Handsets to go 3D - TI licenses MBX

[rake]

Here's the PR:

London, UK, 9th April 2003: Imagination Technologies [LSE:IMG], a leader in system-on-chip intellectual property (SoC IP), announced today that Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI), has licensed Imagination's PowerVR MBX graphics core for integration with TI's OMAPTM family of application processors for mobile devices. PowerVR MBX is a very compact and efficient 2D/3D graphics solution for future wireless multimedia devices, optimised for low power and high performance.

Imagination's PowerVR MBX graphics cores provide mobile communication devices with stunning embedded graphic capabilities, thereby opening up a new world of mobile phone content, including 3D gaming.

"The convergence of communication network technologies and phones with powerful multimedia capabilities, will enable content-rich applications that will drive the new wireless market," said Paul Werp, worldwide director of marketing for TI's OMAP platform. "The combination of TI's application processor expertise and Imagination's graphics technology will provide the basis for a mobile content revolution."

The PowerVR core will be coupled with applications processors to deliver best in class processing performance for advanced mobile applications like 3D gaming, videoconferencing, multimedia messaging services (MMS) and many other compelling services, while still delivering industry-leading power consumption. PowerVR's unique tile-based graphics cores offer scalability and performance with unparalleled memory efficiency and image quality.

"Texas Instruments is the world leader in wireless semiconductors, and Imagination is pleased to provide them with compelling embedded graphics features that will define content trends in wireless markets worldwide," said Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination Technologies.

With TI being the market leader in handset chipsets, and with OMAP already inside a few PDAs, it would appear the jump to hardware 3D in handsets is not far off. It would also seem that ImgTech have the market sown up. Are there really no other products to rival MBX for this market segment?

Rake

 

[arjan de lumens]

Hmmm. Khronos is an organization dedicated to standardising a version of OpenGL for handheld applications. Their member lists (especially the contributor member list) contain several potential competitors to ImgTech in this market segment, although the only competitor I could find publicly available data on is Sanshin's "GSHARK", which appears to be a fair bit smaller than any MBX version ....

 

[Arun]

There have been a lot of rumors about nVidia not forgetting that market segement either.
When they'll have something ready for it is another question, though...


Uttar

 

[Tagrineth]

There have been a lot of rumors about nVidia not forgetting that market segement either.
When they'll have something ready for it is another question, though...


Uttar

GeForce FX 5000 - with a 1x1 architecture. But hey, it has DX9!

 

[Mulciber]

There have been a lot of rumors about nVidia not forgetting that market segement either.
When they'll have something ready for it is another question, though...


Uttar

GeForce FX 5000 - with a 1x1 architecture. But hey, it has DX9!

would you rather them start back at dx6?

 

[Crusher]

Besides, do you really need more than one pixel pipeline when you're only drawing a couple of hundred pixels every frame?

 

[JohnH]

Well, I'd think FSAA/MSAA was rather important given the number of pixles, so fillrate can't be too low.

By the way, there's a lot more involved in producing something that is small enough and low power enough for these types of mobile devices than just going to a 1x1 architecture.

 

[KimB]

Well, FSAA performance today is dependent upon memory bandwidth, not pixel fillrate.

Anyway, a 1x1 FX architecture wouldn't be bad for this market. If they could get it up to around 150MHz-200MHz, it could do quite well for many applications at around 640x480, which is certainly enough resolution for a hand-held display.

But I will have to state that nVidia isn't exactly known for its great power-savings techniques, so I'm not sure that if nVidia does enter this market that they can do very well (at least, the chances are slim to none that their first product will be a good one for the market...later products may fare better...).

 

[Tokelil]

A chip designed for the handheld marked wouldn’t have die space for advanced functions to reduce overdraw, so tile based chips has a big advantage here… An even bigger advantage than in desktop VPUs. So I guess Nvidia/Ati would have a hard time in the handheld marked with no experience with tile based rendering. (No public chips at least)

 

[Arun]

Well, frankly, the following would be a quite terrific mobile device chip:

200Mhz, 0.13u w/ copper, 20M transistors
1x1 ( 200MP/s )
10M Triangles/s, 20M Vertices/s
*Early Z* to have good performance with front-to-back ( but no Z/Color compression, probably no Fast Clears either )
Partial CineFX support ( 128 instructions max for both PS & VS )
At least 1.5GB/s memory bandwidth ( 133Mhz DDR on a 64-bit memory bus would do the job fine - not sure if that wouldn't take too much space )
Gamma Correction, same AA/AF support as on other GFFX ( 2x AA / 2x Balanced AF would be the standard, though )

That would own! I wouldn't be surprised if such a beast could run UT2003 with low detail levels @ 640x480 2x AA.


