Imgtech PowerVR SGX545 vs. nVidia Tegra2

[thilanliyan]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=242824

 

[Nemesis 1]

Thanks so much for starting topic . Keeps Mods happy . I can't start new topics for some reason unknown. Maybe I missing something.

But The Topic you linked . I love it when the nay sayers come .

Lets explore one of there cuts. On this SOC . 1 at a time well look at the BS .

1st one . I will look at .

http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?NewsID=517

 

[nemesismk2]

Exciting stuff because I loved my PowerVR Kyro2 so getting anything PowerVR related would be so cool. PowerVR on my mobile phone would be wicked.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Exciting stuff because I loved my PowerVR Kyro2 so getting anything PowerVR related would be so cool. PowerVR on my mobile phone would be wicked.

I don't know whats On Intels new Smart Phone But I believe its VR. But not the 545.

The smart phone that turns heads will come with Intels 32nm . Later this year.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Heres a little about the 545 . Now when you look at the number of pixels. Don't be fooled unles you understand how Power VR works . Its not apples to Apples with how you think of it.
http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?NewsID=516

 

[Kakkoii]

Uhh, this discussion seems a bit pointless since nobody knows the specs of the GPU inside the Tegra 2.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Really . So in this topic who cares not I . But what I can say is intel did show a Smart phone using 45nm. Pretty sure it uses Vr . Its like Ananda said in his article about Tegra II , The most exciting part was the 2 cortex 9 CPUs . Well thats what this VR 545 uses so Ananda is got to be just as excited about this Chip on SoC as He is tegra II. Or something is very wrong . I am a bit surprised he didn't have an article about . Seems a bit odd . But it was released late in the day yesterday. Than you add in that Intels 32nm comes in 2010 . It makes for a very interesting 2010 , Lets stack the chips and see were they fall. I am betting on Intel and its VR tech to win the day . After all Intel did show Smart phone on the 8th Jan . on 45nm so its all looking like a knock down drag out fight to be . May the Best tech kick ass.

 

[Kakkoii]

Tegra 2 running Unreal Engine 3.
http://video.golem.de/games/2729/nvidia-tegra-berechnet-unreal-engine-3-auf-der-ces-2010.html

Looks quite good for such a small chip running it.

 

[Nemesis 1]

And this chip can't you have much to learn. So does that fit in a smart phone ?

 

[Kakkoii]

And this chip can't you have much to learn. So does that fit in a smart phone ?

Huh? I don't understand what you meant in your first sentence. And yes it fits into smart phones. Tegra is a very compact design. It was originally shown off in a prototype smartphone. And it's in the ZuneHD. Tegra 2 is about the same size.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Here I will clean up 1st sentence for ya. OK.

And this chip can't,you have much to learn.

Translation in response to your , Tegra 2 running Unreal Engine 3. My response. And this chip cann't you have much to learn .

You best read Anandas article this chip does not go into smartphone. Nv is working on that design still. Now your confussing the issue by saying Tegra was orginally prot0type smartphone. Tegra is not tegra II . So how many tegra smartphones were there.

Intel has shown a smartphone WIN on their 45nm using Imagination . By the time NV shows a smartphone with Tegra II Intel will have the 32nm chip SoC fabbed. TegraII not going anywhere fast. Imagination has them well covered . TegraII best hope is Apple and Apple is announcing on the 27 of Jan. What their up to . Keep in mind Apple has bought Imagination stock . Intel /Apple combined own almost 50% share of the stock with intel holding over 25% share . = to that of AMD 30% once owning foundries. In case your wondering . Ananda when looking at Tegra II was very excited about the dual cortex9 cpu. The Imagination 545 also uses dual cortex 9 . Imagination is already in smartphones lots and lots. NV isn't just going to come in and take over . Than we have Intels medfield SoC coming this year . Imgination gpus scale from 1 to 8 cores . Medfield will no doubt use imagination tech . Now whether intel uses the 5 series in handheld devicies has yet to be seen or their own design based on Imagination tech. Than you need to recall that Intel made a deal with another fab for SoC design so other companies using their own designs can feel comfortable about using medfield with say 8 imagination cores . that would be very powerful netbook very powerful . As I said you have much to learn . TegraII looks good . But don't just jump on it because of product companies name . Imagination isn't a new company they are the company in the handheld market. The 5 series strengthens their position , It does not weaken it. Imagination is very thrifty when it comes to power usage.

 

[Kakkoii]

I didn't say Tegra was originally a prototype smart phone. I said they originally showed it off in one. Their plan was to first get into the mobile phone market, and then spread to laptops and other mobiles devices.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TegraByNVIDIA#p/u

I don't have much to learn, I already know. You merely have a difference in opinion.
Tegra II isn't just a dual cortex a9 with a GPU like Imagination Tech's SoC is. Tegra II has a bunch of smaller single purpose processors for use on specific tasks to reduce power consumption. Not throwing the main CPU at every task. It's very high efficiency while still powerful makes it a very attractive candidate for smart phone makers. These phone makers usually value battery life more than top performance, as do general consumers unlike us tech enthusiast's.

