STM / Img Tech mobile graphics accord [Archive]

rake

21-Feb-2002, 08:53

Stock exchange announcement this morning:

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Imagination Technologies, the leading provider of human interface intellectual property (IP), announces today that it has signed a letter of intent for the co-development of a mobile multimedia entertainment platform with co-development of a mobile multimedia entertainment platform with STMicroelectronics, the world's leading provider of System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for digital consumer applications.

STMicroelectronics and Imagination Technologies share a vision of the digital convergence requirements for mobile systems and the need to offer competitive low-power solutions to concurrently perform audio, video and graphics features.

The STMicroelectronics Pocket Multimedia (PMM) platform targets handheld entertainment applications such as audio and video playback and 3D gaming with stringent power consumption requirements. By using this platform, OEMs will be able to design cost-effective devices based on a proven set of IP for battery-powered applications and to secure short time-to-volume production. PMM is integrating a SuperH, IncTM low-power RISC core with Imagination battery-powered applications and to secure short time-to-volume production. PMM is integrating a SuperH, IncTM low-power RISC core with Imagination Technologies' PowerVR MBX 3D/2D and video acceleration mobile graphics technology along with other technologies from STMicroelectronics.

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As promised when they ditched Kyro, they have extended their agreement to the mobile arena - I take it this is what Kristof meant when he told us to think positive :wink:

With the ATi Radeon Mobility and the NV Geforce Go aimed firmly at the laptop market, would I be right in saying that IMG have no competition in the handheld PDA / mobile graphics market?

Rake

Kristof

21-Feb-2002, 09:03

Keep on smiling :grin:

:cool:

Mainly smiling because my holidays are so close... :wink:

Dave Baumann

21-Feb-2002, 09:07

With the ATi Radeon Mobility and the NV Geforce Go aimed firmly at the laptop market, would I be right in saying that IMG have no competition in the handheld PDA / mobile graphics market?

ATi do have 'Imageon' which is only a 2D accelerator, and also has the disadvantage of not being integrated.

Roger Kohli

21-Feb-2002, 10:16

:smile: :cool:

Hi Roger,

Our conservative target speed of the integrated ARM and PowerVR MBX is in excess of 30 FPS on a 320x240 display with FSAA, extrapolated from the current FPGA build of the prototype (an FPGA is a dev system that lets us simulate the ARM and PowerVR MBX cores in a more flexible environment than finished silicon). This FPGA runs at around 1/5th the speed of the finished system with exact speed results depending on the ap and whether it's also using the optional VGP geometry processor element. We are showing a number of demos (some of which are also available as demos for the KYRO chip from ST). We are also showing some game engines running on this target system, though I believe our agreement with the game developers is that I won't reveal the titles at this point - though I guess someone who's been to the show could perhaps tell you ; )

Best wishes,

David.

David Harold PR Manager
PowerVR Technologies

[ This Message was edited by: Roger Kohli on 2002-02-21 11:18 ]

Idiot

21-Feb-2002, 10:18

so do this in anyway increase my chance of getting a Kryo3 in 3 monthes?

from someone whose Geforce card just failed.

Shark

21-Feb-2002, 11:40

Yeah, Kyro 3 with a PDA displays would be great :smile:

Gubbi

21-Feb-2002, 12:21

I don't want to run my 19" CRT at 320x240 :/

Cheers

Roger Kohli

21-Feb-2002, 12:50

Its interesting that ST are using a SuperH core and not an ARM core. Isn't MBX a joint IMG/ARM product?

Entropy

21-Feb-2002, 13:04

Hmm.
What is the likelyhood of someone building a GameBoy Advanced challenger? I would guess that Nintendo won't market an upgrade for the GBA any time soon. The sales volumes for the GameBoys is staggering though.
Otherwise I guess PDAs is the target market.

Entropy

Gubbi

21-Feb-2002, 13:08

A PDA with decent CPU performance, Linux and OpenGL would have every hacker in the universe and his dog porting old games to it.

