Nokia N93 - first Nokia with HW accelerator

Whew! My life has a purpose

 

Does the N93 have accelerated OpenVG?

 

possibly....

Imagination Technologies debuts accelerated OpenVGTM technology on the PowerVR MBX Family at 3GSM 2006

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13th February 2006

Imagination Technologies, a leader in system-on-chip intellectual property (SoC IP), is debuting PowerVR support for the OpenVG API on the company’s stand at the 3GSM World Congress 2006 in Barcelona, Spain from 13-16 February 2006.

PowerVR MBX, the leading mobile graphics acceleration solution, offers full acceleration for OpenVG, achieving many times the performance of software implementations with significantly reduced power consumption.

OpenVG is an industry-standard, cross-platform API that provides a low-level hardware acceleration interface for vector graphics libraries such as SVG. OpenVG is targeted at handheld devices that require portable acceleration of high-quality vector graphics for compelling user interfaces and text on small screen devices.

Says David McBrien, VP business development, Imagination Technologies: “Mobile devices need the smooth, high-quality 2D vector graphics to enable high-quality user interfaces and ultra-readable text on small screens. With support for OpenVG PowerVR can provide a low-power consumption solution with a high level of acceleration for 2D graphics such as SVG, PDF and Postscript. This accelerated, scalable anti-aliased vector graphics solution opens up new possibilities for advanced UI, navigation applications, games, e-books, screensavers and multimedia content.â€￾

PowerVR SGX, Imagination’s new generation PowerVR shader based graphics and video technology family, newly available for licensing, also supports OpenVG.

 

Interesting - I wonder if there are any handets out there that provide hardware accelerated vector graphics support?

 

What is the developer feedback on the relatively deep graphics pipeline of the N93's GPU? What is their impression of its performance versus extra effort spent to avoid pipeline stalls?

 

Your life my have gained somewhat a purpose, but I just saved myself from spending over 740 euros on a high end mobile phone.

 

I take it then that Nokia will not be releasing a device which exposes IMG's proprietary extensions for MBX. I also take it that there will be other vendors' designs (Bitboys?) used for this Nokia platform.

So, what other features of MBX are not being exposed?

 

What extra effort to avoid pipeline stalls?

 

throwing some petrol in the flames...

hmmh... as I am more silent guy nowadays, I still like to remind you about things I mentioned previously:

... you can see hints like this waaaay back if you use the search. with G12, The One and Only Real Vapourware Company did make a very good product to be noticed. Not everyone likes 3D in phones, but everyone definetely likes longer battery hours and better response in menus. Also, you could state that MBX Lite can do it too, but it's a bit overkill on price as well as size for low end phones. (I am not going to argue here, if plain full HW implementation designed straight for the task is faster or more efficient than HW implementation that is designed quite close and is able to do same stuff with small CPU overhead.


After watching the things develop, I am pretty sure that the very big deal I heard about in august 2005 (my sources talked only about a big customer and I never start asking more than I am getting because I know being told everything that can be said without troubles.), was actually Nokia deal in some scale. Also, I am quite confident that the first OpenGL ES 2.0 implementation we see in hardware is going to be G40. ATI's Canadian side stuff is going to be faster and better, but heck, so it should be, it's 2 years younger than G40. SGX again, Right now it seems that whenever it comes as HW, it might be coming somewhere else than Nokia phone. Their fixation to single company as 3D HW delivery is so unique that I can't see them jumping easily to other's options. Not even with the fact that OMAP includes now PowerVR / IMGTech cores.

