AMD VEGA confirmed for 2017 H1

humbug · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:11

Mauller said:
No it doesn't, what you wrote here implies that major parts of vulkan were determined by PowerVR and mobile GPU makers, which they weren't.

The functions added by PowerVR and other mobile orientated manufacturers were to add better support for Defferend and tiled rendering hardware.

Its a pretty strong statement to make when applied to something we know is 80% Mantle, X% other stuff and X% PowerVR's contribution.

I have no doubt there is some important code in there from PowerVR for their mobile platforms but i very much doubt any of it matters to X86 and there in us.

Mauller · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:14

Anyway, back to vega. I am quite interested in seeing how much of a power saving their implementation of Tiled Rasterisation gives. Considering it cuts down a large amount of Vram reads and writes and uses the L2 cache instead.

Pottsey · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:15

Mauller said:
No it doesn't, what you wrote here implies that major parts of vulkan were determine by PowerVR and mobile GPU makers, which they weren't.

The functions added by PowerVR and other mobile orientated manufacturers were to add better support for Defferend and tiled rendering hardware.

PowerVR have been involved with Vulkan since the start before it was even called Vulkan being one of the key contributors as I understand it. I know some of you like to pretend Mantle is 100% AMD but its not. Mantle was the foundation.

Almost every GPU architectures in the world is based on TBDR. Without those changes Vulkan wouldn't be anywhere near as popular or cross platform as it is. One of the key parts of Vulkan was treating all GPU architectures as first-class citizens.

humbug · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:17

Mauller said:
Anyway, back to vega. I am quite interested in seeing how much of a power saving their implementation of Tiled Rasterisation gives. Considering it cuts down a large amount of Vram reads and writes and uses the L2 cache instead.

Not wanting to bring this into here but look to Nvidia, both Maxwell and Pascal do it.

This is AMD catching up, in that regard, that is not a bad thing or even a criticism, i think its one of those things AMD didn't look at because Nvidia claimed it as their own tech, not anymore, they can't, Samsung saw to that.

Pottsey · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:20

humbug said:
Its a pretty strong statement to make when applied to something we know is 80% Mantle, X% other stuff and X% PowerVR's contribution.

I have no doubt there is some important code in there from PowerVR for their mobile platforms but i very much doubt any of it matters to X86 and there in us.

Just because something only makes up 5% or less it doesn't mean its not a key part. Doesn't AMD new VEGA GPU used the tile based optimisations PowerVR pushed for and implanted in Vulkan?

Anyway back on topic who is Mark Papermaster from AMD? Can anyone tell me about his roles as AMD and relations to Vega?

Mauller · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:21

humbug said:
Not wanting to bring this into here but look to Nvidia, both Maxwell and Pascal do it.

This is AMD catching up, in that regard, that not a bad thing or even a criticism, i think its one of those things AMD didn't look at because Nvidia claimed it as their own tech, not anymore, they can't, Samsung saw to that.

Yeah i read recently that Nvidia started using a form of tile based rasterisation with Maxwell.

Being a rendering technique it has been around for a while, although i think it probably took them time to create an immediate mode tiled based rasteriser. considering the majority of them are deffered.

Also seeing the video of linus with the VEGA ES in that taped up case makes it seem that it is fairly cool running. (in comparison to older GCN parts)

humbug · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:25

Mauller said:
Yeah i read recently that Nvidia started using a form of tile based rasterisation with Maxwell.

Being a rendering technique it has been around for a while, although i think it probably took them time to create an immediate mode tiled based rasteriser. considering the majority of them are deffered.

Also seeing the video of linus with the VEGA ES in that taped up case makes it seem that it is fairly cool running. (in comparison to older GCN parts)

Yeah, small box too.

Vega with the tech thats in it has a lot of potential, don't forget AMD have been developing other ways to improve efficiency, with some success.
So if they take all they learned there and apply it along side tiling technologies they should end up with a solidly competitive GPU arch.

Mauller · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:28

humbug said:
Yeah, small box too.

Vega with the tech thats in it has a lot of potential, don't forget AMD have been developing other ways to improve efficiency, with some success.
So if they take all they learned there and apply it along side tiling technologies they should end up with a solidly competitive GPU arch.

Pretty much, considering all that adds to what was added to Polaris, which greatly increased geometry throughput.

