Video and Voice over IP on LTE – the (r)evolution continues!

// May 15th, 2012 // No Comments » // News

Krishna Yarlagadda and Saraj Mudigonda have recently been featured in Mobile Dev & Design with an article on how V.VoIP (Video and Voice over IP) can provide a superior multimedia experience by relying on LTE’s (Long-Term Evolution) available bandwidth and guaranteed quality of service.

The authors clearly describe the problem of existing OTT (over-the-top) clients in delivering V.VoIP services. Faced with either over-crowding an already busy cellular network or relying on a limited number of available Wi-Fi networks, they have turned to LTE to provide the user with dialler based V.VoIP calls.

The article describes how the advantages of adopting this technology have started to become clear, as V.VoIP is now referred to as VoLTE. Therefore, with guarantees like QoS, low latency and a dedicated bearer that enables a guaranteed bit rate for HD voice and video calls, we no longer have to utter the phrase “Can you hear me now?” again, but can start thinking of crisp-clear communication across all platforms.

As VoLTE is deeply integrated in the native dialler, features like Voice or Video Call, Short or Multimedia Messaging Service or Instant Messaging are pre-loaded on the handset with the possibility of OTA (over-the-air) updates to accompany any software revisions.

Operators will have to handle users moving between LTE areas and regions that will still be covered by legacy circuit-switched networks, but this will be transparent to consumers, who will even be able to switch to controlled Wi-Fi in enterprise scenarios. Therefore, a call can easily be transferred between smartphones, desk phones or tablets.

Finally, as the LTE network was designed with V.VoIP functionality in mind, OTT applications can easily take advantage of the resources at hand without leaving users dissatisfied due to call drops, latencies or no quality of service. As such, operators, equipment and device manufacturers and even software vendors have teamed up and are committed to create an LTE ecosystem. Furthermore, as smartphones and tablets today benefit from front-facing cameras, high resolution screens and multicore processors with on-chip voice, video and graphics accelerators that support enhanced real-time communication, VoLTE feels like the next logical step for the consumer as well.

For more information on the topic, please have a look at the original article published by MD&D on May 2^nd, 2012 and stay tuned to our blog for future announcements.

News from GDC

// March 8th, 2012 // Comments Off // News

We launched the PowerVR Insider SDK 2.10 today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco - a major upgrade that includes support for the latest PowerVR PVRTC2 texture compression format - copies are being exclusively given away on DVD at GDC then made available for download after the show.

With Imagination was at the show and has already lost track of how many times we’ve had to say, “Yes, it’s really free. Completely free. Not time limited. Not freemium. Free.” A conversation then ensues about why we, a hardware GPU designer, do so much for developers without ever trying to monetize our relationship with them — which usually ends with smiling devs and Imagineers alike. (The argument is simple: we help devs make great content, because that content makes people want to get products with our GPU in).

In case you don’t know already the PowerVR Insider SDK is the leading SDK and toolset for mobile 3D graphics development. It fully supports the development of applications using the Khronos OpenGL® ES 1.1 and 2.0 APIs and is an established favourite with more than 28,000 developers world-wide who belong to our ecosystem programme PowerVR Insider.

The SDK includes tutorials, source code, extensive documentation, platform abstraction frameworks and a highly integrated suite of tools. And yes, if you really must you can develop for other GPUs than PowerVR using it (though why would you want to? ; )

Release v2.10 of the PowerVR Insider SDK includes new versions of the PowerVR Toolchain including: PVRShaman with post-processing support and enhanced shader profiling; ‘IntroducingPrint3D’, a new training course demonstrating the much more fine grained control now available in the Print3D tools; PVRTrace with recording and graphical scene analysis; PVRTune with optimised GUI and support for custom counters; PVRScope, a new performance analysis tool that enables developers to embed the power of PVRTune in their own software; and PVRTexTool and PVRTexLib with support for PVRTC2, the new texture compression format being introduced for PowerVR at GDC 2012.