Uttar

 

[Mariner]

Mobile use (i.e. laptop) maybe, but we are talking about handheld devices here, aren't we?

20 million transistors could be a leetle-bit too many for the graphics in your Palm Pilot replacement!

 

[arjan de lumens]

20M transistors, 200MHz, 64-bit DDR? That's gonne draw at least 3-5 Watts if designed remotely like a desktop part. That is like, nearly a hundred times the power draw of MBX or GSHARK, and at 1x1 it wouldn't really outperform the MBX that much either.

 

[Arun]

Okay, okay, maybe those specs are a little too high

I don't quite see how you get to the 3-5 Watts figure.
The GeForce 2 GTS took about 10 Watts. It was 30M transistors on 0.18u Aluminium.
Considering 20M transistors on 0.13u Copper, it would thus be more like 2.5 Watts. But oh wait, are you counting the memory there too?

Okay, okay, I'm wrong, such a thing is impossible...
What are the specs of the MBX exactly, BTW?


Uttar

 

[Grall]

Uttar:

RAM chips draws power too you know. Figure you quoted was just for the GPU. 1.5GB/s just for the GPU in a handheld sounds like awful overkill.

PowerVR MBX needs far less than this to give great performance, and since it is made to be integrated with the CPU, uses the same memory interface as the CPU itself, saving both money and power.

*G*

 

[arjan de lumens]

I did count the memory - such a memory subsystem is about an order of magnitude over what most handheld systems have.

For basic MBX specs, you may look here. A "gate" is normally roughly 4-5 transistors.

 

[Rob Evans]

The MBX is quoted as using "<0.7mW/MHz in 0.13µm process" for the MBX R-S, and "<1mW/MHz in 0.13µm process" for the MBX HR-S (http://www.arm.com/armtech.nsf/html/MBX3D?OpenDocument)

For the target market of mobile phones and PDAs, any competition will have to approach that level of power consumption IMO.

 

[elroy]

Why couldn't nVidia use some of the GP tech they have? I know from GP white papers that they had some very high performing chips with low transistor counts and power usage.

 

[Ailuros]

The MBX is quoted as using "<0.7mW/MHz in 0.13µm process" for the MBX R-S, and "<1mW/MHz in 0.13µm process" for the MBX HR-S (http://www.arm.com/armtech.nsf/html/MBX3D?OpenDocument)

For the target market of mobile phones and PDAs, any competition will have to approach that level of power consumption IMO.

If you read the pdf on the buttom of the page it looks like that:

HR-S
0.18um TSMC 1.5V = <2.6mW/MHz
0.13um TSMC 1.0V = <1.3mW/MHz

R-S
0.18um TSMC 1.5V = <1.0mW/MHz
0.13um TSMC 1.0V = <0.5mW/MHz

From the removed pdf (1MB size)

MBX HR-S (no VGP) @.13um 1.0V

660k gates
15.5k edram
1.1mW/MHz power
120Mhz clock
3.75M tris/sec
375M pixels/sec

MBX HR-S + VGP @.13um 1.0V

880k gates
22k edram
1.5mW/MHz power

MBX R-S @.13um 1.0V

365k gates
7.5k edram
0.7mW/MHz power
120MHz
1.5M tris/sec
240M pixels/sec

 

[Blitzkrieg]

I wish I had saved the link. But Im sure I remembering seeing a news link about ATI already planning or having made a 3d chip for PDA's.

 

[Ichneumon]

I wish I had saved the link. But Im sure I remembering seeing a news link about ATI already planning or having made a 3d chip for PDA's.

ATI has 2 handheld chips... but they are 2D and video acceleration, no 3D. They have some other interesting bits to them though.

http://mirror.ati.com/products/builtwireless.html