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IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES AND ADOBE SHOWCASE POTENTIAL OF GPU ACCELERATED ADOBE FLASH PLAYER 10.1 MOBILE EXPERIENCE AT MWC 2010

BARCELONA, SPAIN, Feb. 15, 2010 -- Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia chip technologies company, is demonstrating the results of its collaboration with Adobe to optimize Flash Player 10.1 for mobile and embedded devices, utilising OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration, on application processors with POWERVR SGX GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) at MWC 2010 in Barcelona (Feb 15-18).

Imagination and Adobe have been working together to bring acceleration of the Flash Player to the growing base of more than 200m POWERVR enabled mobile and consumer devices.

With the release of Adobe Flash 10.1 for mobile devices, tens of millions of smart phone devices will be able to display Flash- based web content in browsers equipped with Flash Player 10.1. Imagination will demonstrate a preview of the player with full support for OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration. This promises to deliver significant performance improvements that take full advantage of the growing proliferation of GPUs now becoming standard in most smartphones.

Tony King-Smith, VP Marketing, Imagination Technologies, says: "We are thrilled to be demonstrating the benefits of hardware acceleration for Flash Player 10.1 with OpenGL ES 2.0 for mobile platforms. Imagination’s specialist expertise and leadership in high performance, low power graphics and video acceleration has enabled us to provide unique experiences, as a key part of our contribution to the Open Screen Project. We believe the ultimate goal is for Adobe’s Flash Platform to be able to take full advantage of OpenGL ES 2 graphics acceleration as well as video acceleration under all mobile OS’s, including Linux, Android, WinMobile and Symbian, to maximise performance and minimise power consumption and CPU host load on mobile and embedded platforms. This demonstration brings Adobe and the Open Screen Project partners an important step closer to that goal.”

Imagination has recently joined the Open Screen Project. Accelerating all aspects of the browser's graphics and video functionality for all mobile, consumer and embedded devices is a key goal for Imagination.

Continues King-Smith: “Connected mobile devices require Flash technology for an uncompromised web experience.  Device manufacturers and consumers are demanding this to enable the full potential of ubiquitous and unconstrained web browsing. Application processor chips with POWERVR SGX OpenGL ES 2.0 are already shipping in more than 100 million units today from Imagination’s leading semiconductor partners, and are already at the heart of many of today’s most iconic mobile, consumer and automotive products.  By exploiting the breadth of this growing installed base of real products, Adobe and Imagination can together accelerate the proliferation of Flash Player 10.1 in mobile and other markets in the shortest possible time.”

Background

Imagination's POWERVR SGX and MBX graphics acceleration technologies are the standard for mobile graphics acceleration, already shipped in over 200m mobile products based on chips from Intel, NEC, Renesas, Samsung, Texas Instruments and others. POWERVR SGX supports all Khronos open standards including OpenGL ES 2.x/1.1, OpenVG 1.x, OpenGL 3.x and OpenCL. Imagination also fully supports all forms of OpenMax-based Flash video acceleration with POWERVR VXD video decoders and VXE video encoders, including H.264, Sorenson Spark and VP6 formats.

The Adobe Flash Platform is the de facto standard for delivering breakthrough applications, content and video on the Web. For more information on the Adobe Flash Platform, visit www.adobe.com/flashplatform.

Editors Notes

This demonstration is of an engineering prototype only.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia and communication silicon technologies – creates and licenses market-leading processor cores for graphics, video, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP and multi-standard communications applications. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by strong array of software tools and drivers as well as extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, handheld multimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, and in-car electronics. Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.

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