Next-Gen iPhone & iPhone Nano Speculation

[Ailuros]

My impression was that novathor would be ready for H2 2012, but it still needs a design win to make that happen.

That must have been ST's initial target, albeit when I first read it I considered it already way too optimistic. I can't remember where I've read it that they've revised their expectations and are now targetting early 2013 (which sounds far more reasonable given the complexity of the design).

 

[tangey]

Last thing I heard was a Sept eetimes article:-

"ST Ericsson has taped out a dual-core ARM Cortex A-15 set to ship in 2012. It will outgun rivals including the Omap 5 from Texas Instruments because the STE chip uses the Imagination Rogue graphics core, said Gilles Delfassy, chief executive of ST Ericsson and former head of TI's wireless business unit"

"We have a road map which is very aggressive, but the key question is will we deliver on it on time," Delfassy said.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4226942/ST-Ericsson-plants-center-in-Silicon-Valley

But I also seem to recall recently reading an article quoting some IMG employees that Rogue would appear in 2012, I'll need to find that article. So if not ST-E, then surely the only other viable candidate is Apple, yet it would not appear to fall within Apple's cadence to have rogue out in 2012.


....later

Here is the post that had that 2012 reference. It's a translation from Japanese, so I'm not sure how acrruate the translation is:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1601499&postcount=671

 

[wco81]

I don't know that graphics are that big of a selling point for Apple. Certainly they will advertise the games available on iOS but they're not all-in on making it a better gaming platform (which would include support for physical controls, perhaps pairing with BT controllers).

Maybe if the next iOS has some fancy graphics effects, though that won't necessarily require a monster 3D GPU.

Is there any kind of OpenCL being used on iOS yet?

 

[Ailuros]

I don't know that graphics are that big of a selling point for Apple. Certainly they will advertise the games available on iOS but they're not all-in on making it a better gaming platform (which would include support for physical controls, perhaps pairing with BT controllers).

Then Apple integrated a SGX543MP2 just for decorational reasons. Ironically show me one embedded graphics block that managed to surpass it in graphics performance to date.

Maybe if the next iOS has some fancy graphics effects, though that won't necessarily require a monster 3D GPU.

Rogue is definitely overkill for 2012 for someone like Apple, since even if ST makes it within 2012 with the Novathor A9600 I highly doubt it'll be anything but late in the year.

Is there any kind of OpenCL being used on iOS yet?

What for exactly considering that iOS and any other mobile OSs use OpenGL_ES for their GPUs?

 

[anexanhume]

Rogue is definitely overkill for 2012 for someone like Apple, since even if ST makes it within 2012 with the Novathor A9600 I highly doubt it'll be anything but late in the year.

That's my impression. They're still ahead of any other SoC out there on the GPU, so they can keep that one around for another generation. I definitely see the value in going 28nm +A15 which is aggressive but I think can be done given their typical Spring iPad release. Plus keeping the same GPU on a die shrink will lower the power, leaving room for the new 28nm qualcomm LTE radios to eat more power.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Then Apple integrated a SGX543MP2 just for decorational reasons.

That doesn't invalidate wco81's statement.
Yes, the SGX543MP2 is a monster of a GPU for ipad2's/iphone4s' dimensions, but so far we haven't seen almost anything taking advantage of it (infinity blade and that racing game?).
iOS doesn't have frontends with widgets etc, the 3D capabilities are hardly used by the OS, and Apple doesn't seem too worried about it either.

Ironically show me one embedded graphics block that managed to surpass it in graphics performance to date.

Easy, anything from AMD's Embedded G-Series that bundles an iGPU.
You didn't mention power draw

What for exactly considering that iOS and any other mobile OSs use OpenGL_ES for their GPUs?

I'm not sure what your question means.. OpenCL is for computing and OpenGL ES is for graphics. Different APIs for different purposes.

 

[Ailuros]

That doesn't invalidate wco81's statement.
Yes, the SGX543MP2 is a monster of a GPU for ipad2's/iphone4s' dimensions, but so far we haven't seen almost anything taking advantage of it (infinity blade and that racing game?).
iOS doesn't have frontends with widgets etc, the 3D capabilities are hardly used by the OS, and Apple doesn't seem too worried about it either.

Theoretically since the GPU has USC ALUs they could very well use the GPU as additional GP processors wherever it makes sense. No idea what's going on though inside iOS; if you know something I'd be glad to hear it.

Besides that where's any other tablet or smart-phone platform's gaming involvement at the moment? Last time I checked the highest persentage of downloaded applications in the Apple application store were games and yes amongst them are a large quantity of games that don't require any significant or any at all GPU acceleration. You can yield high impressions with something like Infinity Blade running with higher resolution textures and 4xMSAA on a tablet, instead of running a garden variety 2D card game.

NVIDIA as a counter example invests more in CPU power at the moment in its SoCs and Apple more in GPU power. Take the Tegra3 die shot and estimate how much die area they've dedicated to the 5 CPU cores and how much to the ULP GF and compare to Apple's A5. For the Apple A5 roughly 1/4th of the die estate is the CPU block and roughly 1/4th the GPU block.

Easy, anything from AMD's Embedded G-Series that bundles an iGPU.
You didn't mention power draw

Jokes aside it was obvious what I meant; but by all means integrate it in a tablet under 40nm and try running around with a battery back pack.

I'm not sure what your question means.. OpenCL is for computing and OpenGL ES is for graphics. Different APIs for different purposes.

I misread his post and read OpenGL instead. We need a sw developers opinion or something that knows these things better if the iPhone/iPad GPUs are also being used for some GPGPU functionalities and to what extend.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

(...)
Besides that where's any other tablet or smart-phone platform's gaming involvement at the moment?

Last time I checked the highest persentage of downloaded applications in the Apple application store were games and yes amongst them are a large quantity of games that don't require any significant or any at all GPU acceleration. You can yield high impressions with something like Infinity Blade running with higher resolution textures and 4xMSAA on a tablet, instead of running a garden variety 2D card game.

Again, what was questioned wasn't the amount of games that are being sold, but either the 3D capabilities SGX543MP2 are being used.



But let's put things in these terms:

- Would the ipad2/iphone4s' software market have been any different had the iGPU in Apple A5 been a SGX540 @ 300MHz like in OMAP4430?

If not, then the upgraded GPU has been a total waste so far IMO.

Jokes aside it was obvious what I meant; but by all means integrate it in a tablet under 40nm and try running around with a battery back pack.

Battery back pack?! There are two well-known tablets in the market using C-50 since February:
- MSI WindPad 110W
- Acer Iconia Tab W500

Both of them have an estimated runing time (light usage) of ~4 hours. This is using an incredibly unoptimized O.S. for tablets (Win7).
And this is the "old" C-50. The tablet-oriented Z-01 hasn't appeared in any comercial device so far (it won't make any sense in doing so until Windows 8 is released anyways), but it should provide longer autonomy given the same components.

 

[sebbbi]

The tablet-oriented Z-01 hasn't appeared in any comercial device so far (it won't make any sense in doing so until Windows 8 is released anyways), but it should provide longer autonomy given the same components.

MSI WindPad 110W with Z-01 APU (5.7W TDP) is already available:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152278

599$ isn't that bad price considering the specs: 32 GB SSD, 4 GB RAM and a 1280x800 IPS display. It weights 1.87 pounds (= 848 grams). That's 16% more than Motorola Xoom Android tablet and 39% more than iPad 2. It's getting there...

 

[Deleted member 13524]

MSI WindPad 110W with Z-01 APU (5.7W TDP) is already available:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152278

599$ isn't that bad price considering the specs: 32 GB SSD, 4 GB RAM and a 1280x800 IPS display. It weights 1.87 pounds (= 848 grams). That's 16% more than Motorola Xoom Android tablet and 39% more than iPad 2. It's getting there...

That's great! It seems they quietly replaced C-50 with Z-01.
Battery life should be a bit better in that one.

 

[silent_guy]

- Would the ipad2/iphone4s' software market have been any different had the iGPU in Apple A5 been a SGX540 @ 300MHz like in OMAP4430?

If not, then the upgraded GPU has been a total waste so far IMO.

The software market wouldn't have been materially different right now if they'd only had 1 GPU, but your follow up conclusion doesn't make sense.

First, the presence of a ridiculous amount of GPU power now will increase the willingness of developers to start creating software that makes use of it: they'll know that a huge installed based of existing hardware will run just fine. If GPU heavy software is something Apple wants to promote, they need to sow the seeds first.

Second, the inclusion of said amount of GPU power immediately puts it leap and bounds above the competition. So in addition to trying to compete with an OS with broken UI responsiveness, those competitors are now also trumped in absolutely performance numbers.

Third, there may or may not be an A6 in the next iPad, but having an A5 with GPU power to spare makes it a very nice fall-back to drive a high-res LCD in case the A6 is delayed. It's good to have a plan B.

All that said, I don't think the forward looking aspect for GPUs is as important for Android tablet buyers: while you can be pretty much assured that an iPad 2 will see a number of major OS updates, it'd be naive to expect as much from whatever Android tablet you can buy today. So the promise of software a year or 2 out that will require this kind of power isn't a big factor: by the time it arrives, it'd probably require an unsupported OS version anyway.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

First, the presence of a ridiculous amount of GPU power now will increase the willingness of developers to start creating software that makes use of it: they'll know that a huge installed based of existing hardware will run just fine. If GPU heavy software is something Apple wants to promote, they need to sow the seeds first.

That would've made sense if the first device with an A5 launched last week.
It didn't. ipad2 has been available for 9 months, and during that time the impact in games or anything 3d accelerated has been almost null.
The number of games taking advantage of the extra power very few with almost no impact on the market whatsoever.

So the seeds have been sowed. There's no excuse there.

Second, the inclusion of said amount of GPU power immediately puts it leap and bounds above the competition. So in addition to trying to compete with an OS with broken UI responsiveness, those competitors are now also trumped in absolutely performance numbers.

That's the point: it makes no difference. It made absolutely no difference until now.
It would only make difference if those competitors had shown any worry in catching up. They haven't so far. Samsung manufactures the A5 from day one, they could have made a "clone" of the SoC for Galaxy S2 or the latter HD/LTE versions, yet they didn't, they just didn't care.
And still, Galaxy S2 is considered by most as the best smartphone available, even after iphone4s was released.

Is apple concerned about the absence of LTE? External storage? NFC? Videocalls? Direct HDMI-out? Direct USB host? Confortably larger screen? File transfer between devices? Multitasking? Ability to download files from the browser?

Given the importance that the SGX543MP2 has been given by game developers so far, I'd say any of the above is more important than the upgraded GPU.

Third, there may or may not be an A6 in the next iPad, but having an A5 with GPU power to spare makes it a very nice fall-back to drive a high-res LCD in case the A6 is delayed. It's good to have a plan B.

That's the one and only reason I see for the updated GPU performance.
But not as a plan B. Seeing how things are so far, the SGX543MP2 in A5 makes sense if there'll be an ipad3 released in Q1 2012 that uses A5 and has a higher resolution screen.

All that said, I don't think the forward looking aspect for GPUs is as important for Android tablet buyers: while you can be pretty much assured that an iPad 2 will see a number of major OS updates, it'd be naive to expect as much from whatever Android tablet you can buy today.

What history of Android tablets do you have to support that statement?
Pretty much every non-chinese/ultra-low-cost Android tablet is receiving the upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich. Let's just see what happens next.

the promise of software a year or 2 out that will require this kind of power isn't a big factor: by the time it arrives, it'd probably require an unsupported OS version anyway.

That's just blatantly wrong.
Almost all new applications in Android Market require only Eclair, which has been available since late 2009.
It's the same with games. Except for a couple of device-exclusive games (Xperia Play has a lot of those, since it's a console wannabe), only the newest 3D games are starting to demand Froyo (May 2010), and that isn't going to change anytime soon.

 

[Helmore]

That's the one and only reason I see for the updated GPU performance.
But not as a plan B. Seeing how things are so far, the SGX543MP2 in A5 makes sense if there'll be an ipad3 released in Q1 2012 that uses A5 and has a higher resolution screen.

What if the Apple A5 was designed for a larger screen resolution from the start? Weren't there rumors of a larger screen resolution (2048×1536) for the iPad 2? They were just rumors, but it might be that it was Apple's original intention to outfit the iPad 2 with a higher screen resolution and that Apple had to scrap those plans once they learned that the screens wouldn't be ready yet? I'm just guessing based on rumors though and we may never know the truth in this case.

 

[tangey]

One assumes Apple's insight is better than what is available here.

Choice of current "overkill" could likely be as much marketing/product defferientation as for other reasons. With Each product launch, Apple determines 1 or 2 key features that end users will identify with and will consider as tangible benefits.

iphone4 was the "retina display"....pixels so small you can't see them.
ipad2 was "x9 graphics of previous gen", and extra thiness
iphone4s was Siri, "dual core" and IOS5 (the fact that IOS5 is available on older gen is neither here or there).


So why graphics for the ipad2 ?

At any one particular time, your processor choice/clock rate can not be much different from the next guys. ARM11,A8,A9, Dual core A9, A15. 45nm,40nm,32nm. Everyone has access to the same current gen, based on when you are designing. Also processors are boring/irrelevant to most users. Yes, Apple did use "dual core", but most understand 2 to be better than 1.

