Apple dumps Intel from laptop lines

[swaaye]

GPU GUI acceleration is something that does matter. But we are already at the point where the GPUs are adequate for that.

But yes GPGPU is definitely very niche primarily because GPUs are not generally useful. The more they become so, the more transistors they need and the less GPU they become. The PowerVR SGX cores even cut back on GPU things (they do a blocky texture filtering for example).

 

[Simon F]

The PowerVR SGX cores even cut back on GPU things (they do a blocky texture filtering for example).

Ehh?

 

[Gubbi]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=59519

Cheers

 

[pjbliverpool]

Cool, that's exactly what I was looking for. Cheers!

 

[swaaye]

Ehh?

The blocking is subtle and seems somewhat angle dependent. It reminds me of some of the really old 3D chips that simplified bilinear filtering but it's more subtle than that. I'll have to look closer at it sometime. I've seen it in the Android Quake 2 port and a few of the Android games.

These are using the older SGX 535 (I think) so maybe that's it.

Also, maybe this texture filtering analysis done on GMA 500 shows it.

http://translate.google.com/transla...n&client=ubuntu&hs=HOu&channel=fs&prmd=ivnsfd

 

[swaaye]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=59519

Cheers

Excellent write up. It will be interesting to see if 32nm Atom can make that small window of opportunity work.

 

[Simon F]

The blocking is subtle and seems somewhat angle dependent. It reminds me of some of the really old 3D chips that simplified bilinear filtering but it's more subtle than that. I'll have to look closer at it sometime. I've seen it in the Android Quake 2 port and a few of the Android games.

AFAIK the blending in the filtering unit uses relatively (compared to some) high precision for the weights.

Also, maybe this texture filtering analysis done on GMA 500 shows it.

Wasn't the driver for the GMA500 done by a third party?

 

[argor]

Wasn't the driver for the GMA500 done by a third party?

jeb tungsten graphics

 

[Blazkowicz]

Tungsten graphics writing the drivers is much decried, but it has interesting implications on the linux side. (yes, good drivers would be as much or more interesting!)

Tungsten are the ones who made Gallium3D, a platform that any "state trackers" may use, i.e. OpenGL, Open GL ES, OpenVG etc. drivers, proprietary or open source.

Gallium3D has allowed great advances for 3D opensource drivers, such as much faster R300 and up drivers, or 3D support for the nouveau driver.

they made the 2D driver for the GMA 500 open source, and the 3D part using gallium is proprietary. "anyone" can write an opensource driver if they wish (yep, an impossibly hard task that may be done some day..)

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mg

 

[swaaye]

Well I tried capturing some Quake 2 shots off my Nook Color with Quake 2's screen capture function but they just come up as black images so it's not working right. I'm wondering if the filtering uglies are some sort of software issue though because it is not always apparent whereas sometimes a texture will be super blocky.

Most of the time the trilinear filtering is impeccably smooth and luxurious.