The programmable pixel shader seems interesting, they say it will add even more performance when specifically programmed for. compared to using the current fixed function model etc.

But we have to wait and see, to me it seems like AMD are holding their cards close while giving little snippets with Vega's actual capabilities and features.

humbug · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:36

I have a 970, aside from an increasing lack of V-Ram problem its serving me well enough so far, the GTX 1070 is always an option for me.

I'm confident enough to wait a bit.
If Vega doesn't work out there is still an option, if it does there are more and possibly better options.

Mauller · 20 Jan 2017 at 18:38

I need a new GPU myself, some newer games are not wanting to work on 2GB of ram anymore. Even though they say the 7870 2GB is their min spec, lol.

Will either dish out for a high end GPU for once with Vega or go mid tier.

Gregster · 20 Jan 2017 at 20:13

PowerVR anything to do with Vega? Sorry, might have missed something.

Mauller · 20 Jan 2017 at 20:16

Gregster said:
PowerVR anything to do with Vega? Sorry, might have missed something.

Just another moment of thread derailment.

Gregster · 20 Jan 2017 at 20:18

Mauller said:
Just another moment of thread derailment.

Ahhh no worries and wasn't sure if there was something in it.

Pottsey · 20 Jan 2017 at 20:41

Gregster said:
PowerVR anything to do with Vega? Sorry, might have missed something.

Apparently Vega has implanted some of the tiling stuff PowerVR are known for. But the reason I came into this thread is I have been hearing a bunch of rumours most of which are very far fetched even for me. What triggered these rumours is AMD are talking at the Imagination Tech Summit in H1 and I heard all sorts from they have licensed Power VR Tech to some of the unannounced Vega features are linked to the presentation.

Personally I think they are all way out and its just Vulkan, VR & Heterogeneous stuff not Vega related. Anyway I was asking about the AMD guy doing the speaking as one would assume he is talking about something in his job role background.

Gregster · 20 Jan 2017 at 20:49

All good Pottsey

maonayze · 21 Jan 2017 at 02:50

Pottsey said:
Anyway I was asking about the AMD guy doing the speaking as one would assume he is talking about something in his job role background.

FYI

Mark Papermaster is the Chief Technology Officer at AMD. He had been the Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering at Apple.

Pottsey · 21 Jan 2017 at 09:51

maonayze said:
FYI

Mark Papermaster is the Chief Technology Officer at AMD. He had been the Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering at Apple.

Thank you.

alec · 23 Jan 2017 at 11:51

This thread has been hijacked by discussion about PowerVR and Vulkan.

I am in a moral standoff here.
From one point I really wish Vulkan will thrive and take over DX12 and all future graphics. How MS is locking DX12 down to Win10 is not right.

From other, DX12 is still moving in right direction and Radeons perform better there. So against NVidia I'm supporting DX12.

Is there a chance of Vulkan winning this battle or is best case scenario being OpenGL niche replacement?

TNA · 23 Jan 2017 at 12:10

My guess is it will just be an alternative some developers will use. So far the only game that I know of that uses it and uses it well is Doom. Will know more in a few years time I guess.

nashathedog · 23 Jan 2017 at 14:06

alec said:
This thread has been hijacked by discussion about PowerVR and Vulkan.

I am in a moral standoff here.
From one point I really wish Vulkan will thrive and take over DX12 and all future graphics. How MS is locking DX12 down to Win10 is not right.

From other, DX12 is still moving in right direction and Radeons perform better there. So against NVidia I'm supporting DX12.

Is there a chance of Vulkan winning this battle or is best case scenario being OpenGL niche replacement?

I think Vulcan will only ever have a handful of games per year with the vast majority remaining on Direct X api's, I don't think DX12 only games are going to boom either, at least not yet, not with MS locking it to Win 10, As we've seen with Quantum Break they've pushed a DX11 version on Steam which was probably due to wanting more sales than what they got on the Win 10 store. I think Dev's are going to look at that and shy away from going with DX12 only games which in turn might help Vulcan grow.
It's a bit like these VR only games, I've seen a couple I'd of liked to try but I don't intend to go anywhere near it while headsets are so expensive, I also think once the dust settles and Dev's see how many sales they're getting compared to if it was a non vr game they made they'll also shy away from making VR only games in future.