Along with the new SDK we released what we think it an important new piece of developer focused technology, PVRTC2.

The PVRTC texture compression (TC) format is one of the most widely used texture compression formats in the mobile industry today, implemented in more than 600m devices. The PVRTC 2bpp (bits per pixel) format is widely acknowledged as the most advanced TC format in mainstream use today, enabling compression of textures stored within an application by up to 16x compared to their uncompressed form. PVRTC2 is a major upgrade of this technology, adding a wide range of new features.

Texture compression is a fundamental tool used by rasterised 3D graphics applications. It performs a very different job to well-known image or video compression standards such as JPEG, PNG or MPEG. When a video or still image is compressed with a standard technique, the main purpose is to achieve the highest possible compression to minimise data storage.

Graphics applications typically access a large set of different textures during execution, with data within any of those textures being potentially requested at random, and such access is not feasible with traditional image compression. Because of these random access requirements, all texture compression techniques introduce some artefacts, such as loss of colour fidelity or visible blocks.

The important issue is that, for a given target bitrate, those artefacts, are as small as possible. PVRTC2 delivers the best possible image quality at any given bitrate with much less noticeable artefacts than other solutions.

We delivered the first of our GDC sessions today too – ‘Getting Great Graphics Performance with the PowerVR Insider SDK’. Tomorrow (Thursday 8th 14:30-15:30
Room 2014, West Hall, 2nd floor) is a Masterclass in Graphics Technology and Optimization.

PowerVR / mobile developers will probably also be interested in the session Bringing AAA Graphics to Mobile Platforms by Niklas Smedberg of Epic Games (Thursday 10:00-11:00 Room 2002, West Hall, 2nd floor).

More to come as the show unfolds.

Engadget on OMAP5

// January 18th, 2012 // Comments Off // News

Via Engadget we have this exciting first report on TI’s OMAP5, which includes PowerVR. OMAP5430 and OMAP5432  reportedly combine a dual-core 2GHz ARM Cortex-A15 with PowerVR SGX544MP2 to deliver blistering performance for mobile computing and smartphone applications.

BIS Electronics Showcase

// December 16th, 2011 // Comments Off // News

Mark Prisk, Business Minister with Tony King-Smith - Vice President Marketing, Imagination Technologies Group plc - during his visit to the Electronics Showcase at BIS

The latest in innovative, high tech electronics have been showcasing the very best of British manufacturing at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) in Westminster. Mark Prisk, Business Minister met with Tony King-Smith – Vice President Marketing, Imagination Technologies Group plc – during his visit to the Electronics Showcase.

Next Generation Multimedia & Comms Technologies with Silicon South West

// December 8th, 2011 // Comments Off // News

Imagination Technologies has chosen Bristol as the location for its latest R&D facility and Silicon South West is hosting a  networking event to welcome Imagination Technologies to the city.

“Next Generation Multimedia & Communications Technologies” will be held by Silicon South West on 19 January 2012 at The Bristol Hotel, Bristol.

This event is a perfect opportunity for all design engineers and managers at all levels, as well as postgraduate and undergraduate students to get a first-hand view of Imagination’s latest technologies, meet some of the people behind them, and network.

Come along for a unique opportunity to gain technical insight into the architectures behind some of Imagination’s leading IP cores. There will also be a selection of demonstrations to see and play with, and an opportunity to discuss technology details and industry trends with some of the company’s senior engineers and executives.

This event is free of charge Register here

Samsung Electronics going multiprocessor for graphics with PowerVR

// November 10th, 2011 // Comments Off // News

Check out today’s announcement that Samsung Electronics has signed a license agreement for IP from Imagination’s PowerVR SGX MP multiprocessor graphics family.

Samsung will deploy Imagination’s technologies in multiple SoCs targeting mobile and consumer markets.

HelloSoft 4G VoLTE platform and SDK

// October 25th, 2011 // Comments Off // News

VoLTE is the future of cellular voice communications and it’s exciting to see it open up a wide range of new use cases and capabilities for voice-based communications.

