Imagination update from CES - Ray tracing slated for Q4

Orangey · 23 Jan 2015 at 17:09

http://semiaccurate.com/2015/01/23/imagination-outs-lot-details-demos-ces/

The first bit of news was the so called Library demo that was used to show off the 7-series GPUs at their unveiling. What was interesting is not that the demo did anything technically new but the mere fact that it used all of the techniques it did in a mobile device. What did it do? How about 4K textures, two different hardware texture compression techniques, HDR, physically accurate lighting, and 4xMSAA, all in realtime. On a scene with 250K triangles. In a pocketable form factor. How long ago was this bleeding edge for a PC?

Next up was a new demo called Rogue Planet which showed off Imagination’s tessellation capabilities. Running in software rather than hardware in the above demo it deformed meshes and tessellated in real-time while running at a steady 30+FPS. More impressive was that it only used ~40% of the CPU power to do this, something that will drop to roughly zero when Imagination’s hardware tessellating parts hit the market.

From there we had an update on the Wizard family of cores that feature integrated ray-tracing hardware units. These were announced at GDC 2014 and the big update is that dev boards should be out in Q4. It is a long ways away still but Wizard should be quite impressive when it arrives.

Sounds like major innovation is going on in the mobile space, I guess that's what happens in a trendy market with multiple players all of whom have limitless money.

Tegra really has no hope.

ghost.florian · 23 Jan 2015 at 17:20

The K1 is actually very competitive with Imagination's current lineup (see Apple iPad or iPhone).
However, I guess this is good news for future Apple buyers - anyone else thinking 4k iPad ?

Pottsey · 26 Jan 2015 at 12:54

ghost.florian said:
The K1 is actually very competitive with Imagination's current lineup (see Apple iPad or iPhone).
However, I guess this is good news for future Apple buyers - anyone else thinking 4k iPad ?

Hardly in real world apps the K1 is massively slower while running at more watt. Due to the Metal API and missing features the K1 is at a very large disadvantage. Most of the high end graphics couldn't even be run on a K1. Partly due to lack of features and partly due to lack of software API support. The K1 cannot even scale down to phone level due to heat problems its just cannot compete.

Once we get ray-tracing hardware Tegra doesn't stand a chance, not when ray tracing produces better lighting and shadows then a high end gaming desktop GPU. We could even end up with mobile graphics over taking desktop gaming graphics. (over taking in some aspects like shadows and lights not flat out better at everything)

elmuzzy66. · 26 Jan 2015 at 13:10

Pottsey said:
We could even end up with mobile graphics over taking desktop gaming graphics. (over taking in some aspects like shadows and lights not flat out better at everything)

Haven't you been say that for years?

Pottsey · 26 Jan 2015 at 13:37

elmuzzy66. said:
Haven't you been say that for years?

Yes I predicted this around 5 years ago and it looks like I will be correct even though many laughed at me and said it would never happen or that it would take 20 years. Just look at how amazing the ray tracing demo looked at CES. The lights and shadows looked massively better then what the best current game and desktop GPU can do. Ray tracing is on its way and on its way for mobile. How will AMD and NVidia desktop cards compete against that?

What happens if wide spread hardware ray tracing does arrive for mobiles before desktops? Hardware ray tracing will produce a massive leap forward in graphics and massively reduce game development time and cost. Even if I have the timeframes off by a year or two Hardware ray tracing is the most exciting thing to happen in graphics for years.

elmuzzy66. · 26 Jan 2015 at 13:59

Pottsey said:
Yes I predicted this around 5 years ago and it looks like I will be correct even though many laughed at me and said it would never happen or that it would take 20 years. Just look at how amazing the ray tracing demo looked at CES. The lights and shadows looked massively better then what the best current game and desktop GPU can do. Ray tracing is on its way and on its way for mobile. How will AMD and NVidia desktop cards compete against that?

What happens if wide spread hardware ray tracing does arrive for mobiles before desktops? Hardware ray tracing will produce a massive leap forward in graphics and massively reduce game development time and cost. Even if I have the timeframes off by a year or two Hardware ray tracing is the most exciting thing to happen in graphics for years.

