Qualcomm shows working MSM8x60 at CES.

[Deleted member 13524]

From Anandtech:

The development platform is just a square handset, there’s no real industrial design to speak of. It’s mainly there to give developers a platform to use before handset manufacturers release the final hardware to market. Using that reference hardware, Qualcomm demoed a lot of different things, including physics-enabled games on the new Adreno 220 graphics processor, high definition stereoscopic 3D video, and multi-party video conferencing. Unlike Tegra 2, which can clock gate cores but cannot power gate the second core, scorpion cores can be independently turned off to conserve power as well as be clock gated. Qualcomm showed multi-page web-browsing with the second core enabled and disabled to illustrate the performance difference.

The video shows a demo of Ilomilo in a stereoscopic 3D display with glasses, and hints heavily at handsets coming with auto-stereoscopic 3D displays.



BTW, I wonder what he means by "physics-enabled games on the new Adreno 220". Is the Adreno 220 running a physics engine through OpenCL, or is it simply a game with physics that's just happening to be rendered by the Adreno 220?


That power gating feature seems cool. I guess it's not a standard feature from the regular Cortex A9?

 

[metafor]

From Anandtech:





The video shows a demo of Ilomilo in a stereoscopic 3D display with glasses, and hints heavily at handsets coming with auto-stereoscopic 3D displays.



BTW, I wonder what he means by "physics-enabled games on the new Adreno 220". Is the Adreno 220 running a physics engine through OpenCL, or is it simply a game with physics that's just happening to be rendered by the Adreno 220?


That power gating feature seems cool. I guess it's not a standard feature from the regular Cortex A9?

The core-level power-gating has little to do with who designed the CPU and more to do with whether the SoC architects decided an extra regulator is worth it to be able to independently shut down/undervolt a core.

Alternatively, a power-gate can be used during back-end design to just shut off a core independently.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The core-level power-gating has little to do with who designed the CPU and more to do with whether the SoC architects decided an extra regulator is worth it to be able to independently shut down/undervolt a core.

Alternatively, a power-gate can be used during back-end design to just shut off a core independently.

And why wouldn't nVidia implement it?

 

[metafor]

And why wouldn't nVidia implement it?

IIRC, they implement a power gate but not dual regulators. The advantage of dual regulators is you can undervolt a core and have it work on relatively light tasks while another core works on a heavy one.

nVidia obviously felt it wasn't worth the extra area and complexity to implement a second regulator. Time will tell if that was a good decision.

 

[metafor]

In addition, I don't think ARM's default MP setup for the A9 allows for heterogeneous multicore. So both cores have to operate at the same frequency anyway. I could be wrong though.

 

[suryad]

Damn that is mighty impressive. I have been thinking of getting an unlocked gsm phone for international travelling and Samsung's upcoming dual core beast which is going to be announced in February wth a 4.5 inch Super AMOLED screen was going to be it...but now looks like I am gonna have to put that purchase on hold possibly. Well I guess it depends on when that qualcomm chip is supposed to be launched...I think early 2012? Can't wait that long if that is indeed true!

 

[Ike Turner]

Hold on, is this the MSM260/MSM8260 which has been sampling for a while or the MSM8960 which isn't coming out until later this year / ealry next ?

Edit: Sorry forgot to hit the Anand link. So it's the "old" MSM8660...Still mighty impressive though

 

[suryad]

Hold on, is this the MSM260/MSM8260 which has been sampling for a while or the MSM8960 which isn't coming out until later this year / ealry next ?

Edit: Sorry forgot to hit the Anand link. So it's the "old" MSM8660...Still mighty impressive though

If thats the case then it should be out some time this year?

 

[Ike Turner]

If thats the case then it should be out some time this year?

Yup. They started sampling back in Jun 2010 so I'm guessing that the frist phones will be out this summer/fall.

 

[convergedw]

The Asus EEE MeMo was the only device shown at CES with the MSM8260. It is scheduled for a June launch.

http://liliputing.com/2011/01/hands-on-with-the-asus-eee-pad-memo.html

I would guess that we'll head about more devices at MWC.

 

[Tchock]

Oooh Ilomilo = WP7.

So the incoming WP7 update probably supports both the MSM7x30 / QSD 8x55 and the DC QSD 8x60 too.

 

[Xmas]

Oooh Ilomilo = WP7.

