Bitboys G12 Review (in french though ??)

[Nappe1]

I did my regular (not actually that regular nowadays) gooling around and came across this...
and because I failed my only french course in polytechnic, I am not going to even try to translate it.
http://www.presence-pc.com/actualite/Bitboys-G12-16000/

Babelfish might be a good help to us that don't speak french that much...

EDIT: hmmh... not that much new news though... I have seen that "press board" almost a year ago (late july 2005), when it was ran in different tech shows. So, I'll say some the reviewers predictions are a bit off. Still, this is a kind of new thing that reviewers actually have BB hardware to test.

 

[Lazy8s]

How does this dedicated OpenVG hardware compare to 3D-processor based OpenVG for power consumption, size, and performance?

 

[ddes]

How does this dedicated OpenVG hardware compare to 3D-processor based OpenVG for power consumption, size, and performance?

...and image quality.

 

[Nappe1]

How does this dedicated OpenVG hardware compare to 3D-processor based OpenVG for power consumption, size, and performance?

G10 was small enough to replace column / row latcher in LCD screen, so I'd say that we are talking quite minimalist power consumption. as a transistor budget wise, (afaik) G40 includes G12 as integrated part and leaving it out does not change remarkably core size nor power consumption.

as price, G12 is so cheap to make that I would not be suprised at all to see it in ALL Nokia cellphones. I believe it's the thing that made them to invest to Bitboys. (notice that when used as G10 was used by NEC, using it does not prevent you having SGX/GoForce/Imageon integrated in ARM core as 3D accelerator. As for plain vector graphics, I see it being quite bit more efficient than 3D GPU rendering OpenVG. Of course this depends all the stuff GPU support straight away without any need of conversions/emulations, but G12 supports SVG Tiny 1.2 in hardware completely, so trying to beat that needs... well, dedicated SVG core.)

...and image quality.

I did like what I saw. their vector AA is beautiful and works like a charm.

...but again, it's me. so not much more than just humble opinion.

 

[Sdw]

Anyone know if these OpenVG functions will be available through J2ME somehow (a new JSR, or maybe via JSR184 somehow). I think they would be great for game development, you could do flash-style graphics, and don't have to worry about redoing your game for different screensizes.

 

[Geo]

Until the retina displays come out, allowing you to plug into your phone and play at 800x600 (say) on the train, handhelds just aren't ever going to cut it for me, sadly.

 

[Simon F]

Anyone know if these OpenVG functions will be available through J2ME somehow (a new JSR, or maybe via JSR184 somehow). I think they would be great for game development, you could do flash-style graphics, and don't have to worry about redoing your game for different screensizes.

OpenVG's a C-library. I don't know Java at all - can you link to C?

 

[Nappe1]

Until the retina displays come out, allowing you to plug into your phone and play at 800x600 (say) on the train, handhelds just aren't ever going to cut it for me, sadly.

lol
sorry to laugh against your face, but IF you would have been interested, you have been noticed that G12 does not have anything to do with gaming really. It's primary purpose is to be used for GUI acceleration by using SVG to make menus and stuff. With AA, this can make small screens more readable without sacrifying batterylife for it. It certainly can do some 2D game graphics as well, but I don't see that as a most important thing.

So, this chip is for making life easier with small screens. Not to be No. 1 entertainment platform in world.

OpenVG's a C-library. I don't know Java at all - can you link to C?

I am just gasping a straws here, but I recal something that there would be bridge APIs between OpenVG and JSR-184 (M3G). Again, if I recal right, Hybrid Graphics has upper level API (and/or development platform), that was build on top of OpenGL ES, OpenVG and JSR-184.

 

[Geo]

lol
sorry to laugh against your face, but IF you would have been interested, you have been noticed that G12 does not have anything to do with gaming really. It's primary purpose is to be used for GUI acceleration by using SVG to make menus and stuff. With AA, this can make small screens more readable without sacrifying batterylife for it. It certainly can do some 2D game graphics as well, but I don't see that as a most important thing.

So, this chip is for making life easier with small screens. Not to be No. 1 entertainment platform in world.

I hear you, and I wish them well with it, and the whole market niche.

But we are where we are, chatting it up in B3D. . .so I keep hoping in vain that these things will develop into something that does interest me more. So I check in once in awhile.

 

[Nappe1]

I hear you, and I wish them well with it, and the whole market niche.

But we are where we are, chatting it up in B3D. . .so I keep hoping in vain that these things will develop into something that does interest me more. So I check in once in awhile.

I certainly understand your point.
Getting a foothold with this, may provide more opportunities with higher end chips like G40, which is stuff more interested here.

 

[Sdw]

G12 does not have anything to do with gaming really. It's primary purpose is to be used for GUI acceleration by using SVG to make menus and stuff.

