[Megadrive1988]

I'm starting this new thread for several reasons. New information (rumor) has just been reported about the 3DS, also we need a 3DS topic. The current DS2 topic is old and could be confusing to some people, not realising that it's 3DS now.

okay with that said:

How powerful is the 3DS?
Nintendo has not revealed any specs for the 3DS system, but expect it to well surpass the Nintendo DS in visual and processor capabilities. To provide stereoscopic 3D effects the system must have the ability to render each game field twice, one for each of the player's eyes, a technique that will require significant horsepower to produce.

Several developers that have experienced 3DS in its current form have reported, off the record, that it has processing capabilities that far exceed the Nintendo Wii and bring the device with abilities that are close to HD consoles such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

According to several developer sources, the 3DS device is not using the NVIDIA Tegra mobile chipset, a rumor that's been floating around since 2009.

http://ds.ign.com/articles/109/1094930p1.html

NVIDIA unconnected with 3DS
June 5th, 2010

Mobile industry insiders, speaking with Digital Foundry, have said that the much-rumoured tie-up between Nintendo and NVIDIA for the console-maker's auto-stereoscopic 3D handheld is not happening.

According to our two independent, unconnected sources, the Nintendo 3DS - almost certain to be revealed at E3 - features a design totally divorced from the NVIDIA Tegra SoC (system on chip) initially thought to have been powering the DS successor. It's now thought that Nintendo has instead chosen a Japanese partner for the 3D acceleration hardware within the 3DS.

Sources also confirmed that the 3DS' development codename is "Nintendo CTR", meaning that this motherboard picture we ran a couple of weeks back, sourced from the FCC website, is indeed something akin to a development or test station for the new handheld.

This strongly suggests that 3DS does feature a widescreen "glasses free" stereoscopic 3D display, along with a more conventional 4:3 2D display beneath it. Interestingly, it appears that the images of the board published on the FCC website were uploaded in error: they were supposed to have been made public 10 months after the submission in April this year, presumably after the 3DS itself ships.

Meanwhile, IGN corroborates the story that NVIDIA is out of the picture, quoting "off-the-record" developer sources as saying that the 3DS is up there in the power stakes with PS3 and Xbox 360. It's a statement that needs to be taken with barrel-loads of salt bearing in mind the enormous power draw such a chipset would require. If nothing else, Nintendo has a strong track record in excellent battery life with every one of its previous handhelds.

Indeed, even the four-core PowerVP chip said to be at the heart of the PSP2 offers a performance level some way between the original Xbox and the 360. A more modest GPU is therefore a much more realistic proposition, especially bearing in mind that even the iPhone 3GS with its PowerVR SGX535 architecture doesn't exactly command outstanding battery life in 3D gaming.

All of which is interesting tittle-tattle in the here and now, but let's hope that the Nintendo E3 conference on June 15, kicking off at 5pm UK time, will offer more concrete answers.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/nv...3ds-blog-entry


So who could be powering the 3DS? My bet is PowerVR, manufactured in Japan.

[wsippel]

Imagination Technologies isn't a Japanese company, though. DMP might be a likely candidate - maybe something like this: http://www.dmprof.com/release/leaflet_SMAPH-S_en.pdf

[DeadlyNinja]

Who think IGN is talking out of their behind, or is misinterpreting what they've been told?

My guess is probably GC/Wii level with more advanced effects and shaders. It certainly would be very impressive for a handheld. I hope they keep the damn thing at 60fps.

[darkblu]

Originally Posted by DeadlyNinja

Who think IGN is talking out of their behind, or is misinterpreting what they've been told?

* raises right hand, left hand and a hind limb. waves those in the air, while desperately trying to keep balance on remaining grounded limb *

[brain_stew]

Maybe what IGN were really told was that it'll have a similar featureset to the PS3/360 but in terms of raw performance would be inline with the Wii? I could certainly understand how someone not so technically minded could get confused with such statements and come away with comments like they did. That's got to be around the sort of area we're expecting for this thing, right? Something like a SGX 535 would fit that sort of description and something of that calibre surely isn't out of the realms of possibility, no?

