CAMBRIDGE, UK — ARM has acquired Geomerics, a lighting technology vendor for the gaming and entertainment industries.
The acquisition expands ARM's position in the visual computing and graphics industries. Additionally, the agreement enables Geomerics to build on their existing partnerships as well as accelerate their development in mobile.
"The innovative technologies being developed by Geomerics are already revolutionizing the console gaming experience and are set to rapidly accelerate the transition to photo realistic graphics in mobile," said Pete Hutton, EVP and GM Media Processing Division, ARM. "Empowering Geomerics' portfolio with ARM's graphics capabilities and market reach will be transformative for the user experiences in future mobile and entertainment devices."
Geomerics' Enlighten is the first fully real-time global illumination technology. With a focus on time-saving workflow features and a lightweight runtime, Enlighten is the only solution proven to deliver fully dynamic lighting on todays' PCs, game consoles and mobile platforms. The technology has been the lighting solution of choice for some of today's most advanced and best-selling game titles, including Battlefield 3 and
4, Need for Speed Rivals, Eve Online, and
Medal of Honor: Warfighter.
Global illumination is a term used to describe advanced, photorealistic lighting effects in 3D graphics. Typical graphics applications today are limited to simple, direct lighting effects only. With global illumination, effects such as compound reflections, refractions, shadows and other advanced effects are enabled, providing more life-like graphics quality.
The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.