iPhone/Zune/iPod & More Prediction Thread

"The PowerVR SGX is the graphics processor in Apple’s newest iPhones and is designed for OpenGL ES 2.0. The graphics driver for the PowerVR SGX also"

SGX in the new iPhone, cool!

I'm going to also toss in a wild guess that if Apple doesn't fully support the unified shaders of the SGX (what if vertex texture fetch is missing) via GLES2, that they might be planning on moving on to Tegra in a future product line...
 
Definitely going to hold out for the new model - I noticed that the old one has some among other speed related issues that even if I may be able to get used to them, my wife definitely isn't (and I'm expecting her to use it more)
 
TimothyFarrar said:
SGX in the new iPhone, cool!

I'm going to also toss in a wild guess that if Apple doesn't fully support the unified shaders of the SGX (what if vertex texture fetch is missing) via GLES2, that they might be planning on moving on to Tegra in a future product line...
Click to expand...

Than isn't going to happen. Apple took a multi-year, mult-product, multi-use license from IMG, and have also become a shareholder. Apple have also bought their own Soc design house (PA semi). I'd say there is zero chance of Apple turning to an off the shelf App Pro like Tegra.
 
How long do you think it will take until we find out what CPU/GPU/RAM Apple used in the iPhone 3G S?

I HOPE they used ARMv7@600MHz/SGX530/256MB but I guess something like ARM11/SGX520/128MB could be possible too.
I also hope they tweaked the display a little bit like last time (e.g. brightness, viewing angle etc.) and made the loudspeaker louder.
 
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Mike11 said:
How long do you think it will take until we find out what CPU/GPU/RAM Apple used in the iPhone 3G S?
Click to expand...
Friday next week, you'll see thousands of developers writing running their own benchmarks. It won't take more than a few hours before you'll find tons of blog posts about it.
 
Mike11 said:
How long do you think it will take until we find out what CPU/GPU/RAM Apple used in the iPhone 3G S?

I HOPE they used ARMv7@600MHz/SGX530/256MB but I guess something like ARM11/SGX520/128MB could be possible too.
I also hope they tweaked the display a little bit like last time (e.g. brightness, viewing angle etc.) and made the loudspeaker louder.
Click to expand...


Anandtech have put up an article today that agrees with my view from April that its a customised samsung S5PC100 (they suggest running at 600Mhz) + SGX (they suggest SGX520),

http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579
 
Sorry for not having commented much on this yet, but I'm willing to bet it's at least a SGX530 given PowerVR's claimed tape-out timeframes for various SGX family members. And of course, I'm very impressed by Apple managing to bring this product to market in this timeframe - I guess I got a tad too pessimistic because of constantly being proven wrong when too optimistic... :) I'm a bit surprised my info was wrong, but heh. BTW, I don't think it's fair to call it a custom S5PC100, since so much of the front-end design work should already have happened inside Apple.

Regarding the missing texture fetch, I'm sure they had to do plenty of custom work to port SGX to MacOS X so I wouldn't be surprised if this was just a development focus issue. There is zero (read that again: zero) chance Apple goes for Tegra anytime soon, but it's true that they like keeping long-term flexibility when it comes to suppliers (witness the SGX license agreement mentioning other semi partners/foundries), presumably including IP, even if they often stick for a long time to the same one. But in that timeframe I can't imagine competitors not supporting vertex fetch anyway.
 
silent_guy said:
Friday next week, you'll see thousands of developers writing running their own benchmarks. It won't take more than a few hours before you'll find tons of blog posts about it.
Click to expand...
Hm, I think we're gonna have to wait a bit longer for all details like if the chip really is a derivative of Samsung’s S5PC100, what's the CPU cache size, or even the GPU clock speed etc.
 
Arun said:
Sorry for not having commented much on this yet, but I'm willing to bet it's at least a SGX530 given PowerVR's claimed tape-out timeframes for various SGX family members. And of course, I'm very impressed by Apple managing to bring this product to market in this timeframe - I guess I got a tad too pessimistic because of constantly being proven wrong when too optimistic... :) I'm a bit surprised my info was wrong, but heh. BTW, I don't think it's fair to call it a custom S5PC100, since so much of the front-end design work should already have happened inside Apple.
Click to expand...