For reference with a high level of abstraction the iPad's pulling off some pretty impressive stuff @ 1024x768, like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqdvClxB-Zg&fmt=22

Now the 3DS is going to be using a much lower resolution screen (if it's the rumoured Sharp screen it'll be 800x480 in 2D mode, half that for 3D) and developers will be coding much closer to the metal so that level of hardware should be able to produce some pretty spectacular results. There's the issue of battery life of course so its unlikely that Nintendo will clock the thing quite as high as Apple did but perhaps they'll take a strategy similar to what Sony did with the PSP where they'll "unlock" the chip later in the platform's life to give it a new lease of life once new models with better battery life are released? What process node would Nintendo be able to use if they're launching this thing before the end of the calender year? 40nm?

Is DMP's chip a tiler? It looks a good candidate what with it being Japanese, incredibly scalable and (if their claims are to be believed) having the "industry lowest" power consumption. It coming from a more niche company may mean that Nintendo may be able to negotiate more favourable terms if they're desperate for their first big design win.

What are people's expectations when it comes to RAM? 128MB of LPDDR2 seems to be the minimum for even low end smartphones these days and is available as a single chip so is there any real good reason why Nintendo would go with less than this?

All in all I expect something with games that have graphics/complexity similar to Xbox games but for them not to be quite as RAM starved. Games that can't quite match the raw polycount of high end Wii games but make up for it through better effects/lighting and image quality is what I'd like to see, and games of that ilk should look very impressive in full stereo3D on a small 3/4" screen.

[Squilliam]

I don't see why not, given the effects possible on the iPad and the much smaller screen. This is especially true if they have made it possible to significantly lower the overhead when displaying 3D content which is a very plausible estimate given the fact that they designed the system for 3D display.

[MfA]

Originally Posted by brain_stew

Is DMP's chip a tiler?

Unlikely. Broadcom's chip is probably, based on Gigapixel's Pixelsquirt.

Really though, everything out there in mobile seems a bit antique compared to SGX.

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by wsippel

Imagination Technologies isn't a Japanese company, though. DMP might be a likely candidate - maybe something like this: http://www.dmprof.com/release/leaflet_SMAPH-S_en.pdf

DMP is circulating lately in the rumor mill, but hand in hand with the non programmable pipeline. Don't exclude something along the line of the PICA200 (OGL_ES1.1) just yet. The PICA200 Lite (geez another vendor that can't spell light) sounds too humble to me.

[Teasy]

Originally Posted by brain_stew

Maybe what IGN were really told was that it'll have a similar featureset to the PS3/360 but in terms of raw performance would be inline with the Wii? I could certainly understand how someone not so technically minded could get confused with such statements and come away with comments like they did.

IGN have basically said its going to be much more powerful then Wii and with a similar feature set to 360/PS3. They didn't say it would be as powerful as 360 or PS3 though, Eurogamer misquoted them.

[Teasy]

Is there any firm info on the 3DS screen yet? I saw that Nintendo DS CTR development board with the widescreen on top and normal screen below, but is there any sort of confirmation that the top screen is a Sharp auto-stereoscopic 3D screen? (which is the rumour going around I believe).

[Lazy8s]

DMP have been a curiosity of mine for several years. With their continuing development roadmap and offerings of OpenGL ES seminars, they seemed to have had some assurance of at least one signicant licensee and/or investor. They were previously discussed here.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=32326

Gigapixel was of course the 3Dfx and, in turn, nVidia acquisition while Stellar Semi and their scan-line (scene-captured, deferred) renderer went to Broadcom.

That was way back in the Wild West days of the PC 3D accelerator market, and Broadcom's extremely low profile in the mobile SoC 3D market for all of these years made me think the Stellar assets had just been reassigned within Broadcom. However, the vague similarities to what I seem to recall learning about Nintendo's DS graphics processor makes me wonder whether Broadcom wasn't the mystery partner on that project and whether that was what had kept the former Stellar people busy for that time.

Also, lately, this Stellar architecture or something somewhat like it has seemingly resurfaced within Broadcom's current product line-up. With a similar cost to an MBX Lite but with significantly lower performance, it's not too exciting yet, though.

[sfried]

Originally Posted by Lazy8s

The DMP company is another small graphics firm, staffed by 29, which started as a university research project and turned into a business a few years ago through funding initiatives. Shinichi Okamoto, former Sony executive who headed up development of the PlayStation2, sits on the board of directors.

Hmm...

