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PowerVR demonstrate x2 to x16 core GPU chip for mobile devices!

Pottsey said:
Well we shouldn't have long to wait. If I am right on the 27th of January we should see mobile graphic chips over 8times more powerful then the Iphone 4. Perhaps even as much as x10 more powerful. That will be yet another giant leap towards Crysis on mobiles.
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If you want to throw around vague and meaningless terms such as "x10 more powerful", from my estimates, it would still be "x30" less powerful than a high end desktop GPU and possible "x50" less powerful when you consider the entire platform.
 
It's not a vague or meaningless terms. We have the spec and power of today's chips and the specs and power of the chips coming this year. The 2011 dual core chips are over x4 more powerful then the 2010 chips and the quad core should be over x8 more powerful.
Now if you want meaningless numbers how about your x30 and x50 what is that based on?

Since when is a high end desktop GPU x30 more powerful then a GeForce 8600?
 
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They might be able to run Crysis on lowest settings at 9xx by 5xx or whatever it was, but won't at 1920x1080, thats for sure ;) At least not for a while.
 
metalmackey said " so not only do these new chips have the power of a desktop GPU, they can do it without the power of a desktop CPU, mem bandwidth ect? "
That's the benefits of a PowerVR's architecture and tile based rendering. As I have been trying to explain a 200Mhz PowerVR chip match's a 1000Mhz NV chip. All the while the PowerVR architecture need less bandwidth.

A 4 core 200 MHz SGX543 pushes 133 million polygons per second and has a fill-rate of four billion pixels per second (4GPixel/s) and in high overdraw games those numbers get bigger. That's in the range of a GeForce 8600 desktop card all from a mobile chip.

Ok it doesn't match high end desktop chips yet but it's a very impressive improvement in a very short timeframe.
 
So this tech is fantastic then? Not only can it match a 8600 but the more cores/higher clocks you add, you dont need a faster CPU. Does it do physics too? :D
 
Pottsey said:
It's not a vague or meaningless terms. We have the spec and power of today's chips and the specs and power of the chips coming this year. The 2011 dual core chips are over x4 more powerful then the 2010 chips and the quad core should be over x8 more powerful.
Now if you want meaningless numbers how about your x30 and x50 what is that based on?

Since when is a high end desktop GPU x30 more powerful then a GeForce 8600?
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Have you seen actual gameplay benchmarks, or are those performance increases another extrapolation you've made based on specs?

x30 is a total guesstimate, but if you consider that the 8600GT has 32sp and the GTX580 has 512sp, which along with architectural improvements that came with Fermi, plus higher clock speeds, it's not completely implausible and probably just as valid as your figures.

Don't get me wrong, it's certianly impressive and those demos you posted are amazing considering they are running on a phone. I'm also certain that in a couple of years time we will have current PC level graphics available on a mobile device, but unless the market for large screen desktop computing devices completely dies out (unlikely), they will always be several years ahead of mobile devices.
 
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The fact that mobile GPUs are advancing faster than desktop GPUs shouldn't be that big of a surprise given the relative maturity of the markets. Desktop GPUs are so far ahead that the idea of them being 'caught up and overtaken' is so far off that it doesn't really seem worth thinking about (given that during that timeframe chances are there will have been some revolutionary change).

As mentioned from a physical standpoint mobile devices are severely hampered in terms of power, heat etc. A desktop PC is logistically a much better platform for 3d accelerators, heck even in the laptop market you can see this with cut down / overpriced GPUs.
 
Gashman said:
wow, its like im almost there!!! :D
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Well mobile graphics are now well beyond that screen shot.Uncharted to me looks far better See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKsWSzAe5R4 which shows how much graphics power has jumped forward on mobiles. Thenew Iphone and Ipad should use the same gfx chip only x2 core over x4 core.

I cannot wait to see what PowerVR series 6 is going to be like in the PlayStation 4. Its a series 5 chip in the PSP2
 
Yeah, I'll be getting one over a 7" tablet (unless the browser is poo :D)

Pottsey said:
I cannot wait to see what PowerVR series 6 is going to be like in the PlayStation 4. Its a series 5 chip in the PSP2
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Have they mentioned any real details yet? Judging by the 5 series it should be cracking :D

nVidia, ARM, Qualcomm... over to you!
 
Its only day one of the The Mobile World Congress 2011 show and its already been full of great news. Some of the more interesting facts

"offers up a speed increase over today's quad-core models by around “20-100 times the power”, yet consumes barely a milliwatt to run."

"Apart from the fact that they have managed to ship more than 200 million graphics cores in 2010 (which is more than AMD, Intel and Nvidia combined), Harold also told us that the next generation Series6 graphics architecture will be twenty times faster than the Series5 SGX."

