Software

with Imagination

Unlocking inventiveness with software
carefully optimised for Imagination based devices

Supporting the developer journey

From compilers to code samples and debuggers to DDKs, Imagination develops the software that our customers and their ecosystems needs to bring their products to life.

Imagination equips all stakeholders in the developer journey with solutions based on open standards that enable fit-for-purpose “functional to performant to optimal” workflows typical of today’s application development cycles.

IMG RTX M Software Visualisation

The right tool for the job

The Imagination Developer Portal has a range of tools available to support graphics and compute development on Imagination processors from the Catapult SDK for our Catapult line of RISC-V CPUs to our award-winning PVR Tools.

We also work with world-leading tools companies to ensure that third-party tools, such as the Lauterbach TRACE32®, support Imagination processors.

Visit our Developers website

Working with developers

Imagination works closely with global software companies to optimise their applications for Imagination-based devices in automotive, consumer, mobile and desktop. We're optimised on Unity and Unreal Engine, which gives millions of users around the world access to the best possible performance on Imagination processors.
Discover our ecosystem

Empowering developers to use PowerVR’s high performance and energy efficiency to create incredible gaming experiences for players

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“At NetEase, we prioritise quality in gaming as the foundation for delivering exceptional experiences. In partnership with Imagination, we have optimised our games for both Messiah and our proprietary NeoX engine. By working closely together, we aim to empower developers to use PowerVR’shigh performance and energy efficiency to create incredible gaming experiences for players. With Imagination’s IMG DXT GPU, we are bringing industry-leading mobile ray tracing to the mainstream, enabling immersive graphics for a wider audience.”

NetEase Games logo

Qi Hu Lin

Senior Technical Expert, NetEase Games

Open as standard

The open-source version of our GPU driver, which is upstreamed in Mesa and widely available to the open source community, allows silicon vendors, OEMs and graphics developers to take control of their complete graphics software stack when coding for certain Imagination GPUs.

Imagination’s compute software stack is based on open standards such as the UXL Foundation’s oneAPI to aid application portability.

And on CPU, we work within the RISE program to accelerate the availability of open source software for our target RISC-V markets, ranging from operating systems to firmware.

Open Source GPU Driver

Compute libraries and AI toolkits

IMG DXS is supported by a new set of OpenCL compute libraries (imgBLAS, imgNN, imgFFT) that help software developers achieve up to 80% GPU utilisation for common compute workloads such as computer vision and pre/post processing perception data for ADAS.

The libraries can be used directly by customers through OpenCL and used as foundational blocks within a customer's own toolkits OR they can be used via Imagination reference toolkits to achieve high performance through oneAPI applications or TVM TensorGraph inferencing.

Driver Development Kits (DDKs)

The regular release schedule of our Graphics DDK delivers ongoing performance optimisations to our GPU customers and allows them to make the most out of our hardware.

Imagination maintains DDKs for Android, Linux and Windows operating systems, ensuring they have access to the latest APIs and popular extensions.

Safety Critical Software

Functional safety is vitally important for developers working in automotive and other markets where fault detection and risk management are high priorities.

Imagination partners with CoreAVI, the global leader in safety critical software drivers and libraries, on the development of our safety critical driver supporting OpenGL SC and Vulkan SC on Imagination GPUs.

Safety with Imagination

Frequently asked questions

A driver is a piece of software that enables communication between the operating system and the underlying hardware. Drivers are typically developed by the hardware provider so that they can allocate processing resources in the most efficient manner. 

Drivers can be updated throughout the lifecycle of a product to boost device performance or provide additional features. Processor IP providers such as Imagination provide Driver Development Kits (DDKs) to customers to enable them to quickly build their own drivers based on our IP. 

Software libraries are pre-written code samples that a software developer can apply to any number of software projects, saving time when writing and optimising applications. They exist for a huge range of common operations varying from Fourier transforms to neural networks.  

Hardware vendors like Imagination offer highly optimised software libraries that developers can use as a fast-track to good performance when porting code across devices.  

Open-source software is code that is freely available for anyone to inspect, use or contribute to its development. As the volume of open-source software expands across tools, operating systems, programming frameworks, middleware and more it is an increasingly common component in today’s technology ecosystem.  

Open-source software enables the developer community to innovate free from the legal, financial and logistical constraints of proprietary solutions. It expands the life cycle of popular products as developers are not dependent on corporations to provide important updates. It allows creators to save time by not reinventing the wheel with each new project, while also allowing for ecosystem collaboration and unification around popular standards.