Carrier network interoperability can be very complex and achieving outstanding voice quality is difficult across varied network conditions. Plus, achieving highly reliable performance on a diverse range of mobile device chipset architectures is challenging. To solve this, Imagination has created APIs that are portable across Android, iOS, Linux and Windows operating systems for essentially ‘write once, run anywhere’ code while at the same time providing SDK implementations that are highly optimized across processor and modem architectures.

We think that our HelloSoft V.VoIP SDKs and VoLTE solution are simply the most comprehensive high performance multiplatform solutions on the market for voice and video over IP on 4G mobile devices.

Check out the press release here, or  if you’re going to be at 4G World 2011 in Chicago this week (24-27 October 2011) visit us on stand 1430.

Watch and learn about the OMAP 5 platform’s next-gen graphics

// October 17th, 2011 // Comments Off // News

Rich, responsive graphics take your UIs, games and more to the next level

With gaming, streaming video, advanced user interfaces and stereoscopic 3D becoming more prevalent in smartphones and mobile devices, a mobile applications processor’s graphic abilities have never been more important. TI’s OMAP 5 processor includes a dedicated 2D graphics core as part of its high-performance, low-power design, in addition to the latest generation 3D graphics core from Imagination Technologies, the POWERVR SGX544.

Watch this video to learn more about the OMAP 5 platform’s great graphics capabilities.

IEF2011: The necessity of valued uniqueness

// October 7th, 2011 // Comments Off // News

Electronics Weekly was at IEF 2011 in Seville today to hear the keynote from Imagination CEO Hossein Yassaie. Check out their summary here.

Flow Technology – What’s It All About?

// October 4th, 2011 // Comments Off // News

You may have noticed us talking more about “Flow Technology” over on www.imgtec.com over the past year – but what is it?

Flow is an end to end infrastructure for connecting devices to cloud-based services: the idea is that while providing on-chip Wi-Fi (and ultimately other connectivity standards) enables a device to connect to the cloud – what do you actually connect to? Flow is initially targeting the myriad devices that need to get connected, but where the companies making them simply don’t have the resources to figure that out. What URL do they connect to? How do you set up a user account? How do I update software? How do I control the device from a browser or app in the Cloud? How do I stream content, and where do I get content from? Each of these is a big and complex issue – so we’ve solved it all with Flow.

Flow enables devices to easily talk to cloud services: as part of Flow technology we’ve developed what is known as the ‘Flow APIs’. These enable anyone writing an app on a connected device to do all the functions I mentioned above, and many more. And they can access services too, not just from IMG but from a growing ecosystem of 3rd parties. We’ve got plans advancing fast for partners providing payment systems, streamed content, healthcare, security, and more.

Flow is a key tool to get the best out of our Meta and Ensigma IPs – the MetaFlow ‘connected processor’: Flow technology is initially only available on MetaFlow processors, which combine a Meta HTP or MTP processor running Linux (and ultimately MeOS, Android and other 3rd party OS’s too) with a highly optimised Ensigma communications IP core running at least 802.11 Wi-Fi. This enables us to create a new class of connected processors to power the ‘M2M revolution’ – machine to machine communications that is expected to drive the next 10 billion connected products! And we already have our first MetaFlow devices in production: Toumaz’ Xenif TZ1090. So it’s more than a great idea – it is here now!

Flow takes the technology developed within PURE in conjunction with Ensigma to a much bigger market. The initial Flow range of radios, and the Lounge portal, have enabled PURE to enter new markets and geographies. We’re now moving those services to become part of the Flow technologies portfolio, together with the 3rd parties such as 7DM (content) and MiPay (payment) that help us provide those services. We’ve also taken the substantial investment we’ve made in The Lounge and made that a new portal that is a key pillar of Flow Technologies: FlowWorld.

Flow technology is a major new longer term initiative that we intend to broaden our reach into new markets and customers.