TI and Imagination Create Gaming and Graphics Ecosystem Leveraging TI's OMAP 2 'All in One Mobile Entertainment' Platfor

Texas Instruments Incorporated and Imagination Technologies today announced a collaboration to develop a targeted ecosystem leveraging the power of TI's OMAPTM 2 platform and Imagination's best-in-class PowerVR MBX graphics accelerator. The collaboration is enabling a matrix of games and graphics developers, tools and mobile content providers and systems integrators to offer an extensive portfolio of optimized content, tools and middleware to address the growing 3D graphics hardware accelerated mobile phone marketplace. TI and Imagination will be demonstrating PowerVR Racer on a TI OMAP2420 development platform at CTIA Wireless in New Orleans, March 14 - 16.

Together, TI and Imagination are working with third parties to optimize tool chains, graphics stacks and content for mobile phones. Developers can extract new levels of performance and game-play experience for 3D games and graphics by leveraging the combination of TI's leading OMAP platform and Imagination's PowerVR MBX 3D graphics accelerator.

Says David McBrien, VP business development, Imagination Technologies: "This collaboration enables stakeholders in the 3D graphics value chain to access the state of the art graphics capabilities of PowerVR MBX and the OMAP 2 architecture and leverage experience from leaders across the mobile gaming ecosystem."

Says Paul Werp, worldwide director of marketing for TI's OMAP Platform: "TI is already working together with Imagination to enable a range of world class middleware and tools companies to deliver the best 3D gaming and graphics content available in a timely manner in formats that OEMs and operators will find compelling."

Previously, the quality of mobile games has been limited by the processing capacity of the mobile phone platform. TI and Imagination are addressing this limitation by combining the horsepower of Imagination´s leading embedded PowerVR MBX 3D engine, which includes the fully programmable VGP vertex processor, with TI´s OMAP 2 platform, which includes an ARM1136 with a dedicated vector floating point unit, a C55xTM Digital Signal Processor for audio and speech, and a full imaging and video processor. With a graphics core capable of more than 2.5m triangles per second and with advanced features such as Dot3 bump mapping, PVR-TC texture compression and full screen anti-aliasing, a PowerVR MBX-enabled OMAP 2 platform is capable of a console-quality experience. The TI and Imagination collaboration advances mobile gaming, provides the game developer community with a vast array of capabilities and expands the range of possibilities for the entertainment community.

This Imagination and TI collaboration enhances the mobile entertainment wireless ecosystem by providing the following advantages:

-- For game developers, a range of premier tools and middleware partners that allow game developers to extract maximum performance and features.
-- For handset manufacturers, a range of partners who can offer integration of games, games bundles, and developer community support.
-- For mobile operators, optimized content and extended gaming capabilities, which offer additional revenue opportunities.
-- For mobile content owners, access to a platform on which users can have the kind of game experience to which they have become accustomed on gaming consoles, without compromising the mobile content owners´ brand quality.

Companies such as Fathammer, HI Corporation, Hybrid Graphics, Ideaworks3D and Superscape are already working with TI and Imagination on middleware, gaming technology and games bundles for mobile handsets.

Availability

Applications developers can begin working on the PowerVR MBX-enabled OMAP 2 platform by going to the Imagination website at www.pvrdev.com/Pub/MBX/ and downloading a full PC-based SDK. This link is also available through the TI website at www.ti.com/omapgaming, which also provides a list of companies who are supporting the kick off of this program.