While it may not be the primary purpose, I think that a vector accelerator with decent performance would be a huge benefit for games aswell. As I mentioned earlier, doing 2D games with scalable graphics similar to Flash web-games would probably be very interesting, you could get very smooth animations compared to doing bitmapped stuff.
Actually reading the specification for the G12 it actually supports texturemapping aswell, so you could probably do 3D games aswell that run much faster than 3D games we've seen on phones so far which are running in non-HW-accelerated JSR184.

I am just gasping a straws here, but I recal something that there would be bridge APIs between OpenVG and JSR-184 (M3G). Again, if I recal right, Hybrid Graphics has upper level API (and/or development platform), that was build on top of OpenGL ES, OpenVG and JSR-184.

A JSR184 -> OpenVG bridge should be doable, provided that OpenVG implements the necessary functionality (well, you can ofcourse emulate the missing stuff in software in the bridge driver anyway, but performance would suffer)

Where can I find specification on the OpenVG API?

 

[Nappe1]

While it may not be the primary purpose, I think that a vector accelerator with decent performance would be a huge benefit for games aswell. As I mentioned earlier, doing 2D games with scalable graphics similar to Flash web-games would probably be very interesting, you could get very smooth animations compared to doing bitmapped stuff.
Actually reading the specification for the G12 it actually supports texturemapping aswell, so you could probably do 3D games aswell that run much faster than 3D games we've seen on phones so far which are running in non-HW-accelerated JSR184.



A JSR184 -> OpenVG bridge should be doable, provided that OpenVG implements the necessary functionality (well, you can ofcourse emulate the missing stuff in software in the bridge driver anyway, but performance would suffer)

Where can I find specification on the OpenVG API?

It's on the OpenGL ES site: http://www.opengles.org/openvg/
Also, I did find out that there's JSR226 that implements at least some of OpenVG functionality for Java.

 

[Xmas]

as price, G12 is so cheap to make that I would not be suprised at all to see it in ALL Nokia cellphones. I believe it's the thing that made them to invest to Bitboys. (notice that when used as G10 was used by NEC, using it does not prevent you having SGX/GoForce/Imageon integrated in ARM core as 3D accelerator. As for plain vector graphics, I see it being quite bit more efficient than 3D GPU rendering OpenVG. Of course this depends all the stuff GPU support straight away without any need of conversions/emulations, but G12 supports SVG Tiny 1.2 in hardware completely, so trying to beat that needs... well, dedicated SVG core.)

Still it remains to be seen whether the increased efficiency a dedicated vector graphics core should bring is really that much higher that it justifies the cost. Or whether it has the performance required to drive higher resolutions.

And then there's stuff like using OpenVG and OpenGL ES to render to the same surface

 

[SiBoy]

(notice that when used as G10 was used by NEC, using it does not prevent you having SGX/GoForce/Imageon integrated in ARM core as 3D accelerator.

Are you saying that there are already phones with both the G10 and a separate 3D accelerator, or are you just giving your opinion?

 

[Nappe1]

Are you saying that there are already phones with both the G10 and a separate 3D accelerator,

I don't know how many G10's is out there. But I expect that number being quite big. (based on just the fact that Bitboys has been profittable since G10 release.) I doubt that there would be, but technically it's possible. (look below.)

or are you just giving your opinion?

It's not an opinion. It's a fact. Nec integrated the G10 in LCD display, not in CPU core. For more information, check out Mika Tuomi's (aka. Trug of Future Crew) post here: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=156982#post156982

Still it remains to be seen whether the increased efficiency a dedicated vector graphics core should bring is really that much higher that it justifies the cost. Or whether it has the performance required to drive higher resolutions.

And then there's stuff like using OpenVG and OpenGL ES to render to the same surface

Difference in power consumption is so remarkable compared to software implementation, that without chip like this I don't see SVG coming viable in entry level / mainstream cell phones during next two - three years. Again, I think the price is so low that Nokia will incorporate this chip in every single model. (if not in every single model, then at least all those minority phones that do not have OpenGL ES HW accelerator. )

Using OpenGL ES is option in phones that have 3D accelerator. In those cases I doubt including G12, but I don't see 3D accelerators becoming in mainstream forawhile. the extra cost on those is just way too much to keep the device in sub 300 Euros. Of course you can use OpenGL ES via software, but if you take a look of phones having SVG support right now, they are dead slow dealing with it. It's not really more than a gimmick on those.

OpenVG again... well, G12 is OpenVG compliant accelerator and supports beyond OpenVG 1.0 features.

 

[Nappe1]

by the way, has anyone wondered, what on earth Bitboys are doing at this year E3?