[Rys]

Originally Posted by MfA

Unlikely. Broadcom's chip is probably, based on Gigapixel's Pixelsquirt

OT, but wasn't Pixelsquirt a Stellar Semi thing, rather than Gigapixel? Edit: Ah, Lazy8s covered that above, ignore me.

[MfA]

Gah, too many sunk tiler manufacturers out there ...

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by MfA

Gah, too many sunk tiler manufacturers out there ...

Well there are more tilers integrated in the embedded market today on the other hand, than non tilers. SGX aside, Mali and Imageon are both tile based too.

[Arun]

I've thought for quite some time that talking of 'tilers' as a category has become too misleading (after all it's not as if tiles weren't omnipresent for memory access pattern reasons anyway). I'd much rather talk of 'binners'; how you use that binning data once you've got it is just an (important) implementation detail.

[DeadlyNinja]

Let me ask a silly question. Trust me, it's very silly. Let say Nintendo does intend to have the 3DS beat the Wii graphically, would an ultra crappy integrated GPU like the GeForce 6150SE be enough to do it? I've done some tests with a relatively modern game called Paraworld (2006) and the game runs relatively well at 1024 x 768 with a few things here and there at high.

This is what Paraworld looks like: http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen016.jpg

I also tested it on an older game called Jurassic Park Operation Genesis. It was a GC/Xbox/PS2 era game with some really nice looking water. That game ran like butter at 800 x 600.

Strangely enough, the GPU can barely handle Half Life 2. I think it was set to 480p. Looks horrible, yet the game is nowhere near as modern as Paraworld.

If Nintendo is aiming for 800 x 480 with the 3DS, would a GPU of that power be enough?

[darkblu]

Originally Posted by Arun

I've thought for quite some time that talking of 'tilers' as a category has become too misleading (after all it's not as if tiles weren't omnipresent for memory access pattern reasons anyway). I'd much rather talk of 'binners'; how you use that binning data once you've got it is just an (important) implementation detail.

FWIW, I've been commonly referring to Imagination's designs as 'TBDR', and as 'tilers' to the rest TBDRs which don't do overdraw elimination. Clearly that's rather arbitrary (and misleading), and I, too, have been considering fixing my terms. I'm considering going with:

* TBDR/OE for tiling/binning scene-capturers that do rigid overdraw elimination, and
* TBDR for tiling/binning scene-capturers in general.

By that convention Imagination's designs would be classified as TBDR/OE, and everybody else (GMA (sans 500), Z4xx/Adreno, etc) as TBDR. I'm also considering using 'just DR' (deferred renderer) for scene capturers in general.

[darkblu]

Originally Posted by DeadlyNinja

If Nintendo is aiming for 800 x 480 with the 3DS, would a GPU of that power be enough?

I'd venture to guess that that particular 'ultra crappy' IGP draws between 3x to 7x (maybe even an order of magnitude) more power than Hollywood. Putting such a part into a handheld is not an option.

Also, I'd take the 'more powerful than wii' tidbits as utter nonsense ; )

[DeadlyNinja]

Originally Posted by darkblu

I'd venture to guess that that particular 'ultra crappy' IGP draws between 3x to 7x (maybe even an order of magnitude) more power than Hollywood. Putting such a part into a handheld is not an option.

Also, I'd take the 'more powerful than wii' tidbits as utter nonsense ; )

I don't mean sticking it in as it is. Of course it wouldn't work for a handheld, I mean if they hypothetically made the exact same thing but for handheld.

[Exophase]

Originally Posted by darkblu

FWIW, I've been commonly referring to Imagination's designs as 'TBDR', and as 'tilers' to the rest TBDRs which don't do overdraw elimination. Clearly that's rather arbitrary (and misleading), and I, too, have been considering fixing my terms. I'm considering going with:

* TBDR/OE for tiling/binning scene-capturers that do rigid overdraw elimination, and
* TBDR for tiling/binning scene-capturers in general.

By that convention Imagination's designs would be classified as TBDR/OE, and everybody else (GMA (sans 500), Z4xx/Adreno, etc) as TBDR. I'm also considering using 'just DR' (deferred renderer) for scene capturers in general.

I always thought the "deferred" part in TBDR referred to deferred shading/overdraw elimination approach by IMG (only ones I know of using the TBDR term), not deferred rendering necessitated by scene binning. I mean, now that I think about it I was obviously wrong, especially considering IMR is used as a contrasting term.. but it looks like we were using similar terminology.

