Clovertrail Atom GPU as fast as Core i GPU?!

[AndroAsc]

I found an interesting article on another forum, and thought I would highlight the keypoints here. It seems that the high-end smartphone/tablet GPUs of 2012 are equivalent to the GPU in the 1st generation Core i chips released in 2010!!!

The upcoming Clovertrail Atom is rumored to use a PowerVR SGX 544MP2@533Mhz which has a totally computing power of 34.1 GFLOPS. Interestingly, the existing iPad 3 GPU that uses a PowerVR SGX543MP4@200Mhz also has a similar computing power of 30+ GFLOPS.

Documents from Intel indicates that 1st generation Core i GPU had a computing power of 37 GFLOPS, with the current 2nd generation Core i GPU running at 50+ or 100+ GFLOPS for the Intel HD 2000 and 3000 series respectively.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...4Y1MlmRoy91G7A

Does this means that the iPad 3 and upcoming Atom Clovertrail SoC will have as much horsepower as the Intel GPU released only 2 years ago!?

More startling is the upcoming PowerVR 6 series coming up in early 2013 that I've seen claims to be around 100-200GFLOPS. I'm guessing that Ivy bridge Intel GPUs will bring it up to around 200ish GFLOPS. That will basically put smartphone GPU speed equivalent to that of a laptop integrated GPU within a year!!!

 

[ViRGE]

To be clear here, there's a lot more to GPU performance than just GFLOPs, especially when we're looking at cross-vendor comparisons.

That said it's entirely possible that a modern SoC could match a 2 year old iGPU, at least in some scenarios. However on an architectural basis the SoC is more likely to be fillrate limited.

As for PowerVR Series 6, it's impossible to say this early. You'd definitely want to wait for more architectural details and benchmarks before drawing any conclusions.