AMD Quits Handheld Market?

[tangey]

Ok, I think I see what you mean....



Unfortunately I can't discuss details of our customer platforms.

Cheers,
John.

My information tells me that Tungstengraphics, with assistance of IMG have written the 3D drivers for the GMA500 (intel name for the SGX implementation inside poublso/SCH)

Tungsten have written graphics drivers for many of Intel recent chipsets, and acknowledge SGX expertise on their website.

http://www.tungstengraphics.com/technologies/hardware-capabilities.html

Intel are cited to having funded Tungsten to write the graphics in this poulsbo driver file here:-
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubun...0;hb=da5cb720b48e377ee25e1cf782139d3fa66361f0


Tungsten "fessed-up" to being the driver writers for GMA500 in their press release of April this year:-

http://www.tungstengraphics.com/pdf/news/TG2Apr2008PR.pdf

 

[JohnH]

IMG do supply reference drivers, beyond that I can't comment of the origins of the drivers mentioned above.

John.

 

[roninja]

Okay JohnH etc, so SGX 535 we know is in product, and SGX 555 is our wish list for integreted chipsets, but what about SGX 545 anything you can say about this SoC?

 

[JohnH]

Okay JohnH etc, so SGX 535 we know is in product, and SGX 555 is our wish list for integreted chipsets, but what about SGX 545 anything you can say about this SoC?

Can't say anything about the 545 core other than it being full Dx10.1 and available to license

John.

 

[Geo]

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/2...chip-unit-to-broadcom-for-a-cool-192-8-milli/

That would suggest they've split the "consumer division" up into two for sales purposes, which isn't all that surprising. 530 employees going with the DTV part, which seems too many for just the sales team when you're selling to OEMs rather that retail.

 

[Arun]

It doesn't seem like too bad a price to me, although I could be wrong. I wonder how much they'll be able to ask for the handheld business - it used to be much bigger than DTV, but it has had much more trouble in the last year or two. STMicroelectronics has certainly been in a merger frenzy lately for wireless, so if they truly want to become a giant overnight acquiring yet some more multimedia IP couldn't hurt; at the same time, Qualcomm seems like a more likely buyer here.

 

[tangey]

Did anyone end up buying the AMD handheld graphics division. I see that freescale will be launching the i.mx51 series of prcessors at CES (alledgedly for some real cheap "netbooks"). The roadmap shows app processors with OpenGLes2.0 and OpenGLes2.1 compliant cores in them. Wonder where they got'em from. They did licence IP from AMD, but then of course AMD quit handheld, so does this mean that freescale are using orphaned technology, or someone elses stuff.

http://2008ftf.ccidnet.com/pdf/PC107.pdf

Look at page 6, i.MX51 is OpenGL ES2.0, i.MX53 is OpenGL ES 2.1


Freescale bought Sigmatel, who had previously licenced "a number of PowerVR IP cores" in Nov '07, but timeframe would seem wrong to have anything from that going into production, and nothing specifically to state that any of those IP cores were SGX.

Or is it Mali, which again would seem to be the wrong timeframe, and I don't remember seeing Freescale announced as a Mali 200 / 400 licencee.

 

[Arun]

MX51 uses the same core as the Qualcomm Snapdragon and the STMicroelectronics STn8820, AFAIK, which is a one-pipeline AMD Z430. Given the timeframe you could assume that it might be a Z460 or something else than one pipeline, but I don't think that's very likely. However, it does seem very probable that MX53 uses Z460; alternatively, it could use SGX I guess, although that'd be more surprising.

I find it very, very noteworthy that the evolution of Freescale's video capabilities is identical to that of Qualcomm with Snapdragon1/2: 720p Decode->1080p Encode/Decode... This makes me think they are likely also using AMD's video cores in the MX51 rather than developing their own. Of course, this could just be a coincidence too... However given the total lack of public disclosure from either company on this front, I doubt we'll ever know anything for sure.

EDIT: Also, nobody has indicated public interest in the AMD handheld division yet, but I'm sure things are happening behind the scenes...

 

[Mike11]

Hm, so Freescale, Qualcomm and STMicroelectronics are using AMD as GPU. Is anyone else besides TI (independent, not like Apple) using SGX in their Mobile (phone) SoCs for 2009?

 

[Xmas]

OpenGL ES 2.1? Is that the successor to OpenGL ES 1.2?

 

[tangey]

OpenGL ES 2.1? Is that the successor to OpenGL ES 1.2?

Dunno, I assume its the same thing in a general sense that was talked about by JohnH and Ailuros further up this thread, JohnH refering to SGX being capable of well beyond the ES 2.0 spec, with Ailuros refering to that as ES 2.x.

I guess the point you are aiming at is that there is no such thing as a ES2.1 spec which of course is correct.

 

[Wishmaster]

So whats the difference between z430 and z460?
Freescale states that they support dd2 does that mean that they might be first to use LP-DDR2?
Do you have any informations about which version of NEON instructions they're using? 64bit or 128bit?

What about that z430? Earlier in topic about qualcomm you said that STn8820 used dual-pipeline design and now you're saying that both snapdragon and STn8820 use one-pipeline. So how is it? Wasn't they both supposed to be using z460?

 

[Grumpy]

So whats the difference between z430 and z460?

Singe pipeline vs quad pipeline

 

[Wishmaster]

Singe pipeline vs quad pipeline

Ok thanks for clearing that up. You know some more details about them that you could share ? Just kidding
I was wondering which one of those two is used in those chips? In news from 12th february 2008 Arun said that STn8820 uses z460 and yet now he says that is uses z430.
So which one is it

 

[Grumpy]

I was wondering which one of those two is used in those chips? In news from 12th february 2008 Arun said that STn8820 uses z460 and yet now he says that is uses z430.

From what I heard the original news about STn8820 containing a z460 was a misunderstanding (the AMD guy I spoke to blamed the reporter ) and it has been z430 all the time.

You know some more details about them that you could share ?

Not much info out there, but I'd suspect that the MSM7850 GPU mentioned here would be a z430 running at 133MHz.

 

[Wishmaster]

From what I heard the original news about STn8820 containing a z460 was a misunderstanding (the AMD guy I spoke to blamed the reporter ) and it has been z430 all the time.

Oh okay that explains a lot do you know when we might expect z460 devices?

Not much info out there, but I'd suspect that the MSM7850 GPU mentioned here would be a z430 running at 133MHz.

hmm so what will be the difference between msm7850 and snapdragon if both of them use scorpion cpu? Will it be lower clocked version of snapdragon and so intended for smartphones? Or is this pdf outdated and plans have changed and there will be no msm7850 after all...

 

[Arun]

I'm not sure it's necessarily always as simple as z430=1 pipeline, z460=4 pipelines (it might be, I'm just skeptical), but it's probably very safe to guess that Snapdragon/MSM7850/STn8820/i.MX51 all use a single-pipeline Z430... Sorry if I implied STn8820 might be dual-pipeline, that's probably not quite accurate to say the least! The triangle throughput seems to indicate it runs at 200MHz, though.

And while we're mentioning inaccurate things we might have said, errr, don't hold your breath on N97 using that 45nm ARM11 SoC...

WRT MS7850, it is a 45nm chip (sorry if I said earlier there might be a 65nm version; there isn't. This was Qualcomm's first chip on 45 in fact...) that introduces EV-DO Rev.B... The latter, however, is getting zero carrier traction and time has nearly run out. The chip is likely to still ship on its own merits, wouldn't expect it to be a top seller though - and it's definitely lower-end than Snapdragon (no 720p video, ARM11 CPU, etc.)