AlexVG: An OpenVG implementation with SVG-Tiny support

Abstract

Embedded systems and web browsers have started to provide two-dimensional vector graphics features, to finally support scalability of graphics outputs, while traditional graphics systems have focused on the raster and bitmap operations. Nowadays, SVG and Flash are actively used and OpenVG from Khronos group plays the role of a de facto low-level API standard to support them. In this paper, we represent the design and implementation process and the final results of the first commercial OpenVG implementation, AlexVG. From its design stage, our implementation aims at the cooperation with SVG-Tiny, another de facto standard for embedded systems. Currently, our overall system provides not only the OpenVG core features but also a variety of OpenVG application programs and SVG-Tiny media file playing capabilities. For the conformance with the standard specifications, our system completely passed the whole OpenVG conformance test suites and the graphics output portions of the SVG-Tiny conformance test suites. From the performance point of view, we focused on the efficiency and effectiveness especially on the mobile phones and embedded devices with limited resources. As the result, it showed impressive benchmarks on the small-scale CPUs such as ARMs, even without neither any other libraries nor acceleration hardware. We had started commercial services of our AlexVG products since September 2005, and successfully entered the retail market with a good deal of mobile phones up to the present time.