So assuming 20x the power we are talking about a mobile chip with 2660 million polygons per second and a fill rate of 80GPixel/s a second. Plus real time ray tracing which is being ment to be heavy shown this week.

source

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Various/Imagination+Technologies+news/news.asp?c=27514

http://www.itproportal.com/2011/02/14/exclusive-imagination-technologies-series6-20x-faster-series5/

For those interested ray tracing there has been a little more info at http://segaleaks.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/powervr-engineer-speaks/

To quote the link “CPU ray tracing has received tremendous speed ups in the past decade, with works on acceleration structures, traversal algorithms, and packet (or frustum) traversal. While these advancements brought ray tracing into the real-time area, the speed is still generally not acceptable.

PowerVR presents a solution, which proposes to place a small dedicated hardware ray traversal engine (RTE) directly on the GPU die.

The RTE has been confirmed to run at frequencies above 2GHz and can fit into an area less than 15mm2, achieving performance of over 1000 million rays per second.”

If true it’s pretty interesting and an impressive achievement. But it’s too early to celebrate and I am not convinced it’s true. 2ghz would be very out of character for a PowerVR chip. There chips tend to run more in the 100Mhz to 200Mhz range and use other tricks for speed then raw Mhz. At a push I could see 400mz but 2Ghz?
 
It seems like there's a fatal flaw in your logic Pottsey.

If these powervr chips are indeed going to overtake the performance on desktop gpus... what's stopping them from making a better version for desktops, that plugs into the mains and requires proper cooling?
 
It's not a fatal flaw. For about the for about the 4ht or 5th time in this thread now. Yes a desktop card could be clocked higher with more cooling but there is no one to make it. PowerVR are an IP company which does not work in the same way as Nvidia or AMD.

Unless AMD or Nvidia licence the chip who else would want to enter the small desktop card market? I don't see AMD or Nvidia taking a licence as that would be too embarrassing. Most companys who could bring the chip would not as the desktop card market is too small to bother with. I just cannot think of any company who would want to enter the market. Mobiles are the future and mobiles are overtaking desktops both in unit numbers sold and perhaps over time even in GPU power. I am not saying the desktop market will die out but it's becoming the secondary smaller market.
 
Pottsey, why do you think PowerVR has done what no other company has done and made a GPU that uses hardly any power and has desktop performance. Maybe they have but you seem to think that no one else could come up with something similar or better and the fact is they would have to.
 
Pottsey said:
Well mobile graphics are now well beyond that screen shot.Uncharted to me looks far better See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKsWSzAe5R4 which shows how much graphics power has jumped forward on mobiles.
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I find it ironic how a compressed, downsized, blurry video can make something look better than it actually is.

Show me some full sized uncompressed screenshots or some high quality direct video recordings of this game in action first.
 
metalmackey said " Pottsey, why do you think PowerVR has done what no other company has done and made a GPU that uses hardly any power and has desktop performance."
That massive technology show just started today and is going on all week. PowerVR have a large busy stand at the show and are selling series 6 technology.

PowerVR have constantly been ahead of everyone else in this area which is why they have almost all the market share. Past records prove they do what they say and that they have massive jumps in performance between chips. The refresh chip within the same series chip was x8 times faster than last. The series 6 Rogue chip is the first new generation from PowerVR in a while. It's not surprising it's much faster than a simple refresh. Look how many people said a series 5 refresh cannot be x8 faster and it was.

There is a lot of talk about the PowerVR Series 6 at the show and it's already in design with partners. There are also demonstrations of the latest ray tracing technologies from PowerVR/ Caustic.

Part of the stand
http://static.itproportal.com/slideshow_images/DSCF1422.jpg
http://www.imgtec.com/images/events/mwc_stand_2011_a.jpg
http://www.imgtec.com/images/events/mwc_stand_2011_b.jpg

I just noticed that Caustic Graphics Ray Tracing is also being shown at Game Developers Conference 2011 at the Imagination Technologies stand. Feb 28 - March 1. It must be further along then some people on here thought.


GDC Smartphone Summit Feb 28 - March 1
& GDC EXPO March 2-4


EDIT: titaniumx3 I have been unable to find and screenshots apart from those taken from the videos. If the HD videos are note enough or what has been said from the people using the device at the show then we have to wait.
 
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metalmackey "Maybe they have but you seem to think that no one else could come up with something similar or better and the fact is they would have to. "
I am not saying no one else could just that PowerVR have a massive head start by years. Everyone else has to pretty much start the technology from scratch. PowerVR have been refining it for generations now.

Just look at Nvidia's current attempt with the Tegra 2. Nvidia's 1ghz chip doesn't even beat PowerVR's 100mhz last generation chip at games. Can Nvidia or AMD really make that much advanceman in such a short amount of time?
 
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