Not that I would want to crush IMGTech fans bubble or something but, IMGTech wasn't chosen by Nokia. So, The only reason why N93 has MBX is the fact that OMAP had it easily implemented and Nokia always launches a test device to see how market reacts before going big. For example, there was some 5000 series phone they used to test how ppl likes the idea of making hand held console and phone one and same. Market did like it so they developed it further and market got the N-Gage. Only guys close to Nokia know (jkemp and Patric seem to be close enough ) what's right now happening, but I would guess that this ATI deal is already running at the full speed, which means prototype devices with G40 and Imageon chips. How they are again deal with the fact that OMAP platform isn't using ATI 3D? well, again just plain guessing that this isn't first time when TI makes a custom logic for Nokia, so we might be seing OMAP-kind of platform with G40 inside, maybe even with the yet unreleased ATI Imageon OGL ES 2.0 core.

 

A simple look at the featureset and capabilities of the N93 speaks volumes of the strength of the OMAP2 SoC. It's definitely not only about 3D in today's high end phones, yet TI has a definite performance winner (ie high demands of parallel processing) with the OMAP2 compared to competing SoCs and that goes also for those that have "FPU-less" CPUs. Compare an OMAP2430 with a say 2700G and the answer is easy.

As for the future, TI hasn't yet announced anything considering future SoCs so anything is open for all sides.

***edit: just as a sidenote, there were way too many doubts in the past that the N93 is actually based on OMAP2

 

The features of OpenVG are so close to that required for a full 3D pipeline that, IMHO, they should be one and the same.

You've lost me.

 

as for this I only said that I don't believe that until I have seen it. Same went to the Bitboys, ATI as well as nVidia.

(It also can be argued if I was questioning MBX being used as basic chip for N-Gage 2 platform. Again it can be argued if it is that. Basically yes, though there isn't set of phones using N-Gage 2 platform, but just one. Also, the released ATi Deal can be questioned if that means Nokia using ATI accelerators for N-Gage 2 platform as 3d accelerator features...)

so?? what's the point continuing this?

 

Given that I didn't understand any of that I guess there is little point

 

Ailuros is saying that with some of the hardware unusable (vertex units), (s)he doesn't see any point in spending loads of money on the phone. Kinda like would you shell out $50,000 for an 8 cylinder car if two of the cylinders were disabled, when the same car in 6 cylinder variety is availalble for $25,000?

I'm sure for the mainstream buyer they won't care what's in the hardware as they go by results, and they'll be seeing much improved 3D on these phones. Still, it does seem a waste to include powerful hardware that'll never be used. I guess for many a tech-head, the transition phones are to be avoided until the OpenGL 2.0 standard becomes widely adopted and the hardware fully utilized.

 

Not exposing programmability does not mean the vertex unit sits idle. So it's not that bad.

 

It's a "he"

Jokes aside I wanted to toy around with that thingy a bit, since so far I didn't have the chance so far to touch an MBX powered device. It might be not that bad as Xmas noted, yet I'd rather wait a bit until either the price gets more affordable or something shows up in the meantime, where the whole enchelada is enabled. The price is already steep as it is.

 

I don't see any argument, which would be by the way inherently dumb since those kind of companies make business decisions far from marketing campaigns or based on consumer interest.

NOKIA will do what is in it's best interest and that's completely irrelevant where each piece of IP comes from. Large companies like NOKIA or in extension Texas Instruments aren't the average consumer that can be swayed by any sort of funky marketing or PR stunts. They're very well capable of picking out of the bunch of offered IP the sollution that fits their demands and imagery best and there's no forcing down anyone's throat anything. It should be bleedingly obvious that when it comes to large semiconductor manufacturers it's either "put up or shut up" and I don't see why they would make any distinction here whether they have to deal with A, B or C IP provider. There's space enough for everyone and the PDA/mobile market will shape up soon rapidly.

 

If all N-Gage 2 phones used MBX, what would be the point of not exposing vendor specific extensions? Surely Nokia plans on using different GPU vendors and using OpenGL ES 1.0 for N-Gage 2 as it is the lowest common denominator?

 

Given that OMAP 2420 has already shipped in 10m devices, and OMAP 2430 and V2230 will be in mass production at the turn of the year, the question of what will initially be used has already been answered. Next-gen OpenGL ES 2.0 is another story but SGX will have some footprint....hopefully...