[ltcommander.data]

Originally Posted by tangey

In graphics terms alone, that would make no sense at all to me, Its highly likely they went with SGX543MP4 in the A5X because they could not run an MP2@500Mhz @45nm.

They could replace the 543MP4 with 543MP2, increase clock to 500Mhz and save a significant area of die, and maybe run a bit quicker. SGX54xMP2 @ >=500Mhz has been announced by other SGX licencees @32nm.

Although Apple is clearly not terribly concerned with die area, to be able to reduce the current design by arond 20% must be important when you are planning a chip that might number well north of 150M units.

I wonder does SGX554MP2 offer advantages? Since the next iPhone isn't expected to increase pixel count appreciably, going SGX554MP2 instead of SGX543MP4 allows them to double ALU performance in a more space efficient manner while avoiding aggressive clock speeds needed if sticking with a SGX543MP2. Apple's primary concern probably remains battery life, so it'd be interesting to know whether a low clock speed SGX554MP2 solution would be more power efficient than a high clock speed SGX543MP2. Then if Apple wants to use a lower risk iterative approach to SoC improvement they could potentially go dual Cortex A9 + SGX554MP2 for iPhone 5, dual Cortex A15 + SGX554MP4 for iPad 4, and dual Cortex A15 + Rogue for iPhone 6.

[Pressure]

Scratch that, misread.

[tangey]

Originally Posted by ltcommander.data

I wonder does SGX554MP2 offer advantages? Since the next iPhone isn't expected to increase pixel count appreciably, going SGX554MP2 instead of SGX543MP4 allows them to double ALU performance in a more space efficient manner while avoiding aggressive clock speeds needed if sticking with a SGX543MP2.

Frankly way above my abilities to make a guess about that. All I know is that to date no one has publicly licensed 554, whereas every other announced SGX ip has been licensed multiple times. One assumes its been developed with a licencee in mind, whether it's apple, intel, or someone else, who knows. All I will say is that it contains some extra circuitry for dx9 compliance that apple have seen no need to require to date, so from purely that point of view, it might not be as efficient.

[ltcommander.data]

Originally Posted by tangey

Frankly way above my abilities to make a guess about that. All I know is that to date no one has publicly licensed 554, whereas every other announced SGX ip has been licensed multiple times. One assumes its been developed with a licencee in mind, whether it's apple, intel, or someone else, who knows. All I will say is that it contains some extra circuitry for dx9 compliance that apple have seen no need to require to date, so from purely that point of view, it might not be as efficient.

That is true. I didn't think about the unneeded DX9 compliance.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5789/t...nm-a5-tested/1

Anand has tested the 32nm A5 shrink. 16% battery life increase in web browsing, 29% in gaming, and 19% in video decode. Very impressive considering all the other components are presumably unchanged. There is definitely room to increase clock speeds if sticking with SGX543MP2 for iPhone 5, but I guess there isn't an easy way to tell if ~2x GPU clock is doable. With the GPU performance of the Exynos 4412, if Apple wants to definitively regain the GPU performance crown, they probably need to aim for at least a 2x performance increase.

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by ltcommander.data

That is true. I didn't think about the unneeded DX9 compliance.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5789/t...nm-a5-tested/1

Anand has tested the 32nm A5 shrink. 16% battery life increase in web browsing, 29% in gaming, and 19% in video decode. Very impressive considering all the other components are presumably unchanged. There is definitely room to increase clock speeds if sticking with SGX543MP2 for iPhone 5, but I guess there isn't an easy way to tell if ~2x GPU clock is doable. With the GPU performance of the Exynos 4412, if Apple wants to definitively regain the GPU performance crown, they probably need to aim for at least a 2x performance increase.

Will the 4412 be more than 10-20% faster from the GPU side than the iPhone4S? Wouldn't it rather come down to as to what kind of performance difference Apple is really aiming for in the end?

No I don't know what Apple's plans are, but if they won't go for a A5X shrink under 32nm for the next iPhone and they'll increase frequency of a MP2 by say 50%, I'd still suggest that it'll be comfortably faster than a 4412 for the GPU. In fact it could bank right in between iPad2 and iPad3 performance for Egypt GLBenchmark2.1 and we'll see how GPUs will fair in future synthetic benchmarks with higher shader complexity like GLBenchmark2.5.

[ltcommander.data]

Originally Posted by Ailuros

Will the 4412 be more than 10-20% faster from the GPU side than the iPhone4S? Wouldn't it rather come down to as to what kind of performance difference Apple is really aiming for in the end?

