Implications of SGX543 in iPhone/Pod/Pad?

[Mike11]

Apple did warn developers that future resolution changes may not be an easy 2x increase so in between resolutions are possible. 1600x1200 seems like a reasonable choice.

More signs that point to a 2048x1536 display in the iPad 2:

"iPad 2 Likely to Have 2048x1536 Screen Resolution"
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/15/ipad-2-screen-likely-to-have-2048x1536-resolution/

[...] Version 1.1 of Apple's iBooks application seems to have accidentally included some artwork for this hypothetical pixel-doubled iPad. As shown above, the App's bookmark icon included versions for the iPad, the iPhone and the iPhone Retina Display (iPhonex2). It, however, also included one additional version labeled "iPadx2". Sure enough, this is exactly double the resolution version of the iPad icon and is distinct from the other versions. The most likely explanation for this added graphic is plans for a double-resolution iPad. Apple has since removed this extra artwork in subsequent versions of iBooks.

Based on this information, and persistent rumors of a higher resolution iPad 2, we believe the next iPad will have a 2048x1536 screen resolution. It would also explain why Apple would have to upgrade the GPU on the new devices to drive this higher resolution.

Updarte: Rafeed.me points out another "x2" iPad graphic found in iBooks 1.2.
See the Wood [B]Tile@2x.png[/B] below. It’s current dimensions are 1536x800 pixels. For comparison, the previous Wood Tile.png in iBooks 1.1 was a mere 768x400 pixels.

Supply constraints were supposed to be the reason why Apple went increased the memory bus to 64-bit in the A4 and stuck with LPDDR rather than LPDDR2. Has that cleared up significantly? Otherwise, Apple will probably stay conservative and go 512MB of LPDDR2 on a 64-bit bus across all devices this generation. Going directly from 256MB to 1GB would seem like a huge jump for one generation.

From 256MB to 1GB would be a huge jump, BUT since the iPad came out Multitasking was introduced, the iPhone 4 was released with 512MB RAM and the hypothetical iPad 2 would add a dual-core CPU and a display with four times the amount of pixels. So IMHO 1GB RAM would make total sense, but Apple is known to be pretty (too) conservative with the amount of RAM they put into their machines, so who knows. I guess in the end I would be disappointed but not very surprised to see just 512MB RAM in the iPad 2.

Speaking of too conservative: What do you guys think are the chances that Apple will just use a singe core SGX543 in the Apple A5?

 

[wco81]

I don't think it's conservatism. Apple is shipping maybe an order of magnitude greater in volume than any other manufacturer in the mobile space.

So higher-cost components scales up cost much faster. Then they also have to deal with supply constraints even if they're willing to increase certain costs. So that is probably why they're not jumping on AMOLED until the industry capacity is greater than it is now.

 

[Ailuros]

I didn't think there was such a large die area difference between the SGX543 and SGX545, in which case I can understand why that makes the SGX545 unattractive.

DX10.1 obviously doesn't come for free. If things would be otherwise IMG would have a huge advantage in terms of die area compared to desktop 10.1 GPUs.

I thought the speculation was that the SGX554 would be a 8 ALU, 4 TMU chip, but I guess it's a bit new for to already be implemented.

We know for sure from IMG's announcement that 554 contains 8 ALUs. The TMU amount is unknown as well as the die area for both 544 and 554.

 

[Ailuros]

Speaking of too conservative: What do you guys think are the chances that Apple will just use a singe core SGX543 in the Apple A5?

Weak to none IMHO.

 

[Ailuros]

It wouldn't matter even if they developed at the same time, taped out on the same day and even produced effectively identical chips. Samsung fabbing for Apple has nothing to do with anything else at Samsung in the Semiconductor or Mobile groups.

I could and can understand as much. But still if I look today at Apple A4 and Samsung's own SoC there are quite a few parallels in design decisions and Samsung even integrated a more potent GPU on top of that.

However Orion is slated for late 2011 and unless I'm missing something it'll be a tough comparison against a possible 543 2MP; heck I'd even call Orion vs. OMAP 4440 a (less) tough comparison.

Since I have severe doubts that Samsung as a manufacturer doesn't have any insight on what they're manufacturing for 3rd parties, I can't help but think that whoever is responsible for the roadmap has tomatoes on his eyes.

 

[Lazy8s]

I really, really wish I had been at CES.

Marvell had some nice Armada/Vivante tablet demos as well as some other platforms on show, Epic Citadel could've been compared on a Hummingbird and Tegra 2 tablet (and compared back to iOS devices, of course), IMG had a slew of intriguing demos as always (Natural Motion demo was there), Qualcomm showed some of Adreno220, and, while I haven't yet found out, Mali was probably on show in several places including Orion.

And, of course, hands-on PlayBook.

 

[Ailuros]

I really, really wish I had been at CES.

Marvell had some nice Armada/Vivante tablet demos as well as some other platforms on show, Epic Citadel could've been compared on a Hummingbird and Tegra 2 tablet (and compared back to iOS devices, of course), IMG had a slew of intriguing demos as always (Natural Motion demo was there), Qualcomm showed some of Adreno220, and, while I haven't yet found out, Mali was probably on show in several places including Orion.

Not directly related but nonetheless interesting: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...ncy_of_ARM_and_x86_Will_Be_Equal_Analyst.html

 

[wco81]

Thinking more about this, a 2048x1560 display would be higher resolution than resolution of their $2300 laptop.

Only the 27-inch iMac has a higher resolution but vertically is lower (2560x1440).