Are tilers like Xenon, and by assumption Z4xx, really scene capturing? I mean, I might not understand the concept of operation completely, but it seems to me that instead of collecting all scene geometry then binning it it will render geometry immediately clipped against the tile boundaries, with the option to mark (or maybe remove entirely?) culled primitives and the requirement to render again for other tiles. It seems something in-between immediate and deferred, and also seems like something a modern IMR could mostly (entirely??) do, only lacking the explicit high speed tile memory, that might be serviced similarly with a framebuffer cache.

But I'm probably really showing my ignorance with this post

[Rys]

A 1VS, 2PS 6-series class GeForce isn't that far away from Tegra, functionally. The frequency is miles away, though.

[Rys]

Originally Posted by Exophase

Are tilers like Xenon, and by assumption Z4xx, really scene capturing? I mean, I might not understand the concept of operation completely, but it seems to me that instead of collecting all scene geometry then binning it it will render geometry immediately clipped against the tile boundaries, with the option to mark (or maybe remove entirely?) culled primitives and the requirement to render again for other tiles. It seems something in-between immediate and deferred, and also seems like something a modern IMR could mostly (entirely??) do, only lacking the explicit high speed tile memory, that might be serviced similarly with a framebuffer cache.

You're pretty much spot on.

[aaronspink]

Originally Posted by Exophase

I always thought the "deferred" part in TBDR referred to deferred shading/overdraw elimination approach by IMG (only ones I know of using the TBDR term), not deferred rendering necessitated by scene binning. I mean, now that I think about it I was obviously wrong, especially considering IMR is used as a contrasting term.. but it looks like we were using similar terminology.

There is a matrix.

DR
TBDR
TBR
IMR
etc

The deferred part specifically relates to deferring shading/color until order is known.

Are tilers like Xenon, and by assumption Z4xx, really scene capturing?

Xenon IS NOT a tiler. It is an IMR. The "tiling" comes from the limited framebuffer space due to the size of the embedded memory. The programmer is fully responsible for any tiling that takes place.

It seems something in-between immediate and deferred, and also seems like something a modern IMR could mostly (entirely??) do, only lacking the explicit high speed tile memory, that might be serviced similarly with a framebuffer cache.

No, xenon is fully an IMR.

[darkblu]

Originally Posted by Exophase

I always thought the "deferred" part in TBDR referred to deferred shading/overdraw elimination approach by IMG (only ones I know of using the TBDR term), not deferred rendering necessitated by scene binning. I mean, now that I think about it I was obviously wrong, especially considering IMR is used as a contrasting term.. but it looks like we were using similar terminology.

Well, I've always equated 'deferred' with 'capturing', whether it's for overdraw elimination or god-knows-what. Of course i'm not insisting that my side of the terminology is correct - on the contrary, i'm in search of the correct terminology.

Are tilers like Xenon, and by assumption Z4xx, really scene capturing? I mean, I might not understand the concept of operation completely, but it seems to me that instead of collecting all scene geometry then binning it it will render geometry immediately clipped against the tile boundaries, with the option to mark (or maybe remove entirely?) culled primitives and the requirement to render again for other tiles. It seems something in-between immediate and deferred, and also seems like something a modern IMR could mostly (entirely??) do, only lacking the explicit high speed tile memory, that might be serviced similarly with a framebuffer cache.

So what you suggest is clipping your primitives bin-by-bin without capturing? That spares you capturing but takes away from you on-tile blending and cheap FSAA resolves - hardly a good tradeoff, IMO. You could do that on a scene level on an IMR - ie. re-draw your entire scene and clip it bin-by-bin (see Xenos reference below), but that's hardly optimal vertex-wise.

AFAIK, Xenos and derivatives are not ovedraw-eliminating the way Imagination's are, but they are scene-capturing as much as Imagination's. Ok, in the case of the original Xenos - manual scene capturing ; ) ( or ; (, depending on whether you had to ship a product on that - I didn't). IIRC MS/ATI addressed that later into the lifecycle of the paltform with API augmentations.

Here's an ATI/AMD paper from some time ago discussing their idea of a TBR from back then: http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/...eBasedGpus.pdf - I believe it's quite relevant to Z4xx. Pay particular attention to the 'resolves' topic.