Cheers

rake

21-Feb-2002, 13:13

The Dreamcast was a SuperH / Power VR powered box. Would a similarly powered PDA make it easy to port DC games over?

The MBX demo seen at IMG's AGM was running Tomb Raider if anyone's interested.

Rake

Nexus

21-Feb-2002, 13:20

On 2002-02-21 13:50, Roger Kohli wrote:
Its interesting that ST are using a SuperH core and not an ARM core. Isn't MBX a joint IMG/ARM product?

No, ARM is a licensee of MBX AFAIK.

BTW, SuperH Inc. is a joint venture of STM and Hitachi, so there is a strong connection. Therefore they need no license from SuperH, something they probably would need from ARM. SuperH sells SHx cores, remember that Dreamcast used a SH4 processor.

Nexus

21-Feb-2002, 13:26

On 2002-02-21 14:13, rake wrote:
The Dreamcast was a SuperH / Power VR powered box.

No, it was Hitachi SH4 powered, because SuperH Inc. didn't exist at the time.
Would a similarly powered PDA make it easy to port DC games over?

Lets hope so. :smile:

The MBX demo seen at IMG's AGM was running Tomb Raider if anyone's interested.

Want to see some (more) screenshots!

Nexus

21-Feb-2002, 13:30

On 2002-02-21 14:13, rake wrote:
The Dreamcast was a SuperH / Power VR powered box.

Just realized you meant the core familiy, not the firm. I apologize..

Idiot

21-Feb-2002, 14:06

hmmmmm

a handhold PDA sized DC2 with SH5 + kryo3

would be awesome :smile:

And will have way enough power left to do those real stupid PDA works.

maybe voice input would be possible?

Dave Baumann

21-Feb-2002, 14:20

a handhold PDA sized DC2 with SH5 + kryo3

Note: MBX != KYRO3

Nexus

21-Feb-2002, 14:35

On 2002-02-21 15:20, DaveBaumann wrote:

Note: MBX != KYRO3

Certainly, but MBX could be quite comparable in 3D performance with Dreamcast/Neon250. 4 million triangles/sec at 120MHz isn't bad at all.

[Miscalculation!]

[ This Message was edited by: Nexus on 2002-02-21 15:43 ]

MfA

21-Feb-2002, 15:55

Even a lame old SH3(-DSP) combined with the MBX would blow the GBA out of the water, I assume thats what they are aiming at.

With a SH-4 and VGP it would be faster to a ridiculous extent, 1 or even 2 orders of magnitude for 3D games, noone else seems close to being able to offer something of that power soon ... and does it really offer much improvement for such small screens?

Marco

PS. I wonder if the MBX used will have a iDCT core, it should :)

PPS. I agree, this is some much needed good news for IMG stock holders ... but for me its no reason for optimism. In fact success outside the PC market has been a cause of complacency IMO, so from my point of view the fact that they might once again not need success there to succeed as a company is not really good news ...

[ This Message was edited by: MfA on 2002-02-21 17:18 ]

Idiot

21-Feb-2002, 16:26

Wavey: i know that, but since we might get to see kryo3 get into our pcs, I would not mind if people makes it into MPX-2.

anyways, with PDA's resolution a core thats about as fast as kryo2 would permit extremely realistic images compaged to jpgs displayed on the PDA.

Joe DeFuria

21-Feb-2002, 16:31

I agree, this is some much needed good news for IMG stock holders ... but for me its no reason for optimism. In fact success outside the PC market has been a cause of complacency IMO, so from my point of view the fact that they might once again not need success there to succeed as a company is not really good news ...

My thoughts exactly.

I have to raise this question though.

How much do we "need" 3D graphics acceleration on a hand-held device? This is an honest question. Are the screens big enough, and resolution high enough, such that a 3D environment can realistically be appreciated?