The article contains a few tidbits about SGX I'm not so sure he could figure out from public documents (like Vec2 for USSE and Vec4 for USSE2). I don't know what the 3GS actually contains but it's likely that he has contacted IMG for some details on their articles to write his article.

One minor hair splitting would be that MBX's VGP isn't a fixed function unit. It's a VS1.1 geometry processor afaik.
 
Mike11 said:
Hm, I think we're gonna have to wait a bit longer for all details like if the chip really is a derivative of Samsung’s S5PC100, what's the CPU cache size, or even the GPU clock speed etc.
Click to expand...
Ok, but whether or not it's a derivative of something else is more of an academic question, right?
But things like L1 and L2 cache are trivial to determine. CPU clock speed likewise if you don't mind writing a couple of lines of ARM asm code. Absolute GPU speed is difficult, but what matters is the relative clock speed. Those numbers are going to be posted very quickly.
 
Arun said:
Regarding the missing texture fetch, I'm sure they had to do plenty of custom work to port SGX to MacOS X so I wouldn't be surprised if this was just a development focus issue. There is zero (read that again: zero) chance Apple goes for Tegra anytime soon, but it's true that they like keeping long-term flexibility when it comes to suppliers (witness the SGX license agreement mentioning other semi partners/foundries), presumably including IP, even if they often stick for a long time to the same one. But in that timeframe I can't imagine competitors not supporting vertex fetch anyway.
Click to expand...

My guess that Apple might not have full SGX hardware supported features stems from Apple's past history (IMO) of only supporting the lowest common denominator of GPU hardware via API support. Likely so they could swap in/out hardware and have differences between low and hi-end machines without ever thinking about compatibility. Since I don't know about the licensing end, I just have to take your word that this would NOT be a case of Apple planning ahead to optionally replace SGX with something else in later iPhone models.

It would be hard for me to believe that if Apple decided not to include API support for various unique SGX hardware features, that they would do so out of a time issue. For example, with unified shaders, something like VTF would have to be intentionally disabled because you'd be using the same JIT/compile system for both VS and PS. Also Apple would be getting reference driver source from the IHVs, if so wouldn't they have to remove SGX feature support from the reference drivers when porting them over?

Besides if Apple was tied down with a long term license, wouldn't it make more sense to make it a priority to fully support the unique advantages of the licensed hardware to both enable developers to better take advantage of the hardware (better iPhone apps compared to competition), and to possible make it harder to port the applications off the iPhone to competitive Windows/Linux devices and dilute the market.
 
Arun said:
Sorry for not having commented much on this yet, but I'm willing to bet it's at least a SGX530 given PowerVR's claimed tape-out timeframes for various SGX family members. And of course, I'm very impressed by Apple managing to bring this product to market in this timeframe - I guess I got a tad too pessimistic because of constantly being proven wrong when too optimistic... :) I'm a bit surprised my info was wrong, but heh. BTW, I don't think it's fair to call it a custom S5PC100, since so much of the front-end design work should already have happened inside Apple.
Click to expand...

Do you have any evidence that Apple would have done much of the work on this AP ?, could it not have been similar to the previous processor where it was basically an existing samsung Soc with MBX-lite included ?
 
Beyond3D Exclusive!


The Samsung Louvre (B7610)

- 3.5 AMOLED 16Mcolors resistive screen WVGA (800X480)
- 800Mhz CPU (The samsung reps didn't even know wich one lol and the samsung UI skinning is so deep I couldn't even find the properties page in WM to see the CPU reported. But I'm guessing S3C6410 + MSM6250 baseband)
- 5.1Mpx AutoFocus Cam with LED flash
- Slide Out Qwerty
- 2 UIs (Pro & Media, there's a dedicated button to switch between them)
- TV-OUT
- 3.5" Headphone jack
- MicroUSB connetor (no more samsung connector to charge and headphone)
- Divx/WMV/H.264 accellerations
- GPS/WIFI/HSDPA/HSUPA/BT
- FM Radio
- DNLA support
- 1GB internal memory + SDHC up to 32Gb
- 1500mAh

Release date August 2009 (maybe later cause the current rom is slow as hell. The Omnia 2 (GT-i8000) has been delayed t'il novembre for the same reasons IIRC) and free upgrade to WM6.5 in Sep/Oct.

Sorry for the lame watermark on the pic ;)

Mak
 
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