Free event on October 28th will show devs cutting-edge coding techniques for the world’s most popular platform
TIGA, the network for game developers and digital publishers is teaming up with ARM, the world’s leading semiconductor intellectual property supplier, to host a free-to-attend UK Gaming Developer Day. The event will show UK developers the latest advanced programming techniques for the Android platform, using the ARM® architecture.
The TIGA & ARM Gaming Developer Day will be held at the spectacular Cumberland Hotel in London on the 28th of October from 9am to 6pm, and includes Q&A clinics with the ARM engineering crew.
To make the day as beneficial and effective as possible, attendees are invited to review the agenda and presentation abstracts provided and feed back to ARM via gemma.paris@arm.com if there are any particular topics, challenges or techniques they would like covered.
Why should you attend?
The market:
- Android is the largest mobile gaming market in the world with an 80% share of all global users
- Mobile app revenue is also growing faster on Android than Apple
- The TIGA & ARM toolbox report found that Android is set to overtake PC to become the third most popular platform with developers, whilst iOS will lose ground due to its over-crowded app store
- ARM is the number one Android GPU IP supplier in the world and its CPU architecture is present in over 95% of mobile devices
What you’ll learn about:
- Multicore programming, including big.LITTLE™ technology (as seen in the Samsung Exynos 5430) and ARM NEON™ tech
- The best tools and tech for 64-bit app development
- Using the Pixel Local Storage OpenGL ES extension to get the most out of ARM Mali™ GPUs as a deferred rendering GPU architecture
- How to locate specific areas of code that need improvement using the DS-5 Streamline tool and the ARM Mali Graphics Debugger
- How to use the latest and most efficient texture compression format, ASTC, which includes 3D and HDR textures and is adopted by the Khronos Group (OpenGL and OpenGL ES)
- Best practice for using the latest OpenGL ES 3.1 API for mobile devices, including SSBOs, drawing indirect and compute shaders
The day itself:
- Live demos, Q&A Clinics and the sharing of best coding practice for mobile platforms
- Free to attend with food and drink provided
- One-to-one in-depth discussions with ARM experts about your own current project’s challenges and potential improvements
- The opportunity to network with top UK mobile game developers and engineers
Who should attend?
- Software Architects
- Engine Game Developers
- Middleware Game Developer
- Technical Artists
- Performance Analysts
- Rendering Programmers
- Graphics Programmers
- AI Programmers
- Gameplay Programmers
Places are limited so attendees are politely asked to register for free here as soon as possible.
Dr Richard Wilson, CEO, TIGA, comments:
“It’s not easy to make visually stunning games on mobile platforms. Whilst devices are becoming rapidly more powerful, the constraints are still more severe than for console or PC, not to mention myriad other hurdles such as bandwidth and thermal limitations.
“Mobile is also the fastest moving area of tech in our industry, new features like 64-bit, multi-core programming and updated APIs are constantly emerging, so it’s hard to stay up to speed too.
“On top of all of this, the quality consumers expect from a mobile game is rapidly increasing, and developers have to keep finding ways to raise their game.
“As such, this event is great news for UK developers. We’re fortunate to have members like ARM – UK businesses that are world leaders in their field and willing to contribute to the industry by putting on free events like this.
“Together we can unlock the power of Android and help UK developers lead the way with triple A titles on mobile.”
Nizar Romdhane, Director of Ecosystem, ARM, added:
“We want to help developers meet the growing demand for and challenges of mobile platforms. This UK Gaming Developer Day is a key element in the range of education activities and resources we provide, such as the developer guides and tutorials available at our online Mali Developer Center.
“Any developer who wants to get the most out of the Android platform, learn highly advanced optimisation and mobile graphics techniques will find this event incredibly useful.
“The agenda is designed specifically to provide in-depth technical guidance and interactive workshops. Our approach is not to lecture, but rather to share cutting-edge insight and work through developers’ own games with them, to overcome the challenges and identify the opportunities they face.
“We’re also delighted to be able to partner with TIGA for this event, as we are not only members but have the shared goal of strengthening the UK videogame industry.”