I always wondered about 3dfx/Gigapixel's "roadmap" for 3D technology on hand-held devices like phones and PDAs. Does the market really need or want this?

I can see fast 2D acceleration, and video acceleration being useful...but I'm not sold on the need for 3D. The smallest form factor that I'm conviced 3D acceleration would still be a big selling point is with the so-called "tablet" PCs.

rake

21-Feb-2002, 16:34

Given that STM would be unlikely to spend time and money integrating MBX and SHx without having an end customer / product in mind, what do we think?

1. Enhanced PDA graphics solution? Q3 on iPaq?

2. Brand new handheld gaming platform from an unknown OEM to take on the monopolistic GBA?

3. Cut down MBX "light" into mobile phones. 3D snake anyone?

mboeller

21-Feb-2002, 16:50

maybe something like this would help :

http://www.pentile.com

[ This Message was edited by: mboeller on 2002-02-21 17:50 ]

MfA

21-Feb-2002, 19:43

There's plenty of developers working in 3D for PDA's and GBA ... 320*240 was plenty to revolutionize gaming on the PC at the time 3D hit it big there, and we didnt even have the benefit of high quality anti-aliasing at the time.

Joe DeFuria

21-Feb-2002, 21:44

But the PCs also had the benefit of at least a 15 inch screen, not a few inches. Note that both screens (PC and hand-held) are roughly the same viewing distance to the eyes.

Do hand-helds have enough storage capacity (both in the cartridges and system memory) to handle rich 3D worlds?

[ This Message was edited by: Joe DeFuria on 2002-02-21 22:50 ]

Dave Baumann

21-Feb-2002, 21:53

Do hand-helds have enough storage capacity (both in the cartridges and system memory) to handle rich 3D worlds?

Hrm - we're not talking Doom3 here! How many disks did Quake 1 come on? How big was Tomb Raider? That probably the level of games we'd be talking about here.

N64 was a cartidge based 3D system - you could probably fit one of those games on a GB/GBA sized cartidge on todays process technologies.

Joe DeFuria

21-Feb-2002, 22:00

Of course we aren't talking Doom3 quality...but you still need to be able to see and distinguish between enemies at a "distance" in a FPS for example....That doesn't matter if it's doom 1 or doom 3.

In a nut-shell, most 3D fully *textured* games IMO, may simply require a larger screen than hand-helds / PDAs can provide in order for the user to see much more than a mess of pixels bunched together on the screen.

I can see the situation different with essentially non-textured games (like Mario64)....but then, is a "powerful" 3D processor needed for that?

MfA

21-Feb-2002, 22:13

As someone pointed out N64 was a cartridge system, and once "3D" antifuse ROM chips emerge N64-capacity cartridges will be nickle and dime stuff. Hell, I see a good chance we will see a return of the cartridge format on a much larger scale with that technology ...

BTW I think you are underestimating the capabilities of our eye's.

Marco

[ This Message was edited by: MfA on 2002-02-21 23:21 ]

Dave Baumann

21-Feb-2002, 22:26

In a nut-shell, most 3D fully *textured* games IMO, may simply require a larger screen than hand-helds / PDAs can provide in order for the user to see much more than a mess of pixels bunched together on the screen.

<shrug> The game will meet the needs / capabilities of the platform its being targeted for. Doom (original) was quite well done on the GBA and that hasn’t even got the resolution that we’re talking about here.

Also remember that MBX has ‘fsaa4free’ which should defiantly be a boon for this resolution.

Joe DeFuria

21-Feb-2002, 22:39

BTW I think you are underestimating the capabilities of our eye's.

That could very well be. :wink: I guess I won't know for sure until I try and play Quake or Unreal on a few inches of real-estate.

Idiot

22-Feb-2002, 01:39

it will depend on the type of games.

need not to be a FPS

Ecco and Shenmue will both play fine on a PDA screen as is DOA2 type fighting games.

