Futuremark Corporation Launches Symbian based Smartphone Benchmark Development Program

Saratoga, CA and Las Vegas, NV – January 7, 2004 - Futuremark® Corporation, a leading provider of PC performance analysis software and services, announced today a strategic initiative with the launch of its new Benchmark Development Program for Symbian based Smartphones. Key industry partners, including ATI Technologies, Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Intel, Khronos Group, Neomagic, and NVIDIA, have joined Futuremark’s Smartphone Benchmark Development Program.
“Increasingly, the application performance of a mobile phone is becoming an important criteria for consumers in the purchasing decision process”, said Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Futuremark. “Power efficiency is a tightly coined factor, and it is important to measure how much power different phones consume when running today's and tomorrow's most demanding workloads. The early participation of important industry players will bring diversity to the program and is a validation of the work we have done so far”, Sarkkinen continued.
Futuremark Corporation has completed the initial specification and has now started the implementation of the new mobile platform benchmark. It will measure the performance and power efficiency of Symbian based smartphones and will include OpenGL ES API 3D game scenes, image processing as well as native Symbian applications such as address book and calendar. Symbian is a software licensing company owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. The company supplies the Symbian OS open standards operating system for data-enabled mobile phones. Publicly announced products based on Symbian OS include the BenQ P30, Motorola A920, Sendo X, Siemens SX-1, Fujitsu F2102V and F2051, Sony Ericsson P800 and P900, Nokia 9210 Communicators and 9290 Communicator as well as the Nokia 7650, 6600, 3650, 3600 and N-Gage.
The completed benchmark is scheduled for shipment during the second quarter of this year. Smartphone Benchmark Development Program members have access to all development versions of the benchmark. Upon launch, the benchmark will become publicly available as binary executable.
"ATI Technologies and our customers provide leadership in efficient mobile and wireless technologies across a wide range of market segments. We are very happy to work with Futuremark, an acknowledged leader in benchmark products and analytical technologies, to provide important data about the performance and power capabilities of mobile products to the industry, media and end users", said Azzedine Boubguira, Director of Marketing of Handheld Products Group with ATI Technologies.
Said Mark Butler, VP Software Products and Relations (PowerVR), Imagination Technologies: "It is important that Futuremark, the developer of the standard PC graphics benchmark, has created a Symbian platform benchmark. A comprehensive third party application for benchmarking the increasingly complex multimedia available on Symbian platforms will be a great benefit to the industry allowing customers to make informed choices about graphics technology deployment."
"As the world leader in visual processing, NVIDIA is pleased to help Futuremark create an objective benchmark for Symbian based devices", said Philip Carmack, Vice President, and General Manager of Handheld Products of NVIDIA. "Reviewers and consumers will benefit greatly from the ability to objectively gauge these new technologies."
"Neomagic is working closely with Futuremark to provide input into the new smartphone benchmark”, said Mark Singer, VP of Neomagic. "As a pioneer in multimedia-rich Applications Processors, our feedback and suggestions will assist in cementing Futuremark’s new benchmark to be the most comprehensive testing tool for mobile platform technologies".
"Symbian believes that hardware acceleration and processor optimizations are increasing in importance", said Bill Pinnell, Product Strategist, Multimedia, Games & Content. "The difficult part is to support the many varied types of hardware in a standard fashion. We see the development of benchmarking tools such as Futuremark's smart phone benchmark to be a valuable utility that can be used by device and semiconductor manufacturers to showcase new technology on Symbian OS."
For more information about the Benchmark Development Program, please visit the new BDP Pages.

About Futuremark® Corporation
Futuremark® Corporation is the leading provider of computer performance analysis software and services. Futuremark® is known around the world for its benchmark products, including the 3DMark® Series and PCMark™ (with more than 30 million copies distributed worldwide) and value-added services powered by a database of over 10 million real life benchmarking results. Futuremark® has offices in Saratoga, California and Helsinki, Finland. For more information, please visit http://www.futuremark.com.

© 2003 Futuremark® Corporation. 3DMark® and PCMark™ trademarks and logos, Futuremark® character names and distinctive likenesses, are the exclusive property of Futuremark Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective companies.

Company Contacts:
Futuremark Corporation
Mr. Tero Sarkkinen
Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing
+1-408-517-0131
tero@futuremark.com

Agency Contact:
TechWire International
Leo Pot
+1-831-429-6288
information@ezwire.com