August 7, 2012 -- Vivante Corp. today announced that it is shipping products designed to support the Khronos Group's next-generation OpenGL ES 3.0 API (application programming interface). Support of the new API will be offered in all GC Cores starting with the GC800 Series and higher.

Vivante GC technology in mass production supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 can be found in Freescale's (FSL) i.MX6 Quad application processor. Upcoming releases from Marvell's (MRVL) PXA and Armada product lines and other previously announced Vivante licensees will also support the latest API.

OpenGL ES is an open, royalty-free, cross-platform 3D-graphics API that is used in the majority of smartphones, tablets, and embedded systems. It is based on a subset of desktop OpenGL, enabling developers to create the latest and greatest 3D graphics effects across a wide range of operating systems and platforms. With support of the next-generation OpenGL ES API, Vivante powered products balance leading graphics innovations with demands of application developers creating the next wave of captive content.

"As a promoter and contributor in the Khronos OpenGL ES Working Group, Freescale worked closely with Vivante and committee members to define the next-generation graphics API, which is expected to offer highly advanced graphics innovations to current and upcoming mobile and consumer devices," said Rajeev Kumar, i.MX Product Line Manager for Freescale Semiconductor. "With the official release of OpenGL ES 3.0, we are pleased to announce that our i.MX6 Quad processor supports the new API feature set. Platforms built around i.MX6 Quad are available from many of our board partners for developers to start work on their ES 3.0 applications."

Vivante GC Core features built around the specification include:

Updating the shader and GPU pipelines to include support of occlusion queries, transform feedback, instanced rendering, support of four / eight render targets, and OpenCL – ES3.0 interoperability to simultaneously support multiple contexts of graphics and GPU compute. Support of new texture compression (ETC2 / EAC) and pixel formats included in the specification. Support of the latest GLSL ES shading language including signed / unsigned 32-bit and 16-bit INT and FP operations based on IEEE-754 precision requirements. Additional features include support for 3D textures, texture arrays, sRGB textures, R/RG textures, NPOT textures, FP textures, depth textures, vertex textures, seamless cube maps, and sampler objects.

"Vivante is a major supporter of OpenGL ES and other open standards that help drive GPU innovation across all market segments," said Wei-Jin Dai, President and CEO of Vivante. "With the announcement of OpenGL ES 3.0, we became the first GPU IP vendor to support the API, which is a critical milestone as the ecosystem takes shape and developers port their applications to the new standard."

Posted by: John Miklosz