All 3 should be easy ports as well.

the bigger problem would be how and where to fit the controls...

Kristof

22-Feb-2002, 09:12

In a nut-shell, most 3D fully *textured* games IMO, may simply require a larger screen than hand-helds / PDAs can provide in order for the user to see much more than a mess of pixels bunched together on the screen.

The thing to remember is the actual dots per surface area. Have you ever watched a low res movie (MPG, Quicktime, etc) fullscreen on your monitor ? It looks pretty horible and blurry, if you use no filtering it will look ugly and blocky. The same happens if you play a 3D game fullscreen on your monitor and use 320x240 resolution. BUT when you play that low res MPG movie on your desktop in window it suddenly looks pretty good, the same for a 3D game place it into a window on your 1024x768 desktop and it will look just fine. With mobile devices you'll have small screens yes, but the resolution matches the size of the screen and the actual dots per area are good enough. SO what happens is that the game will actually look like the low res movie playing in a window.

I would be more worried about streaking and slow response of these displays, 60Hz is probably a no go on these devices, its probably going to be a refresh rate of 30Hz.

Just think about this if your worried about how it looks : they do readable text on these devices... and text is probably trickier than any kind of fast action graphics.

K-

PC-Engine

22-Feb-2002, 10:45

I'm thinking downloadable games through 3G wireless networks into Pocket PC devices using 3G modems. Another option would be to download games to your PC then load them into a handheld device through USB link onto a Secure Digital card. Yet another option would be to sell games on 3" CDROMs that you load into your PC then transfer to the handheld device saving the manufacturing costs of cartridges making the games a little cheaper to consumers. There are a lot of possibilites.

[ This Message was edited by: PC-Engine on 2002-02-22 12:19 ]

CIN

22-Feb-2002, 13:25

Would be a good idea to have SEGA develop a GBA beater with this tech. They would not have to upgrade the handheld for ages and they are experts with this tech(SHx and PVR) But they do not have the $$$ :sad: Would have been cool to see what they could get out of it.

22-Feb-2002, 14:26

Actually I have worked to put movies on simular devices here at work. My biggest worry was not how it looked, but battery life. Of course our products are more for communication so to us battery life is key as these products are all mobile.

[ This Message was edited by: jb on 2002-02-22 15:27 ]

Joe DeFuria

22-Feb-2002, 15:05

Kristof,

The thing to remember is the actual dots per surface area...

Sure...that is certainly one critical aspect of something "looking good." My point is, there is not only a relative aspect (dots per surface area) but an absolute one...total surface area.

Taken to the extreme, I could have a really high "dots per surface area" ratio...320x200, but on a 1 cm square screen. I don't think anyone would enjoy playing on such a thing.

So there is some real point at which the absolute screen real estate becomes an issue for "acceptable" use. I assume that this threshold would vary from person to person, and also from type of game to type of game. And I would guess that for many types of 3D games, the "threshold size" is larger than most 2d ones. I'm only raising the issue of the possibility of PDAs being at or around this threshold for 3D gaming.

I still don't see any use for 3D chips on cell phones. :wink:

vidar

22-Feb-2002, 15:23

The PowerVR MBX will face competition from at least NeoMagic, which is already shipping products of their MiMagic NMS7041 SoC with 4MB embedded RAM and a 3.2 GB/sec bandwidth.. To bad it only have 50 Mpixel/sec fillrate..

Vidar

Mariner

22-Feb-2002, 15:23

I don't know. Ultimately, the modern mobile phone sells if it has a 'gimmick' that others don't.

I can imagine people buying a new mobile to show their friends the funky 3D animation of their caller list etc.

EvilTwin

22-Feb-2002, 15:24

On 2002-02-22 14:25, CIN wrote:
Would be a good idea to have SEGA develop a GBA beater with this tech. They would not have to upgrade the handheld for ages and they are experts with this tech(SHx and PVR) But they do not have the $$$ :sad: Would have been cool to see what they could get out of it.

