Imagination Technologies Group, a leading designer of multimedia chip technologies, has demonstrated implementations of its licensable 3D, video and display IP cores capable of delivering stereoscopic 3D (S3D) experiences.

“The additional workload required for S3D places significant additional demands on the graphics processor – and PowerVR SGX is more than up to the task. Given that the performance demands are significantly higher for S3D than conventional 3D applications, we felt it important to show our technology delivering full S3D experiences today using currently shipping silicon,” said Tony King-Smith, vice president of marketing at Imagination.

Imagination Technologies claims that the latest PowerVR SGX-series graphics cores are capable of processing stereo-3D graphics with decent performance and are capable of supporting all commonly used S3D formats such as frame sequential, side-by-side, top-bottom and interlaced. Thanks to tile-based deferred rendering architecture of PowerVR graphics cores, the actual solutions will easily deal with the increased demands of S3D – which include twice the geometry processing workload and commensurate increases in fill/texturing workload. Unfortunately, the company did not show any actual performance figures for S3D rendering in high-definition resolutions.

Imagination also demonstrated its PowerVR FRC [frame rate conversion] cores providing advanced image enhancement and a seamless S3D viewing experience with no frame judder. FRC270 is the world’s smallest FRC solution, capable of full HD at 240Hz. It has been optimised to provide full stereo 1080P60 output from typical 1080P24 stereo sources (e.g. Blu-ray 3D).

In addition, Imagination has PowerVR VXD video decoding engine that supports H.264 MVC (multiview video coding) – the codec used by Blu-ray 3D format – and which also supports  multi-stream video decoding capabilities, which make it suited for both active and passive stereo-3D output, where the S3D effect is created using two fields, each containing almost identical images.

In general, Imagination seems to be very optimistic about stereoscopic 3D technology adoption by a broad set of devices. Regrettably, Imagination did not reveal what “implementations” of its IP cores it used for demonstration, as a result, it is not known which products will support stereo-3D using PowerVR technologies at first.

“We look forward to seeing S3D as another key feature used by a broader base of applications for mobile phones, DTVs, STBs and other products in the next few years,” added Mr. King-Smith.

Tags: Imagination Technologies, ImgTec, PowerVR, Stereo 3D