• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

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

Pottsey

Pottsey

Pottsey

Soldato
Joined
29 May 2006
Posts
5,378
Imagination's Technology’s (PowerVR) demonstrate a portable device Multi-Core graphics processor at CES 2011. http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Imaginations-Portable-Device-Mu running on a PowerVR SGX 5XT

What I find really interesting is they can have up to x16 cores with almost no performance loss, no change in driver software or program software. Everything is done automatically via hardware and drivers so no change needed in apps. Would be pretty useful if in a desktop card, now if only they would bring one out.

Apparently Apple are using this as a SGX543MP2 dual core GPU chip in the Ipad2 with rumours of a 2048x1536 resolution. The latest iPad/iPhone OS 4.3 beta has programmed support for the SGX543 so it’s pretty much confirmed the chip is going to be used although there is no evidence it will be dual core. Not that I am interested in the Ipad or Iphone directly it’s the technology I find interesting.

It really is amazing how fast mobile GPU’s are advancing. At this rate it’s only going to take a handful of years to overtake desktop chips. Year after year the performance increase between generations has increase far more in the mobile space then desktop. This year’s dual core PowerVR chip should have around 4 times the capability over last year’s chip and if the rumors are true that’s at a resolution of 2048x1536 with free FSAA.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/15/ipad-2-screen-likely-to-have-2048x1536-resolution/ some evidence of the new Iphone and Ipad resolution doubling this year.

PS Anyone remember when phones battery’s lasted a good 16days?
 
Pottsey said:
This year’s dual core PowerVR chip should have around 4 times the capability over last year’s chip and if the rumors are true that’s at a resolution of 2048x1536 with free FSAA.
Click to expand...

Good job its 4 times as powerful, because at 2048*1536, its having to shift 4 times as many pixels as 1024*768....so relatively speaking, performance hasnt increased.

Same as if i upgraded my 4850 running at 1280x1024 to a 6950 at 1920x1080, i may have a more powerful gfx card, but with all the extra pixels to process, my frame rates would be relatively the same.....

Now, if the new mobile chip was 6 times as powerful.....:p
 
RavenXXX2 said:
lol
Click to expand...
What’s so funny? Unless PowerVR slowdown in advances and unless Nvidia speed up then what I said is true. The mobile chips have already overtaken low end desktop GPU’s and perhaps caught up with some mid end desktop GPU’s. How many of those desktop GPU’s run at 2048x1536with FSAA? At this rate its only a matter of time before they catch up to high end desktop GPU's.
 
Last edited:
Show me it running crysis at max settings at stated res then I'll believe it, until then suggesting a mobile GPU will out perform highend desktop GPUs in a few years is laughable at best.
 
Well the current generation already run’s Rage and the Unreal engine well. How does Rage compared against Crysis? I see no reason why the Ipad2 GPU cannot run Crysis.

EDIT anyway I never said they would overtake high end GPU's. I said they will overtake desktop GPU and it looks like they have already at the low end and will soon at the mid end.
 
A what res, what settings, got any vids.

EDIT anyway I never said they would overtake high end GPU's. I said they will overtake desktop GPU and it looks like they have already at the low end and will soon at the mid end.
Click to expand...

But you did, ninja edit FTL.
 
Last edited:
What are you blathering on about now.

16x cores with almost all performance kept, you've provided absolutely nothing to support that. The guy himself in the video said an ALMOST doubling in performance with double the cores, that could mean 60% or 95% , xfire does 95% scaling in loads of games now.

As for closing on on the desktop market, rubbish, doubling the capable resolution output doesn't have any bearing at all on its available performance.

Low end gpu's haven't gained in performance in years, because their entire design purpose is to be as small and cheap a discrete gpu card as possible, they aren't built for performance, yet these cores, in a 16 core formation, certainly have been.

The 5450 and 4350 both have 80 shaders, the 3/2 series versions had 40 shaders.

You've shown absolutely no performance comparison between desktop/mobile gpu's, but just claim how fast they are when you post threads on the subject.

A couple game engines designed for mobile devices, that use tiny textures, and tiny res, and tiny power thats all well and good.

What happens when that mobile chip is asked to use proper high res textures and every little high end lighting trick, with full aa?

IF what you mean to say is a mobile chip designed for mobile use, for use with optimised mobile engines can perform better than a desktop chip designed for none of that usage, then sure.

Of course, a Tegra 2 outperforms a Sandybridge as a mobile smartphone device, that doesn't mean a Tegra 2 is remotely close in performance to Sandybridge.
 
SGX 535 - iphone3gs/4
SGX 540 - Samsung Hummingbird phones/tablets
SGX 543x2 - iPad2?