They had several systems that could have beat the gameboy back in the day , but it didn't , due to nintendo strongarming them , and poor battery life , and from what I see this would also be a problem with this combo .

RobTuck

22-Feb-2002, 17:33

They had several systems that could have beat the gameboy back in the day , but it didn't , due to nintendo strongarming them

Gamegear rocked. I had one, well, still have and it still works fine. It was compatible with all my master system games with the aid of a cheap converter and the batteries lasted a good time. The screen was also pretty good.
Much better than anything else at the time.

and poor battery life , and from what I see this would also be a problem with this combo.

Why would this be a problem? Weve already established that MBX is very low powered. Im sure it would give a good amount.

MfA

22-Feb-2002, 17:59

I dont think battery life would be much of an issue if IMG's estimates were accurate, if they put in 1 extra battery they'd make up for more than the MBX uses ... and I doubt they would even need that.

With NiMH batteries and assuming it would have to run for 20 hours like advertised for the GBA the MBX chip would take about 40% of the power ... that should leave enough for the rest of the device, SuperH is right up there in MIPS/Watt area and they have an extra process shrink to work with.

tkopp

22-Feb-2002, 18:03

The Game Gear failed because it's huge (as far as portables go) and the batteries last for about four and a half hours of continuous play. Six AAs. That's too rich for my blood.

I tried getting the Game Gear working. I really wanted it to rock. I bought rechargeable batteries, a recharger, a power adapter, several games, a link... And in the end I had to carry it all in my backpack, since the thing's just too big (well, game gear + power converter).

For dedicated portable game platforms, small size and battery life are your essentials. I don't need a portable that can play Dreamcast games if it's, well, the size of a Dreamcast.

That said, 3d functionality would be great in an Ipaq-like system where the portable is supposed to be a stripped-down portable computer. Then I'm willing to plug in to recharge every couple hours and lug around a couple peripherals. The system's wort hit. But just to entertain me? Heck, I like Game Boy games. They may not be as pretty, but they're fun. And I can carry my GBA in my pocket.

Xmas

22-Feb-2002, 18:31

MfA

23-Feb-2002, 22:08

Hmm MiMagic doesnt look too hot IMO. No mention of any concrete numbers for power consumption makes me suspicious, its feature set is unimpressive. Finally, it was targeted at Infineon's eDRAM process ...

ben6

23-Feb-2002, 22:18

The biggest GBA game I've seen is around 64MB (note Megabyte not megabit) I doubt Doom1 was bigger than that and in fact the GBA Doom is pretty darn good...

jonny m

23-Feb-2002, 23:53

Personally, and kudos to PVR crew, I think this is a great Idea and if released with some good titles would be a smash. If it can produce playstation 1 quality games on handheld then waahoo! I for one would be first in line, even though I've found no interest in any ofthe other handhelds.

Wipeout handheld anyone? now that would be fun if the lcd can keep up with the display change.

Somebody somewhere must be seeing Nintendo's revenue's on the GBA, this market is RIPE(and dripping with money) for another bigtime competitor, even if its just nokia. In my humble opinion the GBA was abit of a disappointment, I was expecting a full 3d feature set.

Could it be that only now this is achievable at a decent pricepoint?

Go MBX!!

[ This Message was edited by: jonny m on 2002-02-24 01:07 ]

pascal

24-Feb-2002, 00:12

Portbale PSOne like games?? And PDA functions too? My daughter will want one :cool:

Nexus

24-Feb-2002, 00:20

ben6, are you really sure? Maybe bit/Byte confusion?

The maximum size for a GBA cartridge is 256Mbit (32MByte) according to the GBA specification.

And the biggest games (Sonic Advance, Advance GTA, Warioland) are 64Mbit (8MByte) right now. I am not aware of bigger ones.