-ends-
Notes to editors:
TIGA & ARM UK GAMING DEVELOPER DAY
Date: 28 October 2014
Location: The Cumberland Hotel, Great Cumberland Place, London, W1H 7D
Event registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/arm-developer-day-london-registration-13088133961
AGENDA:
|
TIME |
ACTIVITY |
Speaker |
|
9am |
Registration & coffee/tea |
|
|
9.30am |
Multicore programming on ARM Cortex CPUs including overview of the new ARMv8 architecture |
Ed Plowman |
|
10.30am |
ARM Mali GPU Architecture Overview and Efficient Rendering with Tile Local Storage |
Marius Bjorge |
|
11:30am |
Coffee break and Q&A clinics |
|
|
11.45am |
Part 1 ARM tools: Profiling and Debugging Games on Mobile Platforms |
Lorenzo Dal Col |
|
12.45pm |
Lunch and Q&A clinics |
|
|
2pm |
Part 2 ARM tools: Best Optimization Practises for Mobile Platforms |
Lorenzo Dal Col |
|
3pm |
ASTC Texture Compression Full Profile, including HDR and 3D textures |
Daniele Di Donato |
|
3.30pm |
Coffee break and Q&A clinics |
|
|
3.45pm |
Get the most out of the new OpenGL ES 3.1 API |
Hans-Kristian Arntzen |
|
4.15pm |
Reflections Based on Local Cubemaps |
Roberto Lopez Mendez |
|
5pm |
Wrap up and Prize draw |
Gemma Paris |
|
6pm |
Closure |
PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS:
Multicore Programming on ARM Cortex CPUs with an Overview of the New ARMv8-A Architecture
An introduction to multicore programming for ARM Cortex CPUs and big.LITTLE technology which will show you how to extract the maximum performance from the ARM CPU architecture. After covering how to get the best out of ARM NEON technology with the Ne10 library the talk will finish with a discussion on the tools and programming models available for the ARMv8-A architecture which will help you prepare for the move to 64 bit.
ARM Mali GPU Architecture Overview and Efficient Rendering with Tile Local Storage
After an introduction to the unique features of ARM Mali GPUs, this presentation then moves to talk about the biggest concern in the mobile space: battery life. One of the biggest consumers of battery is external memory access. Modern mobile games use post-processing effects in various ways and while the GPU itself is capable of doing this, the bandwidth available to the GPU is typically not. A major strength of the Mali architecture is that a lot of operations can be performed on-chip without having to access external memory.
ARM has implemented extensions for OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenGL ES 3.0 to help reduce the requirement of accessing external memory for doing post-processing and other operations. This talk will introduce these extensions as well as use-cases for them (deferred shading, order independent transparency, volume rendering, etc).
ARM Tools Part 1: Profiling and Debugging Games on Mobile Platforms
How can you detect where the performance bottlenecks are in your code? Try utilizing API analysis to debug OpenGL ES graphics, optimize performance of the gaming application and improve the user’s visual experience. This talk introduces you to the tools and skills needed to conduct valuable profiling and debugging on your application.
ARM Tools Part 2: Best Optimization Practices for Mobile Platforms
In this session ARM will first introduce you to methodologies for the efficient rendering of high quality 3D graphics in mobile games, then we will take you behind the curtain on optimization examples used on popular game titles, detailing how they identified the bottlenecks and implemented the optimizations.
Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) Full Profile – Including HDR and 3D Textures In this talk, the benefits of using the ASTC format will be explained and we will also show how ASTC performs in the case of 3D HDR textures available in OpenGL ES 3.0.
The combination of ASTC and features from OpenGL ES 3.0 such as transform feedback and instancing helped us to create the experimental use case shown in this presentation where a particle system managed entirely by the GPU is able to manage collisions with volumetric objects by using compressed 3D textures to express the volume data.
Get the most out of the new OpenGL ES 3.1 API
OpenGL ES is the world’s most deployed 3D graphics API and its latest version, OpenGL ES 3.1, was announced in March 2014.
This talk will cover best practices when using the headline OpenGL ES 3.1 features that stand out: compute shaders, which allow the GPU to be used for general-purpose computing, tightly coupled with GPU-based graphics rendering; indirect drawing commands, which allow the GPU to read drawing command parameters from memory instead of receiving them directly from the CPU; and the Shader Storage Buffer Object (SSBO) feature that gives additional possibilities for exchanging data between pipeline stages, as well as being flexible input and output for compute shaders.
Reflections Based on Local Cubemaps
This presentation reviews the use of cubemaps in reflections. We will show you how the use of standard cubemaps leads to wrong local reflections and then introduce local cubemaps and highlight their main differences with “infinite” cubemaps. We’ll provide you with the shader implementation of reflections using local cubemaps and then show how you can use local cubemaps to correctly reproduce local reflections.
The procedure to apply off line filtering to cubemaps using an external tool as a way of achieving reflection effects is subsequently presented along with the advantages and limitations of using local cubemaps in implementing reflections – especially in mobile devices.