Remember, doubling the pixels in each dimension would be 4 times as many pixels. Now does that make for easier scaling of apps. developed for the iPad1? Or would an intermediate step, like 1920x1200 on their 17-inch MacBook Pro, make more sense cost-wise, but maybe scaling up from 1024x768 not work as well?

Is 1080p video playback a slam dunk with the SOC that we're speculating about? I tried running some 1080p Blu-Ray rips through Air Video and Zumocast apps. and iPad really couldn't play those back smoothly. And these were from rips about 10-20 GB in size. It did fine with 720p rips.

 

[rpg.314]

Remember, doubling the pixels in each dimension would be 4 times as many pixels. Now does that make for easier scaling of apps. developed for the iPad1?

iPhone 4 has some sort of mechanism to scale apps - developed on older phones - to 4x their original resolution.

 

[Lazy8s]

Intel and AMD certainly have the technologies to challenge ARM, yet Atom will still need to see a significant revamp and AMD still needs to move more mobile by a couple markets to get where they need to be.

Trying to break the momentum of the entire ARM ecosystem head on is a rather futile effort, but what success really requires is being released into one breakthrough product and having a platform and app market built around it. That would be enough to be disruptive to ARM's market.

That ARM/x86 article also led me to notice a link to another interesting news piece about Intel opening themselves up as a foundry to an outside FPGA designer. It's obviously a very limited scenario, but getting to use Intel's leading fabs would be amazing.

543MP2 was shown on the Taiji test from 3DMarkMobile ES 2.0 at CES. Rightware's benchmark, spun off from Futuremark, ran fairly smooth on the set-up, but someone needs to pass along an idea of what the test score really was.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Apple won't spend that much money on that many ppi in a 9.8" screen, that's pretty obvious.
The iPad 2 won't have a "retina display", that's for sure.

 

[Rob Evans]

Apple iBooks app indicates iPad 2 will quadruple pixels to 2048x1536 - http://www.appleinsider.com/article...2_will_quadruple_resolution_to_2048x1536.html

 

[wco81]

Apple iBooks app indicates iPad 2 will quadruple pixels to 2048x1536 - http://www.appleinsider.com/article...2_will_quadruple_resolution_to_2048x1536.html

Yeah we've been speculating about that.

If true, that means we wouldn't be able to read those iBooks on any Macs except the 27-inch iMac or without their 27-inch display.

ETA: In full resolution that is.

 

[Pressure]

Yeah we've been speculating about that.

If true, that means we wouldn't be able to read those iBooks on any Macs except the 27-inch iMac or without their 27-inch display.

ETA: In full resolution that is.

The text is dynamic and scale by resolution, much like a pdf.

 

[ltcommander.data]

Speaking of too conservative: What do you guys think are the chances that Apple will just use a singe core SGX543 in the Apple A5?

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ore_sgx543_graphics_into_ipad_2_iphone_5.html

AppleInsider is now reporting that they've heard from a "source" that's been accurate in the past that Apple is in fact using a SGX543MP2. I'm guessing this will be definitively faster than the Tegra 2. I wonder how it'll do against the Adreno 220?

 

[Ailuros]

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ore_sgx543_graphics_into_ipad_2_iphone_5.html

AppleInsider is now reporting that they've heard from a "source" that's been accurate in the past that Apple is in fact using a SGX543MP2. I'm guessing this will be definitively faster than the Tegra 2. I wonder how it'll do against the Adreno 220?

You can bet good money on the first one without losing it. As for the 220 I'm not completely sure but I'd level it with a high clocked SGX540 (something like OMAP4430) give or take and that might even be generous since the Adreno220 is listed with a 532MPixels/s fill-rate.

If you'd compare a single SGX543 against a SGX540 at the same frequency you'd get:

2x times floating point performance
same pixel/texel fill-rates
2x times HSR performance
2x times z/stencil fill-rates
1.5x times tri setup performance
etc.

...and then the whole enchilada times 2x for 2 cores. Of course it'll come down to the frequency of each individual core as well as any theoretical 2MP.

 

[Lazy8s]

These sudden rumors and revelations feel strange considering the hardware for a 2011 iPhone was pretty much pegged the day IMG revealed Series5XT and its timetable of development.

 

[Ailuros]

These sudden rumors and revelations feel strange considering the hardware for a 2011 iPhone was pretty much pegged the day IMG revealed Series5XT and its timetable of development.

Not that I know anything, but I can't get rid of the gut feeling that the rumors for a hypothetical 2048*1536 resolution for a "iPad2" are way too much.

 

[idsn6]

Not that I know anything, but I can't get rid of the gut feeling that the rumors for a hypothetical 2048*1536 resolution for a "iPad2" are way too much.

It's definitely in a totally different ballpark from anything else of that size. My first alternative thought for the @2x textures was for better magnification filtering during zoom or tilt animations.

 

[Mike11]

Not that I know anything, but I can't get rid of the gut feeling that the rumors for a hypothetical 2048*1536 resolution for a "iPad2" are way too much.

Well, that's the only higher resolution we have some sort of evidence for in form of higher resolution graphics that at least hint that Apple was experimenting with a 2048x1536 display. And now we also have some sort of evidence that Apple's future SoC could support such a high resolution. Combine that with what Apple's done with the iPhone 4, the emerging tablet market in 2011 etc. and a 2048x1536 resolution doesn't seem so far fetched any more. IMHO the only thing that speaks against such a high resolution display in the iPad 2 is the high cost for the panel. But if anyone can pull it of it's Apple with it's high volumes, connections, cash, long-term platform strategy/investments/contracts etc (and you could argue that they also introduced other expensive display hardware such as capacitive touchscreens, IPS and very high ("retina") resolution displays to the mobile mass market).