No I don't know what Apple's plans are, but if they won't go for a A5X shrink under 32nm for the next iPhone and they'll increase frequency of a MP2 by say 50%, I'd still suggest that it'll be comfortably faster than a 4412 for the GPU. In fact it could bank right in between iPad2 and iPad3 performance for Egypt GLBenchmark2.1 and we'll see how GPUs will fair in future synthetic benchmarks with higher shader complexity like GLBenchmark2.5.

I was thinking that given the iPhone 5's late September/October expected release, Apple would want to pad their GPU performance increase to meet potential challengers in the Exynos 5 series Mali-T604, Qualcomm S4 Adreno 320, and similar SGX544MP2 in OMAP5 which will all presumably be available later this year. Assuming Apple continues to aim to have top GPU performance on release of course. They may well be aiming for a more incremental performance increase and focusing their attention on the case redesign as the key product differentiator this year.

[Pressure]

You should also have in mind that the added graphic capabilities would just be to enhance eye-candy, as iOS is v-synced at 60Hz.

But yeah, console quality games on your phone is fast approaching, although for my own personal needs that have been totally replaced by the iPad so I am much more interested in that SoC.

Not sure I need much more from my phone at this point until iOS 6 or a new version of Windows and Android needs it.

Right now it basically just feels like a bulletin point you have to check off that you have quad-core etc. Doesn't really enhance the user experience.

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by Pressure

You should also have in mind that the added graphic capabilities would just be to enhance eye-candy, as iOS is v-synced at 60Hz.

But yeah, console quality games on your phone is fast approaching, although for my own personal needs that have been totally replaced by the iPad so I am much more interested in that SoC.

Not sure I need much more from my phone at this point until iOS 6 or a new version of Windows and Android needs it.

Right now it basically just feels like a bulletin point you have to check off that you have quad-core etc. Doesn't really enhance the user experience.

Same here, and it will stay that way for iOS devices for me at the very least until they introduce iPhones with bigger screens.

Though personally, having spent the first few weeks with my iPad 3 now (basically current fastest iOS device right?), I'd say that console quality games on phone are still a ways off. Crytek's thingy for instance looks nice, but has a fixed camera and everything and not a very smooth framerate. Will be a while yet before they reach Uncharted level, even the Vita version, and by the time they do, I expect next-gen consoles to be released.

[sebbbi]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Though personally, having spent the first few weeks with my iPad 3 now (basically current fastest iOS device right?), I'd say that console quality games on phone are still a ways off. Crytek's thingy for instance looks nice, but has a fixed camera and everything and not a very smooth framerate. Will be a while yet before they reach Uncharted level, even the Vita version, and by the time they do, I expect next-gen consoles to be released.

Have you tried Modern Combat 3? It looks pretty much on par to most PS Vita games at least, and is butter smooth on iPad 2 at least.

[ltcommander.data]

Originally Posted by sebbbi

Have you tried Modern Combat 3? It looks pretty much on par to most PS Vita games at least, and is butter smooth on iPad 2 at least.

The upcoming NOVA 3 uses an improved Modern Combat 3 engine with more dynamic lighting and dynamic shadowing, but they are also specifically pointing out that it was designed with dual cores in mind. Anand's review of the iPad 3 found that some iPhoto tasks can already max out the dual 1GHz cores which is the fastest CPU (along with the iPad 2) on an iOS device. If we are thinking that GPU performance is already sufficient, I guess this begs the question of whether Apple's next push should be improved CPU performance? Keeping CPU performance stagnant for another generation/year could stall future cutting-edge app development now that the latest apps are already starting to make good use of current dual cores. A 50% CPU clock speed bump from 800MHz to 1.2GHz for the next iPhone 5 sounds significant, but if apps are beginning to peg 1GHz dual cores, an additional 200MHz may not be sufficient. Even more aggressive clock speed bumps or going quad core are options, but it might be worthwhile just to go to dual Cortex A15 this year, even if Rogue is not ready, and sticking with a Series 5XT GPU similar to the OMAP5.

[wco81]

Isn't the assumption that Apple couldn't do much with the CPU on the A5X because they were still on the larger die and most of their cost went to supporting the new display?

They could have waited a quarter or so and had access to improved lithography (and possibly A15) but then it would mess up their scheduling (iPad in the first quarter, iPhone later in the year).

They are pushing the screen on this iPad as the tentpole feature, as Siri was for the 4S.