Just so the OP knows, the 540 is twice as good as the 535. Remember the hype Samsung were putting into their Hummingbird SoC when they were releasing the Galaxy S. The 543 is a faster clocked 540, and I can't see how this comes close to say even low end graphics cards.
 
kylew said:
Steam processors don't really count as "cores".
Click to expand...

The "cores" in PowerVR 5 series chips are also shaders.

The SGX 540 for example has 2 texture units and 4 shader pipelines. The SGX 535 has 2 texture units and 2 shader pipelines.

edit:

I still don't see a source that the SGX543 has 8 shaders. I suspect it is 4 and so 4 shaders x 2 cores = 8 shaders in total.
 
Last edited:
drunkenmaster said “As for closing on on the desktop market, rubbish, doubling the capable resolution output doesn't have any bearing at all on its available performance.”
Doubling the resolution with doubling the GPU cores at the same time as using a next generation core which is better than the last gen core should have a bearing on performance. At the very minimum you would expect that setup to be double the performance of the last generation. The better GPU will should more than make up for the 5% loss in performance from a 2nd GPU core.



RavenXXX2 Said “A what res, what settings, got any vids.”
I only edited spelling corrections in my older posts when I change facts I do a EDIT: then put the new fact/info/. Anyway resolution depends on which device you use. The higher end is 1024x767 as that’s the limit of the screen. Not sure if you can HD output but the device has an output of 1280×720 to TV's and LCD screens. Below is a nice video. Perhaps not nice from a game point of view, but from a technology point of view its good. That looks very much like a modern PC game to me.

http://gizmodo.com/5693208/download...eed&utm_campaign=Feed:+gizmodo/full+(Gizmodo)



drunkenmaster said “The guy himself in the video said an ALMOST doubling in performance with double the cores, that could mean 60% or 95% , xfire does 95% scaling in loads of games now.”
Since when is 60% almost doubling? Anyway the figures quoted for the chip and I quote from its tech specs “highly linear scaling (over 95% efficiency) of performance in both geometry (vertex processing) and rasterisation (pixel/fragment processing)“ over 95% efficiency with 16 cores is impressive. It’s a well-known fact Tile based cards scale very well as each core renders different tiles.



drunkenmaster said “IF what you mean to say is a mobile chip designed for mobile use, for use with optimised mobile engines can perform better than a desktop chip designed for none of that usage, then sure.”
The chip is designed to scale all the way to desktop and higher. It can run everything a desktop chip can.



drunkenmaster “A couple game engines designed for mobile devices, that use tiny textures, and tiny res, and tiny power thats all well and good.”
You have the most strangest definition of tiny that I have ever seen. How can anyone say the res or textures are tiny? If you class that as tiny what on earth do you class as normal or worse what do you class as HD?



drunkenmaster said “What happens when that mobile chip is asked to use proper high res textures and every little high end lighting trick, with full aa?”
FSAA is free due to the way the chip works so that’s hardly a problem which is why almost all if not all apps have FSAA on. Rage appears to use every little lighting trick.

What do you mean proper high res textures? Surly it already has proper high res textures?
 
drunkenmaster said “You've shown absolutely no performance comparison between desktop/mobile gpu's, but just claim how fast they are when you post threads on the subject.”
Doing a direct comparison is next to impossible it was bad enough trying to compare a tile based desktop card to a PC card yet alone a mobile tile based card running different software to a desktop card.

But going by current facts and specs it’s a safe bet that the next gen chip can run Rage at 2048x1536 with free FSAA and full lighting effects. That alone should be enough to compare against the low and perhaps mid end desktop chips.

How many low or mid end desktop cards can run Rage at those settings smoothly?

Anyway my point was that mobile GPU’s are increasing in speed far faster than desktop GPU’s. There is no arguing against that fact. If that trend keeps going then mobile GPU’s will overtake desktop GPU’s at some point. Perhaps the trend won’t keep going, but so far it is.
 
Pottsey said:
Well the current generation already run’s Rage and the Unreal engine well. How does Rage compared against Crysis? I see no reason why the Ipad2 GPU cannot run Crysis.

EDIT anyway I never said they would overtake high end GPU's. I said they will overtake desktop GPU and it looks like they have already at the low end and will soon at the mid end.
Click to expand...

Ipad 2 to run Crysis? Oh please, If Crysis ever did find its way on to a tablet in the next couple of years it would be in name only and bear very little technical resemblance to the PC version which is still a good test of high end graphics cards at higher resolutions. Mobile GPU's may be challenging low end desktop graphics but thats because those low end options are not intended for people who want to play games. It will be some time yet (if ever) before you can hold as much power in the palm of your hand as you can in a rather larger, more electrically demanding desktop PC
 
Crysis will never run on a mobile device without a large amount of tweaks and optimization.... my Nintendo 64 could easily play rage on low based on that screen shot!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom