Is the MBX more powerfull than PSP?

[SegaR&D]

Does anybody know?

 

[London Geezer]

Didn't you get the memo at Sega?

 

[Megadrive1988]

No. I think not.

PowerVR MBX comes in several flavors. the most powerful of which is still less powerful than PSP, AFAIK.

I'd expect a nextgen MBX to rival and surpass PSP though.

 

[cthellis42]

Let us hope sarcasm can derail this before flames do.

 

[jvd]

In some ways it is , but very few . THe real advantage of the mbx is its power draw . The mbx though is meant to be added to the same core (irc) as an arm chip . Which means its much much smaller than the psp chips too and thus much cheaper.

 

[Lazy8s]

As a synthesizable IP scaled to PSP's class, MBX should compare favorably.

In image quality, its precision is more fully 32-bit for color and Z operations, and it provides the advantages of no penalty FSAA and also support for much higher resolutions.

The SH3707 SoC from Renesas implements MBX with the SuperH architecture and reportedly doubles the geometry rates of the Dreamcast, which could characteristically do about 2 million polygons per second, to beat out the PSP with around 4 million in-game. At around half the rating of the PS2, which has measured at about 7.5 million polygons per second, the PSP can probably sustain somewhat over 3 million, especially with its power restrictive environment. In fillrate, the SH3707's apparent use of something of an MBX Pro gives it near 750 MPixels a second to the PSP's 648.

MBX seems to be more functional with better flexibility for curved surface and skeletal animation acceleration. It's tiling architecture and low memory bandwidth requirements also make it an IP that's very adaptable to SoC integration and fabrication processes, affording it scenarios with more RAM abundancy.

The MBX's design wins out in delivering more performance and functionality for given size, power, and heat levels. Even burdened with a 624 MHz Intel XScale CPU and a 640x480 screen, it was implemented into the Intel2700G chip (an MBX-Lite variety, sold for a premium by Intel and still only $17) and provided over four hours of battery life at full stress in Dell Axim X50v PDAs in reviews.

 

[Farid]

MBX seems to be more functional with better flexibility for curved surface

How come? In what MBX CUSP seems better than PSP's own solution?
And, why Bézier Patches are so important? Since we all know nobody will use them in 99% of the cases, especially now that the PSP has 32MB of RAM.
And if they're used, the main problem would be the art creation, not the quality of its hardware implementation, anyway.

and provided over four hours of battery life at full stress in Dell Axim X50v PDAs in reviews.

The $500 Dell Axim X50v has no optical high density media storage that puts additional strain on the battery, plus its 3D performances are miles away from PSP's.

 

[Jov]

The SH3707 SoC from Renesas implements MBX with the SuperH architecture and reportedly doubles the geometry rates of the Dreamcast, which could characteristically do about 2 million polygons per second, to beat out the PSP with around 4 million in-game. At around half the rating of the PS2, which has measured at about 7.5 million polygons per second, the PSP can probably sustain somewhat over 3 million, especially with its power restrictive environment. In fillrate, the SH3707's apparent use of something of an MBX Pro gives it near 750 MPixels a second to the PSP's 648.

Didn't someone mentioned 30+ mill and about 7+ mill in-game for PSP poly-pushing power?

Extrmetech has th following:

The PSP's graphics engine will feature a 512-bit interface, Okabe said, pushing 664 million pixels or 35 million polygons per second. Freed from the need to conform to any other graphics API besides its own, Sony decided to support some basic graphics primitives as well as directional lighting, clipping, environment projection and texture mapping, fogging, alpha blending, depth and stencil tests, and dithering, all using either 16- or 32-bit color. The 166-MHz graphics core will include 2-Mbytes of embedded graphics memory.

 

[Vince]

Lazy, Sega's dead man.

In some ways it is , but very few . THe real advantage of the mbx is its power draw . The mbx though is meant to be added to the same core (irc) as an arm chip . Which means its much much smaller than the psp chips too and thus much cheaper.

So what you're really saying is that it's underpowered... or is that "power draw" effecient in PR spin? Ohh, and the PSP is a SoC last I checked, 3D core tacked on dual MIPS cores; well, close enough to an SoC for comparison.

 

[pahcman]

As lazy say, current MBX have achieved good efficiency and performance for its designed tasks.

Im sure PVR can designed a MBX as powerful and/or even more functional than PSP if one places an order for(same with Nvidia/Ati). But how many can support such order for a purposeful portable? Until we get to see an Xboy, or Nintendo decides to go for broke, or a handheld SammySega Naomi Arcadia, imho not quite fair to compare a gaming device PSP, to a general multipda accelerator. Apples and oranges, wants and demands.

 

[Megadrive1988]

let me back peddle a little bit. I am pretty certain that ImgTec could come up with a beefier varient of the current-gen MBX that would rival or beat PSP. but as it stands now, the top end MBX is not on par with PSP as far as raw performance, even if MBX has features not found in PSP, ala PowerVR2DC vs PS2's GS.

 

[PC-Engine]

The PSP can only do 2.6 GFLOPS and doesn't have the image quality features of an MBX Pro. The new SH-5 can do 3.2GFLOPS and paired with an MBX Pro or Bitboys G40 would rip PSP a new one!

Anyone who thinks SONY has the best mobile graphics technology isn't quite in touch with reality.

 

[one]

The PSP can only do 2.6 GFLOPS and doesn't have the image quality features of an MBX Pro. The new SH-5 can do 3.2GFLOPS and paired with an MBX Pro would rip PSP a new one!

Do you think the second CPU core in PSP, non-general-purpose-flops-crunching 'Media Engine' with the same spec as the 333MHz PSP CPU except for vector unit, sits there doing nothing?

 

[PC-Engine]

The PSP can only do 2.6 GFLOPS and doesn't have the image quality features of an MBX Pro. The new SH-5 can do 3.2GFLOPS and paired with an MBX Pro would rip PSP a new one!

Do you think the second CPU core in PSP, non-general-purpose-flops-crunching 'Media Engine' with the same spec as the 2.6GFlops PSP CPU except for vector unit, sits there doing nothing?

How many FLOPS can the VME do and what is it used for?

Oh btw a G40 chip has pixel and vertex shaders too.

 

[Jov]

Do you think the second CPU core in PSP, non-general-purpose-flops-crunching 'Media Engine' with the same spec as the 333MHz PSP CPU except for vector unit, sits there doing nothing?

Yep... just to make the 4-6 hours!!

 

[Panajev2001a]

The PSP can only do 2.6 GFLOPS and doesn't have the image quality features of an MBX Pro. The new SH-5 can do 3.2GFLOPS and paired with an MBX Pro would rip PSP a new one!

Fine, on December the 12th will this super 457 MHz SH-5 (124 MHz higher clock-speed, but of course SCE's crappy designers managed to bloat the CPU power consumption to make up for 124 MHz of clock-speed difference ) + 200 MHz MBX Pro (34 MHz faster clocked than the PSP GPU and paired with a more complex VGP [DX 8.1 capabilities verus a DX7+ Hardwired T&L unit]) be on a small cool device (with a similar high-quality screen) for about $199 at a retail store ?

Yeah, I did not think so either .

So "it" (as in the configuration you proposed) "would" rip PSP a new one if it were out and it was available for a similar price.

Do not worry, I am sure you will spin everything into a "Sony sucks at designing anything... hurrah for any of its competitors".

I am sure you will show that such a device with much higher clock-speed all-around (124 MHz of clock-speed advantage for the SH-5 you quoted) will also have a much longer battery life at doing any kind of workload.

I wonder if you ever stop to see how you are not helping their competitors' cause by doing all this hand-waving.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The PSP can only do 2.6 GFLOPS and doesn't have the image quality features of an MBX Pro. The new SH-5 can do 3.2GFLOPS and paired with an MBX Pro would rip PSP a new one!

Do you think the second CPU core in PSP, non-general-purpose-flops-crunching 'Media Engine' with the same spec as the 2.6GFlops PSP CPU except for vector unit, sits there doing nothing?

How many FLOPS can the VME do and what is it used for?

Oh btw a G40 chip has pixel and vertex shaders too.

The Media Engine(333 MHz R4000i + FPU woth 2 MB of e-DRAM dedicated to media processing) can do ~0.67 GFLOPS and the VME can do about 5 GOPS, but the VME is only used for audio-processing related with or not related with video-processing.

 

[PC-Engine]

The PSP can only do 2.6 GFLOPS and doesn't have the image quality features of an MBX Pro. The new SH-5 can do 3.2GFLOPS and paired with an MBX Pro would rip PSP a new one!

Fine, on December the 12th will this super 457 MHz SH-5 (124 MHz higher clock-speed, but of course SCE's crappy designers managed to bloat the CPU power consumption to make up for 124 MHz of clock-speed difference ) + 200 MHz MBX Pro (34 MHz faster clocked than the PSP GPU and paired with a more complex VGP [DX 8.1 capabilities verus a DX7+ Hardwired T&L unit]) be on a small cool device (with a similar high-quality screen) for about $199 at a retail store ?

Yeah, I did not think so either .

So "it" (as in the configuration you proposed) "would" rip PSP a new one if it were out and it was available for a similar price.

Do not worry, I am sure you will spin everything into a "Sony sucks at designing anything... hurrah for any of its competitors".

I am sure you will show that such a device with much higher clock-speed all-around (124 MHz of clock-speed advantage for the SH-5 you quoted) will also have a much longer battery life at doing any kind of workload.

I wonder if you ever stop to see how you are not helping their competitors' cause by doing all this hand-waving.

Who said anything about a portable using this tech being available for purchase?

The point which you conveniently glossed over is the fact superior technology already exist for portable gaming. PSP graphics processing technology is already outdated and inferior to boot.

Oh and btw connecting clock speeds with power consumption is flawed. What do you think fab process technology is for?

Correction: SH-5 is rated at 2.8GFLOPS at 400MHz. 8)

 

[Lazy8s]

Vysez:

How come? In what MBX CUSP seems better than PSP's own solution?

MBX supports LOD that's fractional and not just integral and also the capability for different levels of tesselation on neighboring patch edges, preventing them from forming seams.

The $500 Dell Axim X50v has no optical high density media storage that puts additional strain on the battery, plus its 3D performances are miles away from PSP's.

That PDA also uses only an 1100mah battery.

Jov:

Didn't someone mentioned 30+ mill and about 7+ mill in-game for PSP poly-pushing power?

Rates always spike really high and really low (peak figures for the SH3707 go beyond 4 Mpps too), but the PS2 reference was the performance which best characterized its in-game abilities.

Vince:

or is that "power draw" effecient in PR spin?

Efficiency as a function of price/performance is the quality of a design that makes it "good".

As mentioned, the next series of MBX will be competing against a class of competitors with next-generation programmable functionality like BitBoys' high-end mobiles more than anything.

 

[Jov]

The point which you conveniently glossed over is the fact superior technology already exist for portable gaming. PSP graphics processing technology is already outdated and inferior to boot.

Is this an imaginary portable with superior tech?

How do you justify its superior if it never materialises into a portable console