drawElements Quality Program puts OpenGL ES 2.0 drivers to the test; Benchmarking of quality to improve driver robustness and reduce fragmentation in mobile and embedded platforms
HELSINKI, Finland – December 13, 2010 – drawElements Ltd. launches the drawElements Quality Program for OpenGL ES 2.0, a unique system for benchmarking the quality of GPUs and their drivers, on the 16th of December at SIGGRAPH Asia in Seoul. The drawElements Quality Program (dEQP) score measures correctness, feature richness, precision, and stability, which is a clear difference from other GPU benchmarks focusing on rendering performance. The first release of dEQP includes tests for OpenGL ES 2.0. More test suites for other Khronos APIs will be announced in early 2011.

dEQP benefits everyone involved in making high-end graphics a reality in the embedded space; from the GPU design team and silicon providers to the device manufacturers and application developers.  GPU providers can focus their resources on differentiating activities as dEQP eases the burden of quality assurance. Device manufacturers get a better understanding of the maturity and quality of the different platforms during their selection process. Developers gain knowledge of the strengths, weaknesses, and incompatibilities of OpenGL ES 2.0 platforms, allowing them to create applications that run on a wider range of devices. Improved and known level of quality gives application programmers a more predictable environment to work in, which in turn results in consumers getting better and more reliable applications and devices.

During the development of dEQP, drawElements has subjected commercially available mobile phones to preliminary tests. The tests have validated the need for more thorough quality assurance as the tested devices invariably have issues ranging from minor graphical glitches to device crashes in more advanced test cases.

To celebrate the launch, drawElements will be distributing a free preview application, called dEQP-Mini, for Android phones. The application contains a small subset of the tests found in the commercial version of dEQP and reference scores from devices currently available in stores. For more details, please visit www.drawelements.com.

“dEQP was born from our noble plans to make the world a somewhat better place for our fellow developers. Enforcing the OpenGL ES 2.0 spec makes life easier for the developers, and also builds a healthy non-fragmented application market. We are passionate about creating high quality tests to help that happen.” explains Petri Kero, CTO at drawElements.

“I'm delighted to see the appearance of a quality benchmarking program such as this.  Its focus on robustness and features complements the Khronos OpenGL ES Conformance Test's focus...