Imagination delivers new and enhanced developer tools for Android

SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Game Developers Conference (GDC), USA -- Imagination Technologies (booth S763), a leading technology provider for graphics, neural network acceleration and connectivity, announces new and enhanced tools to help developers optimise Android™ graphics performance for devices with PowerVR GPUs. These are: PVRMonitor for real-time GPU and CPU performance statistics; PVRTune for profiling and analysing applications; and PVRStudio for seamless CPU/GPU debugging on PowerVR devices.  

David McBrien, EVP Sales and Business Development, Imagination Technologies, says, “PowerVR GPUs have a significant presence in Android handsets, particularly with new chips coming to market from Unisoc and MediaTek in the coming months. It is strategically important for us to provide graphics developers with the best tools to take advantage of our GPU technology in the full range of Android devices, from low-end to high-end. We provide professional tools at no cost to developers because we understand that without outstanding applications, no one will buy the hardware.”

As well as helping developers to get the best performance out of the many devices with PowerVR GPUs, these tools can also help improve the development of applications for any Android phone, tablet, or OTT device.

Carlos Sarria, Senior Developer Technology Manager, Imagination Technologies, says, “Imagination has been providing powerful tools for 3D graphics development for over twenty years, backed up by our extensive technical support and documentation. Our tools are consistently ranked highly by developers thanks to our complete, fully-featured set of performance analysis, debugging, and asset optimisation utilities which are continually improved and updated.”

New versions of PVRMonitor for Unreal Engine and Unity

To make developers’ lives easier, PVRMonitor, PowerVR’s real-time GPU performance monitor for Android, will shortly be available as a plug-in for Unreal Engine™ with Unity™ support coming early next quarter. Developers simply drag and drop the PVRMonitor widget onto their app. Once their app is launched, developers will find PVRMonitor gives a quick and easy way to view statistics such as frame rate and hardware counter values as an overlay on the development device.

With this latest version, developers now have instant access to the full range of hardware counters previously only available through PVRTune. These include cycles per pixel/vertex, texture processing load, shader units load, and dozens more.

Developers have full control over the statistics they want to see, laying out as few or as many counter graphs as they like, setting threshold values, and even setting which colours indicate high and low values for quicker interpretation.

PVRTune enhancements

PowerVR’s hardware profiler PVRTune now has Vulkan™ and OpenCL™ support, including support for visualising Vulkan debug markers.

PowerVR will be demoing the latest enhancements at GDC which also include:

• Full shader source-code profiling  
• Improvements to memory usage reporting, including new software counters for tracking application and driver memory usage
• New statistics report window
• Syntax highlighter for GLSL
• Easier deployment and direct connection to devices via the GUI

PVRStudio new features

Offering developers seamless debugging between GPU and CPU, the latest version of PowerVR’s IDE PVRStudio now offers Android deployment and debugging, with full support for OpenCL, OpenGL ES™, Vulkan and more. 

Other recent developments that PVRStudio now offers include:

• GPU conditional breakpoint support / conditional shader breakpoints
• Page fault capture
• Shader source and unified shading cluster (assembler) intermixed debugging
• Improved readability of unified shading cluster code and values passed to the shader

Imagination will be demonstrating these PowerVR tools at its booth, S763 at GDC 2019.

Notes to editors
On Thursday 21^st March at 11:30 am PST in room 2011/West Hall, Imagination’s Omar Zohdi, one of our support engineers, will be highlighting the best ways to profile applications on PowerVR using PVRTune. It’s a great opportunity to learn optimisation tips, as well as find out more about PVRTune.

About Imagination Technologies
Imagination is a global technology leader whose products touch the lives of billions of people across the globe. The company’s broad range of silicon IP (intellectual property) includes the key processing blocks needed to create the SoCs (Systems on Chips) that power all mobile, consumer and embedded electronics. Its unique software IP, infrastructure technologies and system solutions enable its customers to get to market quickly with complete and highly differentiated SoC platforms. Imagination’s licensees include many of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEMs/ODMs who are creating some of the world’s most iconic products. See www.imgtec.com.

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Imagination, PowerVR and the Imagination Technologies logo are trademarks of Imagination Technologies Limited and/or its affiliated group companies in the United Kingdom and/or other countries.

Imagination Technologies was acquired in 2017 by Canyon Bridge, a California-headquartered, global private equity investment fund.