PowerVR® Shows Off its Curves at GDC 2004

[Kristof]

London, UK: Imagination Technologies – a leader in system-on-chip intellectual property - is demonstrating advanced hardware curved surface support on its PowerVR MBX embedded graphics core at GDC Expo 2004 (March 24-26, 2004, San Jose, CA).

Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR MBX family features the PowerVR VGP with CuSP™ (Curved Surface Processing), a fully programmable vertex shader with geometry amplification, which allows for the first time hardware-accelerated direct rendering of curved surfaces in mobile devices, and enables desktop-class continuous Level-of-Detail in handheld games with extremely low CPU overhead.

A key advantage of this technology is that it allows complex graphical models to be compactly represented with curved surfaces for transmission across mobile networks. Such compression could be 10:1 or even higher. This, combined with texture compression technology in PowerVR MBX, enables advanced game content to be delivered over mobile phone networks using a minimal amount of bandwidth.

http://www.powervr.com/News/Release/index.asp?ID=65

 

[London Geezer]

Curves are good and all, but for me, the next big thing is gonna be Displacement Mapping. Until I see that technique being used extensively in a game, i won't go OOOOHHH... Promise

 

[jvd]

Curves are good and all, but for me, the next big thing is gonna be Displacement Mapping. Until I see that technique being used extensively in a game, i won't go OOOOHHH... Promise

You realise this is mbx we are talking about which is embeded into the cpu.

This is not a seperate 3d core like an r300 or nv30 .

This is very impressive when you look at this and then you look at ngage .


This shows you what might be possible on the psp .

 

[Guden Oden]

I bet this technology will be really effective in teaparty-simulation games.

 

[Ty]

I bet this technology will be really effective in teaparty-simulation games.

Lol.

 

[cthellis42]

Looks good. ^_^ Hopefully soon we'll see what can be done with it. People are damn near to weeping in desire to see even just demos at this point, as we're constantly getting blue-balled from every angle.

 

[JesusClownFox]

How long has PowerVR had a T&L solution around? I thought one of the major complaints of the Kyro line was the fact that it still doesn't have any T&L...

 

[Lazy8s]

Great idea to use with the constraints of the mobile space. Like jvd said, considering the flexibility for integration that the MBX gives licensees, it's impressive that they've made it so robust.

Heads up, Nintendo...

JesusClownFox:

How long has PowerVR had a T&L solution around?

They had ELAN, a separate T&L chip, since at least 2000.

 

[jvd]

Great idea to use with the constraints of the mobile space. Like jvd said, considering the flexibility for integration that the MBX gives licensees, it's impressive that they've made it so robust.

Heads up, Nintendo...

JesusClownFox:

How long has PowerVR had a T&L solution around?

They had ELAN, a separate T&L chip, since at least 2000.

yup and correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't this also have insanly low power consumption and is only about 15 million transistors .

 

[JesusClownFox]

Isn't ELAN just a vector coprocessor to aid PVR in T&L calculations, and not a dedicated T&L unit?

 

[jvd]

Isn't ELAN just a vector coprocessor to aid PVR in T&L calculations, and not a dedicated T&L unit?

I believe it was a t@l chip and did 10 million polygons with 8 lights if i am correct in my memory and that was back in 2000

 

[PC-Engine]

I hope Nintendo is watching and listening...

 

[Ty]

Isn't ELAN just a vector coprocessor to aid PVR in T&L calculations, and not a dedicated T&L unit?

I believe it was a t@l chip and did 10 million polygons with 8 lights if i am correct in my memory and that was back in 2000

8 lights? I think it was 6. Well it could do more but with a poly count reduction.

 

[PC-Engine]

6 complex lights

 

[London Geezer]

OH... Sorry Jvd, should have known better...

 

[jvd]

OH... Sorry Jvd, should have known better...

No problem everyone makes mistakes. I made on in this thread. I said 8 lights when it was only 6 lights


Still impressive considering the year .

 

[akira888]

VGP is what your thinking of JVD, and yes unlike ELAN it is fully programmable - it qualifies for the vs1.1 spec.

 

[Lazy8s]

What kind of performance does the VGP get, and what type of products are licensees picking up the extra T&L for?

From PowerVR's materials, I've only gotten a rough picture:

PowerVR Vertex Geometry Processor (VGP) is a high-performance, fully programmable floating-point SIMD coprocessor carefully matched to the requirements of MBX. Designed for optimal 3D Transformation and Lighting (T&L), the VGP offloads these highly computer intensive tasks from the host CPU. With an instruction set carefully designed to allow common T&L operations to be performed in a minimal number of instructions, the VGP is capable of four floating-point operations per clock.

 

[CIN]

Elan IIRC can do 10mpps with 6 fully featured lights. I had also read that it was actually about 12million in reality but the N@omi 2 could only actally render 10mpps before slowing down.

This is even better than XBOX BTW

I also remember that with every light source added after the 6 it would take a hit but it was not very big compared to the other consoles.

If you used less than 6 there was no gain IIRC.

Maybe someone from Img tech can correct me

 

[Fox5]

Better than xbox? I thought xbox could do like 60mpps with its t and l unit......though that's probably with no lights, but would it be at 10mpps with 6 lights?