PowerVR’s Discrete GPGPU with Ray Tracing now due second half of this year, with a showing at Siggra

[Pottsey]

AFAIK this isn't a gpgpu at all, nor a gpu, it won't have video out, its got nothing to do with PowerVR 6 series gpu's at all, its an entirely different product for Caustic for ray tracing.

From what I can gather(their website is frustratingly..... sparse on information) we're talking about something that loosely compared to something else would be, an Ageia physx card, but for a different library/algorithm.

The ray tracing setup they have is, the hardware acceleration card speeds up the algorithms and lets them essentially give a "ray traced scene" without the randomness...... for the cpu or gpu to them actually do the rendering.

IE you put a cpu in, a monster gpu, AND a PowerVR acceleration card and it lets you make far more effective use of your cpu/gpu combo.

I have to admit I am a little confused myself and I am thinking it’s likely your post is correct and the website is wrong. The old roadmap was very much like you just described a single discrete card for ray tracing that ran alongside your GPU/CPU and was due in 2011 not made for gaming. The roadmap then much later down the line had the ray tracing chip being merged into the GPGPU chip under PowerVR series 6. But this merge was to take place after the first few Series 6 chips come out.

This is the first time I have seen a reference to GPGPU and ray tracing alongside on the same card for the PC at least this early on. Perhaps this was why the PC card was delayed a year? One thing for sure is we need more info.

It would explain the delays but I find it is a pretty big and unexpected change to make. I just do not see the place for a GPGPU in the PC market yet. Long term yes, but not now.

 

[Pottsey]

"ray tracing on mobiles" is simply not happening anywhere or anytime soon, neither is real team ray tracing graphics on pc's, neither is PowerVR discrete pc cards going to have anything to do with gaming at all.

I agree on the discrete card is not for gaming. As for mobiles one of the video I posted above gives a timeframe less than 5 years. But I do not remember which one of the video links it was. It seems all the time frames have gone back at least a year.

Not sure what you mean about "real team ray tracing graphics on pc's" not happening as surly thats 6 months away if there are no delays.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Sorry I didn't say it specifically but I meant in regards to gaming, ie actual graphics in games not graphics design.

Real time is also...... well, its a variable term at the least shall we say From the video's I've seen before the real time changes with people doing rendering are, real time in so much as you can click and it will be done without you having to go off for a cig break before seeing it. But there was lag before it was "done" and it was done in low res(so it seemed).

For ray tracing in game engines we need, games written for it, we need gpu's with one of these cores stuck in it, and we have no idea how big the co-processor is at the moment.

Physx went from software written for a particular hardware to software done in Cuda that didn't need the specific hardware to run it, could that happen in the future, it will depend entirely on the algorithms used but for now I think we're still years away from games being raytraced, at the very least and it could well end up something that just doesn't happen until we get, frankly entirely different types of chips being made and magnitudes more power.

I think also the first Caustic cards were talked about in 09 and supposed to be out in 2010, so there are a ways behind, which stuff like this often is. Highly specialised with a co-processor is well, it has to be right, its not like a general purpose cpu/gpu that you can fix things.

The size will certainly be interesting, i wouldn't be remotely surprised to see it on an older cheaper process and bigger than it has to be, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it(when factoring in scaling down) its still WAY to big to go on a current desktop gpu let alone a mobile one, nor do we know power usage.

It's interesting certainly, PowerVR are doing lots of useful stuff, but in terms of gaming and ray tracing, we're far enough away that other stuff can appear before then, and in terms of powervr and desktop graphics, I can't see it happening any time soon.

Also a huge part of the newer gpu's performance increase simply comes from being bigger and using more power. Its 20 times faster, but only 5 times more efficient, meaning its using something roughly 4 times bigger than before.

 

[Pottsey]

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4235354/Who-are-Imagination-s-four-missing-customers-

ImgTech announced PowerVR Series 6 has been licensed by 8 customers already but only gave a list of 4 customers. Intel and Apple are pretty much a given even though they are not listed, leaving 2 unknown names. My personally guess is Sony, others say Samsung or Qualcomm. Any one got other ideas?

As for the Caustic card the first one came out. The 2nd one got delayed I think from 2010 to 2011 and now back to 2012.

 

[Mr Krugga]

I don't believe PowerVR cards will become competitors to Nvidia or AMD any time soon but it's likely that they might be the first cards to offer some support for real time ray tracing in games... in a good few years.