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by sebbbi

Have you tried Modern Combat 3? It looks pretty much on par to most PS Vita games at least, and is butter smooth on iPad 2 at least.

I haven't, but partly because I hate CoD and couldn't get through Battlefield 3 either. Anyway, even if this looks decent and smooth, there's no shadows or lighting happening at all. Nothing. While plaudible for being smooth and clean, and to some extent making the baked lighting work well for them. If they're planning on adding some of that for the next game they're working on, let's see where that goes. So it's still catching up to Vita as far as I am concerned, which means it's still a ways away from even current gen, which was my point. Mind you, it will eventually become viable even for bigger games no doubt, even if the controls currently still hold it back badly in some genres (which is where Android has a big advantage).

But yeah, one or two gens further and we'll probably see some cool stuff. I agree that iPad 3's priority was the screen, and having got it, it was worth the priority, even simply because I bought it for 2D stuff, not 3D. The screen is spectacular, and I love reading stuff on it.

[dagamer]

Originally Posted by wco81

Why would this be easier than developing for Android, where developers have to test their software on dozens of popular devices?

W8 devices will span a broader range of HW features, profiles, etc.

More likely they will try to ensure compatibility or target a handful or two of the most popular devices or SOC platforms.

The problem with Android is that with games, the different SoCs require different texture types. As far as I know with Windows, there's a standard DirectX texture compression format which simplifies a lot work.

[Lazy8s]

While I haven't played Modern Combat 3 in a while, I'm pretty sure it was doing some shader and lighting effects.

iPhoto for iOS is more of a highlight of the need for GPGPU utilization than for CPU enhancement, which is a shame considering how well, in general, Apple has accelerated the rest of the OS/apps and how they proposed the OpenCL spec in the first place. Though I expect OpenCL for iOS in the near future, iPhoto could've used some extra polishing.

The very same goes for the compositing of the HDR photo in the camera app.

[tangey]

BBC online today posted a piece about IMG, including an interview with the CEO, Hossein Yassaie.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17939014

There's an interesting one-liner commentary by the author towards the end of the piece.

"For example, Apple's popular voice command system, Siri, is driven by the GPU."

Now I have no way of knowing if that is factually correct, but I can say that everything else in the article is spot on, and unlike many media outlets correctly identify IMG as licensing IP where many media outlets still write that IMG sells chips.

Assuming it is correct, it likely makes this the first widely deployed GPU compute application. I wonder do Apple have internal openCL in ios 5, and are just not exposing it at this time ?

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by ltcommander.data

I was thinking that given the iPhone 5's late September/October expected release, Apple would want to pad their GPU performance increase to meet potential challengers in the Exynos 5 series Mali-T604, Qualcomm S4 Adreno 320, and similar SGX544MP2 in OMAP5 which will all presumably be available later this year. Assuming Apple continues to aim to have top GPU performance on release of course. They may well be aiming for a more incremental performance increase and focusing their attention on the case redesign as the key product differentiator this year.

Let's see first if we see SoCs like OMAP5 and co in actual devices before this year runs out. Even if then in what kind of quantities?

As you note in another post Apple's headache for the next iPhone might not be only on the GPU side but also on the CPU side, since dual A15 at high frequencies (such as in OMAP5 at =/>2.0GHz) are going to be a tough cookie for quad A9s. Of course there's also always the sw side of things and since Apple has its own OS and hw is not obviously the entire story.

I also missed your 554MP2 question somewhere above; such a config is IMHO ideal if you have a workload with very high complexity shaders for today's small form factor standards, in any other case where shader complexity in applications is still mediocre the advantage to a 544MP2 at the same frequency could be by a lot smaller then the theoretical difference in FLOP amounts between the two might indicate (exactly because all other GPU aspects like texel, pixel and Z fillrates remain the same amongst others).

Rogue on the other hand is a totally different beast (obvious for any new architectural generation); it doesn't only rise FLOP rates by a lot compared to Series5XT but apparently also by a high degree triangle rates and texel fillrates amongst other things.

Remember also that you get from different sides a crapload of twisted marketing material; how long was it ago when in a freescale document the Vivante GC2000 was presented as being by a good marging faster than the MP2 in the iPad2 (while they'd obviously compared non vsynced vs. vsynced results ) and now that the Huawei U9510 with a GC4000 (twice the "cores" than the GC2000) made it to a product it's suddenly even slightly below the iPhone4S in Egypt.

