Some Kyro 4800SE boards has arrived

[PC-Engine]

1. Does NEC own any stock in VL, PowerVR, or IMGTEC and are there collaboration between the two companies for future joint projects?

2. Are there any plans for a ELAN successor in the near future and if yes will it be in the form of a separate chip or integrated into the graphics core?

3. If a fab company was interested in entering the highend graphics market with a PowerVR core, can IMGTEC come up with designs that can compete ATI or Nvidia on a performance level if cost was not a concern?

 

[Dave Baumann]

4a. Villagemark has been accused of deliberately sorting back-to-front. I have come to the conclusion that it renders the sky first, then the landscape, then the buildings in random order. Is this correct? *

Groan. I don't know how many times Kristof, Simon, JohnH, CC, or someone else from PowerVR have stated that there is no specific ordering.

 

[LittlePenny]

Obviously, the most important question would be along the lines of why the hell won't PowerVR produce its own damn chips?, but probably more polite.

None of it sounds very polite to me.

 

[Ailuros]

Obviously, the most important question would be along the lines of why the hell won't PowerVR produce its own damn chips?, but probably more polite.

Depends what you mean with "producing chips". It looks like they have quite different plans this time; with a bit of patience when the company feels and is ready for annoucements/clarifications we´ll find out for sure.

I don´t think it´s wise anyway at this point to take any different approach then they currently do, especially after the ST/K3 "fiasco".

All guestimates so far while counting pages on the latest presentation seem rather to be off base.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Ask someone like Russ, or anyone else in the industry, and then take a good look at IMG's balance sheets - I have a sneeky suspicion that you'll find the answer why IMG doesn't produce its own chips (its no coincidence that they partner with, generally speaking, large companies with FAB's).

There is, also, a reason why this may have changed for the future.

 

[CMcK]

The Img Tech slides posted on the net the other day mentioned a possible console deal and a possible handheld console deal.
Now there is no way Mr Harold will give us any names but would he at least be willing to tell us if the companies they are negotiating with are US, European or Japanese? And have any of the companies in question ever released a console worldwide before?

Also do the PVR people think it is more important to include features in a graphics chipset that can be used on all games, such as aniso, AA or higher precision colour? Or would they rather include new features that will not really be used routinely in games for maybe 18 -24 months such as PS,VS, displacement mapping?

 

[Above]

This is a Windogg from another site :
"Okay, I can finally let the cat out of the bag now that I have distanced myself far enough from STMicroelectronics. Internally the project was a mess. Those that did know what they were doing didn't care and those that had no clue was hyping stuff they didn't understand. Lots of other issues that I cannot get into publically but lets just say it was almost doomed from the start. Yes I was very enthusiastic in the beginning but all that changed one day."http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=31&threadid=832499

 

[Ailuros]

And this Windogg persona might be who if I may ask?

 

[amk]

4a. Villagemark has been accused of deliberately sorting back-to-front. I have come to the conclusion that it renders the sky first, then the landscape, then the buildings in random order. Is this correct? *

Groan. I don't know how many times Kristof, Simon, JohnH, CC, or someone else from PowerVR have stated that there is no specific ordering.

I believe that there is no ordering of the buildings. However, on the PCStats B3D forums:

I just checked out Villagemark, and although it's not strictly ordered back-to-front, there is one especially silly thing: the sky is drawn first, then the terrain (which overlaps the sky), then the houses. Any reasonable app would draw the sky and terrain last.

http://bbs.pcstats.com/beyond3d/mes...adid=297&highlight_key=y&keyword1=villagemark

JohnH was skeptical (but seemingly unsure), but K and Simon didn't comment. I've no idea who this PEO is, and the two posts on this thread were the only ones he made. He's probably just some random hobbyist, though.

We also had an (admittedly decidedly biased) NV engineer telling B3D that he'd stepped through Villagemark poly by poly, and found it biased towards back-to-front. Sky->terrain->random buildings seems to fit the facts quite nicely, IMHO. Can't hurt to ask anyway.

None of it sounds very polite to me.

Sometimes the best way to get an interesting response from an interview is to play devils advocate.

It's only Qs 2 & 4 where I've been a bit agressive anyway.

Ask someone like Russ, or anyone else in the industry, and then take a good look at IMG's balance sheets - I have a sneeky suspicion that you'll find the answer why IMG doesn't produce its own chips (its no coincidence that they partner with, generally speaking, large companies with FAB's).

There is, also, a reason why this may have changed for the future.

I emailed in a (suitably respectful ) general question about PVR's business model, but asking specifics may get an interesting response.

9. If PowerVR were to produce its own chips (i.e. pay a foundry to build them, rather than license the cores out) would the success of Metagence and PURE's DAB radios (I want one, BTW) make IMG more able to absorb e.g. any losses due to targetting a core for a delayed x micron process?

 

[Simon F]

JohnH was skeptical (but seemingly unsure), but K and Simon didn't comment.

In the past I have definitely commented on the drawing order of VillageMark. I have spoken to the author and the buildings are simply drawn in the order that they happen to be in the database/list, i.e., there is no sorting. Since the camera does a circuit, the changes in relative order should even out.

As for the Sky and Ground, which as you say cover the entire screen (even overlapping slightly), games often put these in first for the very simple reason that it can save a lot of memory bandwidth. (...think framebuffer clears, Z clears, and Z testing).

FWIW, the author contacted the dev rel people of other chip producers to make sure he was doing things like T&L the recommended way.

 

[amk]

As for the Sky and Ground, which as you say cover the entire screen (even overlapping slightly), games often put these in first for the very simple reason that it can save a lot of memory bandwidth. (...think framebuffer clears, Z clears, and Z testing).

I wasn't aware of that, and it hadn't occured to me. Thanks for the clarification. (I knew, and didn't doubt, the rest of what you said, and didn't mean to make you repeat yourself).

BTW, I'm very disappointed at the lack of dirty tricks from PVR Everyone else does it, you know. One Fun Thing To Do could be to list the buildings in a specific route through the village, and then run the camera along that route, backwards. That's what I'd do .

Perhaps the NV Engineer was referring to a slight skew from random fluctuation?

(Curses, should have suggested that PKY ask IMG to provide witnesses for Little Teasy's demise. Oh well).

 

[Pottsey]

“(Curses, should have suggested that PKY ask IMG to provide witnesses for Little Teasy's demise. Oh well).â€￾

We got a surprising amount of questions by Email about Little Teasy's demise to send to ImgTech.

 

[Ty]

“(Curses, should have suggested that PKY ask IMG to provide witnesses for Little Teasy's demise. Oh well).â€￾

We got a surprising amount of questions by Email about Little Teasy's demise to send to ImgTech.

Heh, they should take a reference board, throw it on a store shelf, and then take a picture to save their biggest 'little' fan.