Ilomilo has been demonstrated on Android.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Ilomilo has been demonstrated on Android.

Yes, but the demo was back in May 2010 and the game is now "Xbox Live" branded.
I don't know about any details, but it's possible that Microsoft bought the platform exclusivity for that game.

Nonetheless, I think The Harvest is a much better show-off than llomilo.
Sure, Ilomilo has lots of shader effects, but there's little geometry in there.
The Harvest has great texture and geometry detail, IMHO it really looks like Starcraft 2. I was really impressed by the game's looks in my father's Omnia7, given it has the same old-and-wrinkled Adreno 200 as my tiny X10 Mini.
Makes me wonder how (un)optimized are the Android drivers for that GPU.

 

[Ike Turner]

Yes, but the demo was back in May 2010 and the game is now "Xbox Live" branded.
I don't know about any details, but it's possible that Microsoft bought the platform exclusivity for that game.

Nonetheless, I think The Harvest is a much better show-off than llomilo.
Sure, Ilomilo has lots of shader effects, but there's little geometry in there.
The Harvest has great texture and geometry detail, IMHO it really looks like Starcraft 2. I was really impressed by the game's looks in my father's Omnia7, given it has the same old-and-wrinkled Adreno 200 as my tiny X10 Mini.
Makes me wonder how (un)optimized are the Android drivers for that GPU.

Ilomilo has always been an X360XBLA game but the mobile version started as a Adreno 205 tech-demo (which btw looks better than the final WP7 version) see interview with the developer: http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2010/09/01/ilomilo-interview-with-southend-interactive/

It's true that The Harvest looks insane for a mobile game running on an Adreno 200 adn just goes to show that the hardware doesn't matter if the software (drivers, OS) doesn't take advantage of it (->Android).

 

[Tchock]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/01/hp-palm-topaz-specs.jpg

Palm Topaz using MSM8660. Hmm! So they're not gonna go down without a fight on the hardware front.
8 hours is pretty impressive compared to what WebOS has been reputed for, but owning a Pre myself, I can say that power management system wise is quite robust- until you enable 3G. There's something wretched in the Pre's UMTS radio...

 

[Ailuros]

Some interesting Adreno220 stuff: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4243/...mance-1-5-ghz-msm8660-adreno-220-benchmarks/1

 

[Wishmaster]

Some interesting Adreno220 stuff: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4243/...mance-1-5-ghz-msm8660-adreno-220-benchmarks/1

Considering that those probably aren't final drivers I would say it compares quite well with other SoC's(especially with SGX540 on OMAP4). Impressive how much higher performance it achieves when Vsync is turned off. It should stop people from bashing snapdragon platform.

So it would seem that their PR talk of 2x the performance was accurate.
Wonder if that 15x performance claim for quad-core Krait is accurate...

EDIT: One thing I just thought about. If without vsync it shows higher performance it should mean that higher resolution wouldn't be much of a problem. It will be interesting to compare tegra2 tablets with msm8x60 tablets.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

If that 15x performance bump really happens, then the "Mini-Xenos" architecture will pair with the actual Xenos in performance.
Unbelievable

 

[Ailuros]

Considering that those probably aren't final drivers I would say it compares quite well with other SoC's(especially with SGX540 on OMAP4). Impressive how much higher performance it achieves when Vsync is turned off. It should stop people from bashing snapdragon platform.

So it would seem that their PR talk of 2x the performance was accurate.

Isn't the Adreno220 a dual core GPU?

If that 15x performance bump really happens, then the "Mini-Xenos" architecture will pair with the actual Xenos in performance.
Unbelievable :smile:

My recollection of Adreno cores is a bit rusty, but if memory serves well the 220 is a dual core GPU each core with a single TMU. Xenos has 16 TMUs amongst other things let alone that it clocks at 500MHz. Just as much as the NGP can match the PS3 I guess.

 

[Arun]

It's dual-core in the same sense that a GeForce2 MX is dual-core... The critical point is that it has only one rasteriser despite having two TMUs - just like a single SGX543 core. I assume the same is true for Vivante. BTW, at this performance level and especially for an architecture not based on binning in small tiles (i.e. closer to an IMR), this is a good thing IMO, not a bad one.

Qualcomm has indicated Adreno 3xx would be using multiple cores in the high-end, and I'd tend to believe that's not just marketing.