Qualcomm Releases Adreno 2xx GPU Binaries for on ICS ARMv6 Devices

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Not too long ago, we shared fantastic news that Qualcomm had released the Adreno 2xx GPU Binaries for Ice Cream Sandwich. However one thing that we failed to consider was that these precompiled GPU binaries were compatible only with ARMv7 devices.

Sadly, this left many users with older and less powerful ARMv6 devices out in the cold. Due to having less powerful CPUs, these are devices that could stand to benefit greatly from full GPU hardware acceleration in ICS. Not content with sitting idly by, XDA Forum Member sweetnsour quickly saw fit to create a global petition asking Qualcomm to compile and release the necessary Adreno 2xx GPU binaries to get ARMv6 devices up to speed with ICS back on March 17th.

Less than two weeks later, and thanks largely to sweetnsour’s petition efforts, Qualcomm Senior Staff Engineer Dave Astle—otherwise known as XDA Forum Member myopicrhino—lets us know that Qualcomm has shared the goods with the development community. In other words, we now have the proper Adreno 2xx GPU binaries for ICS on ARMv6 devices.

In the words of the Qualcomm Forum Master:

In order to provide enthusiasts with recent improvements made to Snapdragon’s Adreno graphics driver for the 7×27 based on the ARMv6 ISA, Qualcomm has posted the updated Adreno 200 graphics driver binaries here. It has been tested with the Ice Cream Sandwich CAF release M8960AAAAANLYA1030, but Qualcomm is providing these driver binaries “as is” to those of you who have requested them.

Official Release Information:

This release contains the user-mode driver binaries for Qualcomm’s Adreno 2xx GPU on Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich for ARMv6 based chipsets. It has been tested with the CAF release M8960AAAAANLYA1030. Supports any Adreno 2xx GPU on Android ICS using the ARMv6 chipset (7×27). Google’s libRS (LLVM) does not currently support ARMv6.

Well there you have it, folks. Score this as another big win for the development community. And just as before, we would like to extend our gratitude for Qualcomm for playing nicely with the enthusiast / development community. ARMv6 developers looking to get cracking with the new GPU binaries can find what they’re looking for in Qualcomm’s Mobile Gaming and Graphics page or from myopicrhino’s post.

Qualcomm, thank you for once again showing that you care about your users and the Android development community.

[Huge thanks to myopicrhino for the tip!]