EXPERT SPEAKER LINE UP
Ed Plowman is Director of Solutions Architecture, ARM. A bona fide graphics guru, one of the founders of The Khronos Group and an avid gamer who has been immersed in performance optimization and enabling developers of graphics and gaming technology for nearly two decades.
Marius Bjorge is a Staff Engineer at ARM. He currently looks at ways of enabling advanced real-time graphics on current and future mobile GPU technology. He has worked previously in the ARM Mali OpenGL ES driver team and before that he was a graphics programmer at Funcom Games in Canada.
Lorenzo is the Product Manager of ARM GPU Tools. He first used ARM technology when, in 2007, he created a voice-controlled robot at university. He has experience in machine learning, image processing and computer vision. He moved into a new dimension when he joined ARM in 2011 to work on 3D graphics, developing performance analysis and debug tools for software running on ARM Mali GPUs.
Daniele is a Senior Software Engineer at ARM. Daniele joined the demo team after working on driver development at ARM. He likes computer graphics, computer vision and trying to make linear algebra look cool. His current work is based on creating demos that showcase the benefits of ASTC and new OpenGL ES features for mobile devices.
Hans-Kristian Arntzen
Hans-Kristian Arntzen is a Graduate Engineer in ARM’s Media Processing Group. He dove into graphics programming in 2009, focusing on modern OpenGL and OpenGL ES. He is also experienced with a wide variety of platforms, video/image compression, audio DSP programming and optimization. Before joining ARM full time, he worked part-time for ARM developing OpenGL ES 3.0 demos while attending university.
Roberto Lopez Mendez
Roberto is a former Nuclear Physicist who moved to Computer Graphics in 1995 and loves it because “What You Code Is What You See”. He has large experience developing 3D Graphics tools for a wide range of applications including a 3D modeller, a non-photo-realistic renderer, a virtual fashion designer and 3D scene reconstruction from video stream. At ARM he focuses on creating innovative mobile applications on ARM Mali GPUs that demonstrate cutting-edge graphics techniques.
After a successful career in location services and connectivity solutions for mobile phones, Gemma finally realized that the key to success for any mobile application is a good graphical interface, and hence joined ARM’s Multimedia Division team, where she carries out developer education activities for ARM’s Mali graphics architecture.
About ARM
ARM designs the semiconductor intellectual property and enabling technology at the heart of the world’s advanced digital products. Our energy efficient and scalable processors deliver the intelligence which is transforming society; from smartphones and wearable devices, to enterprise infrastructure and servers, to embedded technology in automotive, industrial applications and the “Internet of Things.”
Our technology is licensed by partners who have now shipped more than 50 billion microchips containing ARM processors since the company was founded in 1990.
Together with our Connected Community, we are breaking down barriers to innovation for developers, designers and engineers, ensuring a fast, reliable route to market for leading electronics companies.
Find out more about ARM by following these links:
ARM website: http://www.arm.com/
Mali Developer Center: http://malideveloper.arm.com
ARM Connected Community®: http://www.arm.com/community/
ARM 50 Billion Chips: http://www.50billionchips.com/
ARMFlix on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ARMflix
ARM on Twitter:
- http://twitter.com/ARMMultimedia
- http://twitter.com/ARMMobile
- http://twitter.com/ARMCommunity
- http://twitter.com/ARMEmbedded
- http://twitter.com/KeilTools
About TIGA
TIGA is the trade association representing the UK video game industry. We help developers and digital publishers build successful studios, network with the right people, save money and access professional business advice. We also have traditional publishers, outsourcing companies, technology businesses and universities amongst our membership.
TIGA is 90% funded by independent UK businesses. 80% of our board members are developers and/or from UK owned businesses, and 50% of our board are UK business owners themselves.
Since 2010, TIGA has won 17 business awards.
TIGA focuses on three sets of activities:
- Political representation
- Media representation
- Business services
This enhances the competitiveness of our members by providing benefits that make a material difference to their businesses, including a reduction in costs and improved commercial opportunities.
It also means our members’ voices are heard in the corridors of power and positively represented in national, broadcast and UK video game trade media.
Get in touch:
Tel: 0845 468 2330
Email: info@tiga.org
Web: www.tiga.org
Twitter: www.twitter.com/tigamovement
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TIGAMovement
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/tiga
For further information, you can also contact:
Dr Richard Wilson, TIGA CEO on: 07875 939 643, or email: richard.wilson@tiga.org
Drew Field, TIGA Communications Director on: 07720 643 344, or email drew.field@tiga.org