Ok so in a year or 2 mobile devices will out preform desktop graphics cards. Is that what you are saying?

Ayahuasca · 26 Jan 2015 at 14:05

Pottsey loves bashing on things he's not invested in.

Pottsey · 26 Jan 2015 at 14:18

elmuzzy66. said:
Ok so in a year or 2 mobile devices will out preform desktop graphics cards. Is that what you are saying?

Its a bit more complicated then that. If Ray tracing arrives in that timeframe for mobiles it will allow shadows and lighting effects to jump forward massively graphically far beyond what todays desktop gaming GPU's can do in real time. We are talking film quality effects.

Lights, reflections, refractions and shadows will all massively improve. The other aspects will most likely still lag behind desktops GPU's.

spot35 · 26 Jan 2015 at 16:16

Pottsey said:
Its a bit more complicated then that. If Ray tracing arrives in that timeframe for mobiles it will allow shadows and lighting effects to jump forward massively graphically far beyond what todays desktop gaming GPU's can do in real time. We are talking film quality effects.

Lights, reflections, refractions and shadows will all massively improve. The other aspects will most likely still lag behind desktops GPU's.

Forgive me for the potentially naive question, but why wouldn't the same hardware be put into the GPUs to perform the ray tracing?

bru · 26 Jan 2015 at 16:27

Pottsey said:
Hardly in real world apps the K1 is massively slower while running at more watt. Due to the Metal API and missing features the K1 is at a very large disadvantage. Most of the high end graphics couldn't even be run on a K1. Partly due to lack of features and partly due to lack of software API support. The K1 cannot even scale down to phone level due to heat problems its just cannot compete.

Once we get ray-tracing hardware Tegra doesn't stand a chance, not when ray tracing produces better lighting and shadows then a high end gaming desktop GPU. We could even end up with mobile graphics over taking desktop gaming graphics. (over taking in some aspects like shadows and lights not flat out better at everything)

Please tell me you mean that you mean the software that runs on IOS and the METAL API, because other wise your just talking billyhooks.

Even then it's like saying A new PS4 game doesn't run on the Xbox, er .... well no **** Sherlock.

Pottsey · 26 Jan 2015 at 16:31

spot35 said:
Forgive me for the potentially naive question, but why wouldn't the same hardware be put into the GPUs to perform the ray tracing?

The same hardware could be put into desktop GPU's, the problem is AMD and NVidia don’t have the technology developed or patents. Either could license the technology and use it but what are the chances of that?

spot35 · 26 Jan 2015 at 16:49

So, if Samsung bought out AMD, they would be more likely to license the tech, yes?

Pottsey · 26 Jan 2015 at 17:32

bru said:
Please tell me you mean that you mean the software that runs on IOS and the METAL API, because other wise your just talking billyhooks.

Even then it's like saying A new PS4 game doesn't run on the Xbox, er .... well no **** Sherlock.

Tegra doesn’t have a Tile-Based Deferred Rendering architecture which gives it a massive disadvantage. High overdraw scenes that work fine on PowerVR GPU’s would slow down massively on K1. The same game scene on K1 might need scaling back or another way to put it a K1 needs more resources to render the same game scene, more raw power, more bandwidth and more memory then what a PowerVR GPU. needs.

K1 does not support the high end texture compression formats used in the top end games. As the K1 texture compression format support is not as good textures would have to be reduced in quality to fit into the same amount of memory. That means either less textures or lower quality texture which = worse looking games.

Then you have the K1 draw cell limit and high overhead which is a big one. If I recall K1 is limited to around 500 objects/particles on screen at once. ( that number needs checking I might be a little bit off). With K1 limited to about 400 to 500 draw calls per frame its massively short of what's needed to run the top end games which use 4,000 to 5,000 sometimes more per frame.

There tons of other stuff I am not going into now. Basically the top end mobile graphics just cannot run on a K1 without massively scaling down the graphics.

