Imagination releases second gen tools for mobile GPU compute developers

SUNNYVALE, USA: Imagination Technologies has implemented a set of image and video handling extensions to the EGL Native Platform Interface which will enable developers to create high-performance GPU compute applications on the new low-cost Hardkernel ODROID-XU development system.

Imagination has been one of the early pioneers of mobile GPU compute, being the first mobile IP vendor to achieve OpenCL conformance. To encourage wider adoption of GPU compute in mobile, Imagination has

delivered to its silicon partners a number of OpenCL extensions related to advanced camera interoperability. These extensions can be used with the Samsung Exynos 5410 SoC (System on Chip), the application processor

found in both the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone and the Hardkernel ODROID-XU development board.

The new OpenCL applications programming interface (API) extensions enable developers to implement Instagram-like functionality on real-time camera data, including computational photography and video processing, while offloading the main CPU by providing resource sharing and interoperability between the camera pipeline, OpenGL ES graphics and OpenCL compute APIs.

Peter McGuinness, director of technology marketing for multimedia, Imagination, says: "Computational photography is a primary use case for GPU compute in mobile, and video is the most compelling example of that.

Our OpenCL drivers have always been class-leading, but video in mobile devices has unique challenges which we have been able to overcome by leveraging our many years of experience in video processing.

"By adopting a whole-system approach, we have been able to provide developers with the optimum environment surrounding OpenCL to enable them to create world-beating applications within their power and bandwidth budgets. This demonstrates that we are at the forefront of mobile GPU compute, which we strongly believe will continue to be a key differentiator in the mobile market in the years ahead. We expect that the availability of these tools will encourage developers to create new and exciting video applications to improve the mobile experience across a wide range of handsets and tablets."

To accelerate development time for developers who wish to use these extensions, together with the many other features of OpenCL, Imagination will be releasing the PowerVR GPU compute SDK and programming guidelines for PowerVR Series5XT GPUs. Furthermore, developers can look forward to the upcoming release of the popular

PowerVR Graphics SDK v3.2 featuring OpenCL support in PVRTrace for PowerVR Series6 GPUs, through which GPU compute and graphics workloads can be tracked concurrently.