an ever-wider array of high performance consumer devices ahead of market availability, said the release.

“The Mali Developer Center will act as a catalyst for the development of next-generation user interfaces, gaming, browsing and navigation,” said Lance Howarth, general manager, ARM Media Processing Division.

He further added that with developers crying out for better access to OpenGL ES and OpenVG resources for some time, they see the Mali Developer Center becoming an effective hub for accelerated development of highly advanced graphics. Allowing access to the complete Mali graphics stack and the ARM Mali ecosystem, the portal would advance innovation, drive down development costs and reduce time to market, making next-generation graphics a reality.”

The online portal would enable graphics and embedded applications developers, as well as middleware providers, to access to a comprehensive range of support levels and free tools, information resources, hardware and a community forum to speed pre-integration into Mali GPU-based platforms.

This would significantly reduce development costs and shorten time to market of cutting-edge graphics on any device with a screen. Essentially, it will reduce the total cost of graphics ownership for the whole value chain, added the release.