As for the display size/resolution.. The GBA has 240x160 on a 2,9" screen which isn't that bad. If a MBX device had 320x240 on ~4" it would be enough for my taste. Would make a pretty big mobile phone though. :smile:

Nexus

24-Feb-2002, 00:26

On 2002-02-24 01:12, pascal wrote:
Portable PSOne

Just remembered this Portable Playstation:
http://www.classicgaming.com/vcsp/PSp/PSp1.htm
More (Portable Atari 2600 and SNES) can be found here: http://www.classicgaming.com/vcsp/

Shogmaster

24-Feb-2002, 00:32

One word:

XBoy!!!

:grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

PC-Engine

24-Feb-2002, 00:35

If a MBX device had 320x240 on ~4" it would be enough for my taste. Would make a pretty big mobile phone though. :smile:

Well you're forgetting that mobile phones don't always have to follow traditional handset device. You could simply have a PDA style device with a bluetooth earpiece :wink: Think about it, when 3G video phones pickup you're going to have to use an earpiece to simultaneously view the person on the other end anyway

[ This Message was edited by: PC-Engine on 2002-02-24 01:38 ]

Teasy

24-Feb-2002, 07:02

If it can produce playstation 1 quality games on handheld then waahoo!

MBX is capable of considerably better 3D quality then PSX considering its feature set. It might only be 320x240x32 but on a smaller screen and with 4 FSAA, trilinear filtering, bump mapping, texture compression (none of which PSX had) and also more then 4 times higher poly counts then PSX (35,000 polys per frame) it would blow the PSX's best visuals completely out of the water. It could look more like Dreamcast visuals in fact as long as they have a decent storage medium.

Sounds like it would make an incredible handheld, mobile Dreamcast :eek:

[ This Message was edited by: Teasy on 2002-02-24 08:19 ]

jvd

24-Feb-2002, 08:12

sega should make another nomad ... :smile: nomad 2

ushac

24-Feb-2002, 18:37

On 2002-02-22 16:23, vidar wrote:
The PowerVR MBX will face competition from at least NeoMagic, which is already shipping products of their MiMagic NMS7041 SoC with 4MB embedded RAM and a 3.2 GB/sec bandwidth.. To bad it only have 50 Mpixel/sec fillrate..

Vidar

...and then there's 3DLabs working on a prortable Permedia3-based processor. They've got some deal with Microsoft to integrate it in Windows CE .NET devices. http://www.3dlabs.com/whatsnew/pressreleases/pr02/02-01-08-windowsce.htm

The future for mobile graphics looks interesting...

Regards / ushac

RaolinDarksbane

25-Feb-2002, 09:56

"And the biggest games (Sonic Advance, Advance GTA, Warioland) are 64Mbit (8MByte) right now. I am not aware of bigger ones."

King of Fighter Neo for the GBA is 128 Megabits(16 MB)

Simon F

25-Feb-2002, 12:38

On 2002-02-24 00:53, jonny m wrote:
Personally, and kudos to PVR crew, I think this is a great Idea and if released with some good titles would be a smash. If it can produce playstation 1 quality games on handheld then waahoo!
Gosh you're aiming low.

Simon (via internet cafe in Turkey.)

vidar

27-Feb-2002, 18:04

On 2002-02-23 23:08, MfA wrote:
Hmm MiMagic doesnt look too hot IMO. No mention of any concrete numbers for power consumption makes me suspicious, its feature set is unimpressive. Finally, it was targeted at Infineon's eDRAM process ...

A quote from ExtremeTech:

"At the heart of the chip is a MIPS32 4Kc embedded CPU, running at 100 MHz and processing 130 Dhrystone MIPS. Currently, the chip is fabricated upon a 0.2 micron process, embedding from 4 to 16 Mbytes of DRAM within an internal module. Most importantly, the chip consumes only 75 milliwatts of power—although the figure should jump to 800 mW if the 3D core is turned on, Zaidi estimated."

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3428,a%253D16682,00.asp

Vidar