OpenGL is the premier environment for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D graphics applications. Since its introduction in 1992, OpenGL has become the industry's most widely used and supported 2D and 3D graphics application programming interface (API), bringing thousands of applications to a wide variety of computer platforms. OpenGL fosters innovation and speeds application development by incorporating a broad set of rendering, texture mapping, special effects, and other powerful visualization functions. Developers can leverage the power of OpenGL across all popular desktop and workstation platforms, ensuring wide application deployment. Source: http://www.opengl.org/about/overview/
On i.MX processors, OpenGL takes the advantage of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) block to improve 3D performance.
Get more information on how to install and run demos using OpenGL on i.MX31 on this application note:
AN3723 - Using OpenGL Applications on the i.MX31 ADS Board - http://www.freescale.com/files/dsp/doc/app_note/AN3723.pdf?fsrch=1
This tutorial shows how to develop a simple OpenGL ES 2.0 application with LTIB and an i.MX51 EVK board. This tutorial can be adapted to i.MX53 that share the same 3D GPU core (Z430) and API (OpenGL ES 2.0).