As far as I can see you cannot render games with 1.3 million triangles on screen at a time with 4,000 draw calls per frame with high res textures and everything else on a K1. That's what the top end mobile games today do and that is why you don't see the best graphic games on a K1. A large amount of mobile games on a K1 have graphics features cut out and graphic reduced in quality.

layte · 26 Jan 2015 at 18:03

Hurray! A Pottsey fairy tale thread.

Link us up to these amazing PVR games that are so far ahead of what the K1 can do please. I'm sure everyone is interested.

ghost.florian · 26 Jan 2015 at 20:18

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8666/the-apple-ipad-air-2-review/4

This is what I based my words on. The Shield Tablet is very competitive with the iPad 2, which is a larger device and built with metal (better at removing heat).

Pottsey · 26 Jan 2015 at 20:54

layte said:
Hurray! A Pottsey fairy tale thread.

Link us up to these amazing PVR games that are so far ahead of what the K1 can do please. I'm sure everyone is interested.

I know your really struggle to understand the subject as you demonstrated time and time again so I will try and keep it simple for you.

Asphalt 8: Airborne, Vain Glory, Modern Combat 5, Zen Garden, Battlefield 4 tech demo are some of the key examples. There are just to many to list, this video shows a few http://vimeo.com/112399344

Modern Combat 5 for example has the following improvements over the Tega version.

• Denser explosions and RPG rocket trails
• more detailed impact particles for intense gunfights
• Richer environments and weather effects
• Improved heat haze and god rays

Asphalt 8 again has a large upgrade over the Tegra version
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131...dy-game-for-ios-8-and-boy-does-it-look-lovely

Surly that's enough evidence and examples for you?

Pottsey · 26 Jan 2015 at 21:00

ghost.florian said:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8666/the-apple-ipad-air-2-review/4

This is what I based my words on. The Shield Tablet is very competitive with the iPad 2, which is a larger device and built with metal (better at removing heat).

That’s a bias benchmark that doesn’t represent high end games. It also doesn’t factor in the advantages PowerVR GPU’s have that real world apps and games make use of. For example the PowerVR GPU’s can gain a large speed increase from the Metal API and have x10 more objects on screen then what the K1 can handle. All the advance features like PVTC that PowerVR support and games make use of 3Dmark ignores. 3dmark mobile is pretty much useless as a benchmark when looking at real world app/game performance.

Or to put it another way. 3Dmark shows both GPU’s at the same speed. Yet none of the high end game graphics work on the K1 as it’s too slow or limited in other ways.

layte · 26 Jan 2015 at 21:08

Pottsey said:
I know your really struggle to understand the subject as you demonstrated time and time again so I will try and keep it simple for you.

Asphalt 8: Airborne, Vain Glory, Modern Combat 5, Zen Garden, Battlefield 4 tech demo are some of the key examples. There are just to many to list, this video shows a few http://vimeo.com/112399344

Modern Combat 5 for example has the following improvements over the Tega version.

• Denser explosions and RPG rocket trails
• more detailed impact particles for intense gunfights
• Richer environments and weather effects
• Improved heat haze and god rays

Asphalt 8 again has a large upgrade over the Tegra version
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131...dy-game-for-ios-8-and-boy-does-it-look-lovely

Surly that's enough evidence and examples for you?

lol the irony overload from your opening paragraph.

So games that are available in identical forms on other platforms and a tech demo like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRr-G95GdaM

Keep up the delusion old chap.

Rroff · 26 Jan 2015 at 21:08

Pottsey said:
The same hardware could be put into desktop GPU's, the problem is AMD and NVidia don’t have the technology developed or patents. Either could license the technology and use it but what are the chances of that?

Dunno about AMD but nVidia have the software in development (OptiX, etc.), various relevant patents either owned by them or licensed and theoretically the next generation of their hardware would potentially be able to offload it to cores that are specifically good at that kind of processing. If it takes off nVidia will be able to ramp into it.

bru · 26 Jan 2015 at 21:48

Pottsey said:
Yet none of the high end game graphics work on the K1 as it’s too slow or limited in other ways.

Ah so now it will run but only slowly, rather couldn't run at all. nice to see you being consistent. :rolleyes: