Apple going with IMG for years to come ?

I don't think MBX has acceleration for stencils
That is correct. It made OpenVG interesting. :)

[EDIT: I should just qualify the OVG comment - it meant I got to develop a triangulation algorithm for "arbitrary" polygons]
 
Thought I'd resurrect this thread, as its the most pertinent to the subject matter.

With the usual madness surrounding the impending announcement next week of the apple "ithingy" ( which I suppose will technically be a handheld), does anyone have any concrete thoughts as to the graphics.

We know that Apple is an IMG shareholder and using SGX535 in the 3GS and latest itouches, but what do we exepct for the ithingy ?

The options would appear to be

1) Clock the existing iphone Soc quicker, giving a boost to both the CPU and graphics. Mixed with a possible reduction to 45nM this could result in a performance increase and a power reduction.

2) A new Soc with SGX545....545 would give roughly a x2-x3 graphics improvement alone without any clock change.

3) A New Soc with 543MP. This seems very unlikely to me as IMG only started to talk about it for the first time a year ago, and formally announced the IP in March last year.
http://www.imgtec.com/corporate/newsdetail.asp?NewsID=449

And only started to ship finished IP to lead partners last month
http://www.imgtec.com/corporate/newsdetail.asp?NewsID=497

Surely that makes it too early for chips.. even if they don't need to be delivered until April for a June product launch.

4) A Tegra solution... Nvidia have been talking up itablet type devices lately.

Something else entirely ?
 
OT: I know I shouldn't ask you, but why isn't there a VGX factsheet yet available?
Since the thread's been resurrected, there is now a factsheet for VGX available to Insider members.
 
If the device is a new form factor of a Mac and/or needed the full profile of OpenCL, a 545 would make sense. Otherwise, a 540 should be the only other alternative to the current 535.
 
If the device is a new form factor of a Mac and/or needed the full profile of OpenCL, a 545 would make sense. Otherwise, a 540 should be the only other alternative to the current 535.

With Apple being one of the leading lights of OpenCL, it might be a matter of policy to incorporate compliant cores.
 
Since the thread's been resurrected, there is now a factsheet for VGX available to Insider members.

It's been officially on their homepage for quite some time now. But since I'm in a pestering mood today: the October Insider newsletter got me all riled up waiting for the next one (read through it if you haven't already...). Waiting for the next edition to continue where the October issue has left is worse than watching 500 episodes of a soap opera and at the last 501 episode to have a power cut :cry:. It's January already....$%#@@@&^ (<ancient greek curse).

Captain Chickenpants,

I guess being slow is contageous inside IMG *snicker* :LOL:

If the device is a new form factor of a Mac and/or needed the full profile of OpenCL, a 545 would make sense. Otherwise, a 540 should be the only other alternative to the current 535.

Why are you excluding the 2MP SGX543 option? Considering the increase in die area for the GPU between MBX Lite and SGX535 should be more than sizeable I don't see why. Depends really what Apple is targetting for and that's something unfortunately only Apple knows at the time.
 
Why are you excluding the 2MP SGX543 option? Considering the increase in die area for the GPU between MBX Lite and SGX535 should be more than sizeable I don't see why. Depends really what Apple is targetting for and that's something unfortunately only Apple knows at the time.

IMG stated in December past that they were only starting to ship production ready 543MP IP at the end of that month. Is it feasible to go from production ready IP to an Soc shipping in production quantities in 3 months (for March/April).

I see over on eetimes an analyst is quoted as saying:-

System processor: ''The key change in the component stack will be the application processor. Our checks indicate that Apple licensed the ARM Cortex core from Samsung but built out the rest of the silicon with the PA Semi design team. While Samsung will continue to supply the flash memory, it will be relegated to a foundry status for the application processor. We expect this silicon to populate future iterations of the iPhone.''


Nothing startling there regarding PA semi and Samsung but If the above is true (processor for itablet will be used in later iphones) then itablet is definitely IMG graphics. However surely whatever would be used in the itablet would be overkill in a phone ? (unless a slower clocked version was used in the phone).
 
I wouldn't say that the 3GS 535 is that much over 100MHz; if you'd compare that to (nearly) 4x times the frequency under 45nm for upcoming netbooks, there's quite a difference in raw fillrate between those too 535 variants.

Assuming Apple hasn't gone shopping elsewhere (which we'll find out only after products have been released as usual) and they're only using IMG graphics IP it comes down to what functionalities they want for each device (SGX545 obviously means the highest available featureset but at an obvious cost of perf/mm2 compared to other SGX variants), power consumption/die area for each device, if they want to have two different application processors for different markets or one and for the last only a frequency/fillrate difference (for higher resolutions-screen sizes) will come into play. But I'm just stating the obvious here.

545 by the way has additional GPGPU functionalities (due to it's full embedded GPGPU profile), but if those functionalities aren't needed, there's a lot more floating point power IMO you can squeeze out at the same frequency even from a single 543 than from a 545.
 
It's been officially on their homepage for quite some time now. But since I'm in a pestering mood today:
Freely available without an Insider login? I can't find it if so, although it wouldn't be outwith my abilities to not even find something on our own website :LOL:

Your Greek curses have no effect here, Kristof has cast many spells around the office using his ducks and general wizardry....
 
Freely available without an Insider login? I can't find it if so, although it wouldn't be outwith my abilities to not even find something on our own website :LOL:

Your Greek curses have no effect here, Kristof has cast many spells around the office using his ducks and general wizardry....

*ahem* http://www.imgtec.com/powervr/VGX150.asp

Send the bastige my greetings I haven't seen him in a long time. As for my feline username I swear to Bastet that there's no pun intended in that pic:

018.jpg
 
In a 45/40nm 2011 product, I fully expect Apple to employ the 543MP in a dual, tri, or quad configuration.

According to Beyond3D's own archie4oz, Apple went all out to clock the 535 at 150 MHz in the 3G S (with the original iPhone's MBX Lite at the 103 MHz speed of the system bus as first speculated).
 
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