Graphics however is something you can pick a level of performance of, and you can market it in a way that separates you from the the rest. "x9 graphics of previous gen"... which also fits into Apple's desire to launch apparently leading edge technology.

This marketing is further enhanced by for example game developers citing A5 as providing a completely different level of performance, and also 3rd party benchmark sites reinforcing Apple's products dominance in graphics. The best marketing is when other people do it for you.

And in keeping with the need to always appear to be in that lead, you have to look at what graphics I/P was available at the time of design, and what Apple thought would be available during the lifetime of the product. At time of design, upgrading options within IMG from SGX535 was SGX540, and single core SGX543. SGX540 was already being used by the competition. If SGX543 was used, then when Mali400MP4 devices came out, they would take the graphics "crown". (multiple such devices have been out for a while now).

And for the ipad3. Well, it looks highly likely that they'll repeat the iphone4 trick and go with having the "highest res tablet in the world" or some such, as the key marketing point. I'll almost guarantee, that in doing so they won't want it diminished by"yes but it runs games 4 times slower than the old one", so look out for a graphics performance uprating to allow it to run identically to the ipad2.

Their bigger struggle will be what to pick to make the iphone5 unique. Can't do it with physical screen size, can't do it with pixels (do we really need more that 1280 on a handheld ?). They'll have to look away from screen. Likely they'll go with inductive charging, gesture control or whatever.

 

[wco81]

On LTE, there's only one carrier, probably in the whole world, with a substantial LTE footprint.

And of course the available chipsets are energy hogs.

AT&T may not be able to ramp their LTE network fast enough in 2012 either. 4G sounds good on paper but with data caps, it's overkill for now, especially on devices with limited storage.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

On LTE, there's only one carrier, probably in the whole world, with a substantial LTE footprint.

And of course the available chipsets are energy hogs.

AT&T may not be able to ramp their LTE network fast enough in 2012 either. 4G sounds good on paper but with data caps, it's overkill for now, especially on devices with limited storage.

Weren't people just saying that the SGX543MP2 was more of a future-proofing component than a immediate advantage one?

So they did well in securing a future-proof GPU on a mobile phone/tablet because it will be supported for over 2 years..
But they also also did well in not supporting the next-gen broadband communication standard in their mobile phone because it won't be widely available during the next year?


So what's important here is not to sell people an actual future-proof product, right?
It's to sell people products that are obviously not future-proof while making them think they are.

Same as everyone else, sure. The only difference is that apple deceives a lot better. Hats off for that.

 

[Ailuros]

That would've made sense if the first device with an A5 launched last week.
It didn't. ipad2 has been available for 9 months, and during that time the impact in games or anything 3d accelerated has been almost null.
The number of games taking advantage of the extra power very few with almost no impact on the market whatsoever.

If the MP2 would launch in 2012 Apple would break even in terms of GPU power with many other IHVs. Their goal was/is obviously to stay ahead of the others.

Not only takes any sort of game development time, but if your lowest common denominator is times less capable than a MP2 it's another milestone you have to overcome. Eventually you have to start somewhere and the driving factor for ISVs is the volume with which Apple's application store will sell.

So the seeds have been sowed. There's no excuse there.

It's true that the seeds have been sowed but not from your perspective. Since it shouldn't be too hard to guess that their upcoming SoC will have by N% more GPU processing power, guess where it might leave the entire competition in that regard.

That's the point: it makes no difference. It made absolutely no difference until now.
It would only make difference if those competitors had shown any worry in catching up. They haven't so far. Samsung manufactures the A5 from day one, they could have made a "clone" of the SoC for Galaxy S2 or the latter HD/LTE versions, yet they didn't, they just didn't care.
And still, Galaxy S2 is considered by most as the best smartphone available, even after iphone4s was released.

Is apple concerned about the absence of LTE? External storage? NFC? Videocalls? Direct HDMI-out? Direct USB host? Confortably larger screen? File transfer between devices? Multitasking? Ability to download files from the browser?

Given the importance that the SGX543MP2 has been given by game developers so far, I'd say any of the above is more important than the upgraded GPU.

If the A5 wouldn't had gone for a MP2 I'd have severe doubts that Samsung might have pushed for a Mali400MP4. SGS2 users are actually gaming occassionally on their smart-phones and there are quite a few applications with fill-rate to spare where they just enable 16xAA (4xMSAA + 4xOGSS).

