(AT) Apple's new 3D rendering API "Metal"

[Rakehellion]

Does Metal work on older devices that don't support OpenGL ES 3.0?

 

[TheStu]

Does Metal work on older devices that don't support OpenGL ES 3.0?

I think Metal is currently only good for the A7

 

[Rakehellion]

I like that Metal is object-oriented, something that OpenGL promised for version 3.0 but failed to deliver.

 

[Aikouka]

By what metric?

Interestingly enough, while Anand has pointed out that the dual-core CPUs in the iPhones have been more than enough, the rumors are currently pointing to a quad core for the iPhone 6's A8. I'm a bit curious to see what Apple will do with it.

I think Metal is currently only good for the A7

Yep, that's what they said during WWDC. Of course, you can bet that it'll also work on the A8 that should be coming in the iPhone 6.

 

[TheStu]

Interestingly enough, while Anand has pointed out that the dual-core CPUs in the iPhones have been more than enough, the rumors are currently pointing to a quad core for the iPhone 6's A8. I'm a bit curious to see what Apple will do with it.



Yep, that's what they said during WWDC. Of course, you can bet that it'll also work on the A8 that should be coming in the iPhone 6.

Well yea, that's sort of a given. A7 and up basically.

 

[Aikouka]

Well yea, that's sort of a given. A7 and up basically.

Although, that makes me wonder... what will the A8 have as a GPU? I've seen that current rumors are pointing to a quad-core CPU and a "quad-core" GPU. The thing is... the A7's GPU is already a "quad-core" and PowerVR only announced their latest mobile GPUs (6XE, 6XT) back in January. So, what do you think they'll use?

At least according to the chart on Wikipedia, there's still a 6 cluster ("core") unit available. If the rumors are right about the iPhone 6 being 3x the size of the original iPhone (ignoring that the iPhone 5 was also taller) compared to the iPhone 4 being 2x the size, a 50% increase in processing power would put us at about the same processing power. Although, the only bad thing is that would really just put the device in (about) parity with its predecessor considering rendering at their screen resolution. Most people expect a larger increase in power.

Based on the performance speculated in the Anandtech article, It would be interesting if we get a PowerVR 6XT processor. Since 6XT doesn't appear to be much different architecturally, Metal probably wouldn't require much change to adapt it.

 

[Rakehellion]

How is the iPhone 4 twice the size of the original iPhone?

 

[Aikouka]

How is the iPhone 4 twice the size of the original iPhone?

...because it was the first one with the "Retina Display", which is double each dimension (or four times the number of pixels)?

 

[Rakehellion]

...because it was the first one with the "Retina Display", which is double each dimension (or four times the number of pixels)?

So the phone isn't twice the size, the display is four times the resolution.

iPhones have doubled in CPU every generation for the past several releases and GPU speed has at least doubled.

I'm pretty sure the next iPhone will be faster than the iPad Air and have fewer pixels, so it'll handle games well.