So Little PowerVR SGX?

[iwod]

The PowerVR SGX, announced in Q2 2005 and final design shipped at Q4 2005.

Although on paper it offer very high performance / features / watt. We have manage to made it half way in 2008 and yet seen one in action.

So three years later, Nvidia manage to have G80, G90, G92b and now GTX200. PowerVR still have yet to update their product.

What is wrong? And why? VXD offer the best performance / watt video decoding in the industry. Day to day people are in pain and suffering for watching sluggish 1080P H.264 Video with their less then 2 years old computer.

SGX is good for Hybrid Graphics.

Why we aren't using it?

 

[randomhack]

Well OMAP 35xx integrates it. So does Poulsbo chipset. We shud see products based on both of these in 2-3 months. The one I am waiting for, Pandora, is based on OMAP 35xx.
You can find Pandora here : openpandora.org

 

[Davros]

Someone here works for them (simon iirc) but trying to get any info out of him is a struggle, you'd think he was ashamed of their products or something

 

[Rys]

Or maybe he likes to honour his company's agreements with their licensees, which (if I'm not mistaken) means he can't talk about the specific implementations.

 

[iwod]

Well it is not even implementation at all. The products are good as we can see by design wins and amount of company licensing it. The matter is that it is SO late.
From 2005 till Now....

 

[Simon F]

Someone here works for them (simon iirc) but trying to get any info out of him is a struggle, you'd think he was ashamed of their products or something

 

[Davros]

Well now your here you can answer iwod question cant you

 

[dharold]

SGX is sampling in several devices inc. Centrino Atom, NaviEngine1 and OMAP3.

There's something like 20 SoCs with it included in development right now.

MBX, the previous generation has done about 75m units and is in 90+ handsets, but still has a long way to go yet.

IP is a market where it takes a while for devices to complete and ship, but hey, good things come to those who wait.

David Harold
Head of PR
Imagination Technologies

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Someone here works for them (simon iirc) but trying to get any info out of him is a struggle, you'd think he was ashamed of their products or something

Quite a few of us are from IMG, but as Rys says it is better if we don't comment on products as it would be all to easy to break an NDA and get the company or ourselves in trouble.

CC

 

[Simon F]

Well now your here you can answer iwod question cant you

Just to add to what David and "CC" have said.

Iwod is probably not comparing "like with like". If a single company, X, is highly "vertical" and produces the concept, design, fabrication and the product that actually contains the chip then you might not hear of the technology until the final 1 or two steps.

With an IP licensing company, you tend hear about it at an early phase but it probably still takes the same total amount of time to get to a final product (e.g. phone) in the shops.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I still believe they have PSP2 in their pocket instead of nVIDIA, but maybe it is wishful thinking...

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Well I'm waiting for the Poulsbo+Atom netbooks to come out so I can buy one.

It's better be worth the wait!

I guess it will be better than a GMA 950 clocked at 150Mhz like most netbooks, right?








RIGHT?

 

[INKster]

Well I'm waiting for the Poulsbo+Atom netbooks to come out so I can buy one.

It's better be worth the wait!

I guess it will be better than a GMA 950 clocked at 150Mhz like most netbooks, right?








RIGHT?

Even if the IGP turns out better, in practice i doubt there will be much of a difference, considering most netbooks of the time will be running some flavor of Vista or Linux with Compiz Fusion eye-candy...

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Even if the IGP turns out better, in practice i doubt there will be much of a difference, considering most netbooks of the time will be running some flavor of Vista or Linux with Compiz Fusion eye-candy...

What do you mean "considering most netbooks of the time"?

When is the poulsbo coming to market? I thought I could already get one by the end of this summer..

 

[INKster]

What do you mean "considering most netbooks of the time"?

When is the poulsbo coming to market? I thought I could already get one by the end of this summer..

Errr, sorry, i keep confusing "Poulsbo" with "Moorestown".
That's what i get for ignoring the "el-cheapo" laptop/netbook segment for too long...

"Poulsbo" still has the IGP on a separate chip (northbridge/southbridge combo), that's what i meant.
"Moorestown" has the IGP built directly into the CPU die, hence leading to potentially higher performance (enough even to compensate for the hit taken with the fancy graphics-happy Vista Aero/Compiz Fusion).

 

[Deleted member 13524]

And is Moorestown also based on PowerVR SGX?

 

[INKster]

And is Moorestown also based on PowerVR SGX?

No idea.
This is all that is known publicly about it (source: anandtech):

No PCI bus too, so Intel is pushing the Smartphone/MID/netbook specific version of this platform to only run Linux distros (which isn't necessarily a bad thing...)

Since the memory controller and the IGP will be part of the CPU, there's a chance that it might hold similarities with "Nehalem's" built-in IGP (on some versions only).
If it has PowerVR SGX IP in it is still a mystery for now.

 

[lastninja]

Well I'm waiting for the Poulsbo+Atom netbooks to come out so I can buy one.

It's better be worth the wait!

I guess it will be better than a GMA 950 clocked at 150Mhz like most netbooks, right?

yeah... good question... the hd-decoding of the gma500 seems very appealing...
and even if netbooks arent intended for games there are those of us that want cpu and graphics power for oldschool emulators (like snes, psx, n64 and dreamcast)

perhaps this question is a bit silly but i know that powervr chips was used in the dreamcast... and i remember that the dreamcast had some VERY beautyful arcade games like Dead or alive 2, Virtua Fighter 3, and Daytona USA... so i would say that if poulsbo atleast have the same graphics performance as a dreamcast (or ps2 or xbox 1) i would be more than satisfied with the 3d gaming capabilities (...and who wouldnt be, for a netbook???!!!)

so does any1 know if we can expect gma500 to perform the same/better graphics than the dreamcast?

(p.s. graphical quality features (directx versions) will definitly be better on the gma500 than the dreamcast, so im only wondering about raw polygon pumping performance)

 

[Lazy8s]

SGX535 (GMA 500) vs. Dreamcast's CLX2
......200 MHz....................100 MHz.........
......~15M tri/sec..............7M tri/sec.......
......400M tex/sec............100M tex/sec....

The GMA 500 also comes in a lower speed, 100 MHz configuration for MIDs, yet that'd still have a higher potential for performance than CLX2.

As a fixed spec console platform, Dreamcast games would be better tailored to its hardware though, which can make a big difference.

 

[lastninja]

thanks for the great comparisson!
...those numbers make it much easier to know what to expect, and i would say it looks very promising and impressive for such portable and energy-efficient purposes.