That's the one and only reason I see for the updated GPU performance.
But not as a plan B. Seeing how things are so far, the SGX543MP2 in A5 makes sense if there'll be an ipad3 released in Q1 2012 that uses A5 and has a higher resolution screen.

Eventually tablets will go to ultra high resolutions and that's exactly the reason why GPU IP vendors like Vivante, ARM and IMG (Qualcomm also soon albeit not an IP IHV) all went for multi-core GPU IP. Just for the record the Lenovo LePad K2 (Tegra3) is already at 1920*1152: http://www.glbenchmark.com/phonedetails.jsp?benchmark=glpro21&D=Lenovo+LePad+K2&testgroup=system

As a sidenote and no offense to wco81 he's been questioning the meaning of any sort of GPU in smart-phones for years now. Scaling performance through the GPU block can make more sense in terms of power consumption (see frequency differences for reference) for specific tasks then on the CPU side. SoCs are already heterogeneous processors and while for fully fledged GPGPU you'd need an API like OpenCL, there should be some tasks that can be driven through OpenGL_ES. If and to what degree Apple makes use of it no idea.

The case in point is that Apple didn't integrate a MP2 purely for decorational reasons. There's a plan behind it and while before the iPad2 was announced many said that it's fairly impossible that Apple will go from a SGX535 straight to a SGX543MP2 because they supposedly keep their hw on a low profile, they've been obviously wrong. I'll eat a hat if OMAP5 doesn't come along with roughly twice the GPU processing power than the iPad2.

I'll go even further: GPU processing power will continue to scale at higher degrees in the future then CPU processing power will. Easy example: take a 2*A15@2.0GHz and compare it to a 2*A9@1.0GHz vs. the iPad2 SGX543MP2 compared to the Novathor A9600 Rogue.

 

[tangey]

But they also also did well in not supporting the next-gen broadband communication standard in their mobile phone because it won't be widely available during the next year?

So what's important here is not to sell people an actual future-proof product, right?
It's to sell people products that are obviously not future-proof while making them think they are.

4G...hell I can't even get 3G at work or at home.

In 2 years time, what proportion of people will be in a 4G area who TODAY own an iphone4S. I'd say it isn't so high to alienate a significant proportion.

Next question is, what do most mobile owners consider "future-proofing". Is it enough to buy the top phone today, and know that your hardware will still be at competivie and will get all updates over the lifetime of your average contract (say 24 months).

totally personal story but some years ago I bought a samsung 8510. It's hardware was towards the top end at the time (Omap2 I think). But on release it was buggy, camera would freeze, some basic functionality didn't work. After 8 months, I gave up waiting for the 1st update to the firmware, and sold it. I decided I'd never again by a samsung phone, not becuase it was poor hardware, but because of the "fire and forget" nature of the sale.

 

[Arun]

Eventually tablets will go to ultra high resolutions and that's exactly the reason why GPU IP vendors like Vivante, ARM and IMG (Qualcomm also soon albeit not an IP IHV) all went for multi-core GPU IP.

This isn't very important but I heavily suspect that Vivante being multi-core is pure marketing. It's multi-core in the same way that R300 was multi-core by having two fully independent quad TMUs and quad ROPs... Customers must still license multiple IPs which are tuned for different performance levels.

I'll go even further: GPU processing power will continue to scale at higher degrees in the future then CPU processing power will. Easy example: take a 2*A15@2.0GHz and compare it to a 2*A9@1.0GHz vs. the iPad2 SGX543MP2 compared to the Novathor A9600 Rogue.

~3x for the CPU, ~5x for the TMUs/ROPs, ~12x for the ALUs... And memory bandwidth isn't increasing as fast as any of them

 

[anexanhume]

On LTE, there's only one carrier, probably in the whole world, with a substantial LTE footprint.

And of course the available chipsets are energy hogs.

AT&T may not be able to ramp their LTE network fast enough in 2012 either. 4G sounds good on paper but with data caps, it's overkill for now, especially on devices with limited storage.

That's changing with Qualcomm's 28nm LTE all-in-one radio. Of course, LTE is still power hungry, but the lower power consumption from this chip and smaller, integrated form of it makes it a prime choice for Apple in the iPad 3 and next iphone. I think the features of the next iPad will be retina display + LTE. The features of the new A6 will be there, but they won't be played up as much as those two features.

I think Verizon's aggressive LTE rollout coupled with many users buying android phones because of 4G capability will force Apple's hand.