Again I've no idea what Apple's intentions are, however it seems to me that if their next iPhone banks in terms of GPU performance somewhere in between the iPad2 and 3 it could very well be sufficient in order for them to stay competitive always in a relative sense. Yes competing solutions might beat it within timeframe N, but then again iPhone uber-next might beat the first again later on. Here I doubt that either Apple or other players in the small form factor market will go for a <1 year launch cycle. When any new product launches by N months later than another one, I'd expect the newer product to be better.

[Simon F]

Originally Posted by tangey

BBC online today posted a piece about IMG, including an interview with the CEO, Hossein Yassaie.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17939014

But did you see the caption "This image gives an idea of the complexity of the graphics processing unit of a computer chip"

[Lazy8s]

While I can't be 100% certain that Siri relies only upon server-side processing for its voice recognition, I've tried plenty of other apps that do, which work on even the original iPhone, and have accuracy subjectively similar to Siri. Maybe the article's comment was referring to the GPU compositing of the search results to the display, as unnecessary as such a comment would be.

Other phone manufacturers, including Apple on non-Siri equipped iOS devices, have shown that voice recognition for voice activated dialing and other voice controls can be processed quite well locally on the phone. That's without even tapping the GPU, and that's while tackling the challenge of deciphering the names/surnames of a person's phone book, let alone simple dictionary words. When giving commands for playing music to pre-Siri iOS devices, the voice recognition was actually very impressive for understanding the names of songs and artists, and I believe they even had that working on smaller iPods. The major limitation was the range of commands Apple let the application do; it even allowed a fair amount of flexibility in how a person could phrase the commands it did support (though not nearly as flexible as Siri, admittedly).

Tapping the GPU for pattern recognition for even more sophisticated voice controls should give software designers more than enough performance at this point. If the voice command involves performing a search on the Internet and thus server side processing anyway, the whole argument is moot since the voice recognition might as well be done there for even more accuracy.

[tangey]

Originally Posted by Lazy8s

While I can't be 100% certain that Siri relies only upon server-side processing for its voice recognition, I've tried plenty of other apps that do, which work on even the original iPhone, and have accuracy subjectively similar to Sir....i.

Other phone manufacturers, including Apple on non-Siri equipped iOS devices, have shown that voice recognition for voice activated dialing and other voice controls can be processed quite well locally on the phone. That's without even tapping the GPU,).....

Tapping the GPU for pattern recognition for even more sophisticated voice controls should give software designers more than enough performance at this point.

Your comments focus on processing capability, however IMG in its recent published video demos (were they at MWC ? or GDC ? or some such), placed at least if not more emphasis on GPU compute being able to do certain tasks using significantly less mWatts than the CPU, and hence improve battery life, so maybe that is the reason (assuming the article is correct).

[metafor]

Voice recognition in the cloud has a lot more advantages than just processing power. it also has access to a much larger data set to bade its decicions on.

[Lazy8s]

The other important advantage to it is Apple's ability to update that database on their end whenever they want, not once every few months when they make an iOS update. Keeping Siri's vocabulary and range of responses as current as possible helps maintain the perception of an intelligent assistant.

If Siri's voice recognition were processed locally, GPGPU would certainly be the way to go; I'm just doubting that they're actually doing that and believe the article was inaccurate/misleading. I'd have a hard time imagining Apple taking good advantage of GPGPU for Siri yet not for iPhoto.

[rpg.314]

Originally Posted by tangey

"For example, Apple's popular voice command system, Siri, is driven by the GPU."

GPU cloud perhaps?

[wco81]

Looks like the bigger screen iPhone is finally coming.

Not sure what the next big feature would be. If it's a bigger screen/new form factor, that might mean a modest change in the SOC and of course LTE (supposedly the US carriers are going to ditch the grandfathered unlimited data plans in anticipation of LTE support in iPhone).

[metafor]

Based on the recent articles about Siri's answer to "What is the best smartphone in the world" (for some, it reported Nokia Lumia 900), I'd say it's definitely a cloud-based search. It pretty much crawls through the web based on the Wolfram Alpha engine and collects keywords/category and phrases. That's not something you can do on a smartphone.

[tangey]

Originally Posted by metafor

Based on the recent articles about Siri's answer to "What is the best smartphone in the world" (for some, it reported Nokia Lumia 900), I'd say it's definitely a cloud-based search. It pretty much crawls through the web based on the Wolfram Alpha engine and collects keywords/category and phrases. That's not something you can do on a smartphone.

I think the question is whether any part of the voice recognition is done using GPU, as opposed to the actual search that results from it.