ARM Ltd. is the first company to license Futuremark's OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics benchmarks, Futuremark reports. The 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0 benchmark product and its SimulationMark ES 2.0 product for pre-silicon design testing will help ARM objectively evaluate graphics IP (intellectual property) performance, Futuremark said.

Futuremark has yet to announce any real details, screenshots, or availability information for 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0. It released 3DMarkMobile ES 1.1 a little more than a year ago. It describes its OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmark products as follows:

• 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0 — includes 3D game content workloads and API feature tests. For use on real hardware
• SimulationMark ES 2.0 — includes “theoretical and practical shader test workloads based on high level shader and parameter descriptions published by Futuremark.” For evaluation of pre-silicon OpenGL ES 2.0 design performance

ARM is best known as a vendor of processor cores. However, it offers a full range of chip IP products, including a Mali200 GPU (graphics processing unit) said to support OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG (vector graphics) v1.0.

OpenGL ES 2.0 is the “embedded subset” of SGI's now ubiquitous OpenGL 3D graphics library. Maintained by the Khronos Group, an open industry group, OpenGL ES 2.0 was released in August of 2005, along with OpenVG v1.0 and a handful of other royalty free standards and APIs aimed at making graphics hardware and software more interoperable.

Petri Talala, VP of Futuremark's mobile business unit, claims that “[Futuremark's] benchmarks have become the industry standard for measuring and comparing performance in cell phones, handhelds, and other embedded applications.”

According to Borgar Ljosland, graphics business development manager at ARM, “ARM is working with its Connected Community members to close the disconnect that has existed between the gaming and mobile value chains.”

Prior to licensing Futuremark's OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmarks, ARM was active in the benchmark vendor's Handheld Benchmark Developer Program (BDP), which also includes AMD, Broadcom, DMP, Freescale, GiQuila, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Marvell, Mtekvision, NexusChips, NVIDIA, Renesas, Samsung, Symbian, and TI.

 
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