And of course Nvidia won't just suddenly take the whole market by storm. But most companies are always looking for the best option, and Tegra is looking to be that option now. How fast companies start to move over to it well just have to wait and see.

 

[IntelUser2000]

*snip*

Than we have Intels medfield SoC coming this year . Imgination gpus scale from 1 to 8 cores . Medfield will no doubt use imagination tech.

*snip*

Not saying about anything else, but Medfield is NOT coming this year. They'll release Moorestown sometime in Q1 with product launches in Q2, that will leave Medfield launch around 2011.

 

[Nemesis 1]

I only going by whats being reported.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Atom-Medfield,6671.html

 

[Outrage]

here you have a pdf with intels roadmap.

http://www.umpcportal.com/downloads/2009_05_IM_Chandrasekher_final.pdf

medfield in 2011

 

[Nemesis 1]

Thanks much for that link . But it is possiable in light of GF getting bulk 28 out in second half Intel has moved up Medfield is it not . I really don't care one way or the other . I just not real happy about how it was reported and covered by AT hence I wanted this topic to let others know the cortex 9 was on the 545 chip . AT only mentioned the 540 . I do understand the time between press releases tho . I have a horse in this race. Its imagination , So its natural I want it reported also . Let wait for real world results to see who has better products.

 

[Voo]

The article you posted is more than one year old..

 

[bnasty]

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h.../POWERVR_SGX_Series5_IP_Core_Family_[2.3].pdfPowervr specs sheet

POWERVR SGX Series5 family Smart and feature phones
Family members SGX520/530/531/535/540/545
Triangles/sec* 7m – 40m
Pixels/sec* 250m – 1000m
2.6 mm2 – 12.5 mm2 Area (65nm process)

* Realistic, sustainable, SoC performance at 200 MHz (e.g. less In-car navigation and driver information than 50% shader load); peak performance significantly higher Electronic dashboards dependent on content and operating conditions. Ultra-mobile PCs, laptops and netbooks
​

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h...OWERVR_SGX_Series5XT_IP_Core_Family_[1.0].pdfPowerVR SGX Series 5XT specs sheet

POWERVR SGX Series5XT family Smart and feature phones
Family members
Series 5: SGX520/530/531/535/540/545
Series 5XT: SGX543/SGX543MP

Triangles/sec* 7m – 140m
Pixels/sec* 250m – 4000m
2.6 mm2 – 32 mm2 Area (65nm process)

* Realistic, sustainable, SoC performance at 200 MHz (e.g. less than 50% shader load); peak performance significantly higher dependent on content and operating conditions.
​

Those specs are well above the Tegra2. I'm looking forward to a SOC that provides the 545 pvr chip to see an eye to eye comparison.

Hope that's ok to share. It was publicly listed..



For future reference PowerVR's PDF download section: http://www.imgtec.com/downloads.asp#WhitePapers

 

[Fox5]

Tegra 2 running Unreal Engine 3.
http://video.golem.de/games/2729/nvidia-tegra-berechnet-unreal-engine-3-auf-der-ces-2010.html

Looks quite good for such a small chip running it.

There's a video on anandtech of the iphone 3gs running unreal engine 3 also. If you strip the graphics down enough, it'll work.

However, tegra 2 should be powerful enough to be within 'quick-glance equivalence' (TM) of the ps3 and 360.

Tegra II isn't just a dual cortex a9 with a GPU like Imagination Tech's SoC is. Tegra II has a bunch of smaller single purpose processors for use on specific tasks to reduce power consumption. Not throwing the main CPU at every task. It's very high efficiency while still powerful makes it a very attractive candidate for smart phone makers. These phone makers usually value battery life more than top performance, as do general consumers unlike us tech enthusiast's.

All SOCs have many processors integrated to focus on power efficiency. Nvidia threw in a few more processors than most, but it's not unusual to have 1 to 3 extra coprocessors (in addition to the primary cpu(s) and graphics cores) in a cell phone soc. Nvidia's boasts about tegra/tegra2's power efficiency are even more impressive than their boasts about its graphics performance.
Tegra 2 is going to provide dual core atom levels of performance, directx10 (maybe 10.1) feature set, and performance that fits in with low end geforce 8 series cards. (ie, full pc igp performance)

Of course, what exists on the market already more than fills the need cell phones have for 3d graphics. The recently released snapdragon has rather slow ati graphics, but they're more than fast enough for the cell phone market.

 

[Nemesis 1]

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h.../POWERVR_SGX_Series5_IP_Core_Family_[2.3].pdfPowervr specs sheet

POWERVR SGX Series5 family Smart and feature phones
Family members SGX520/530/531/535/540/545
Triangles/sec* 7m – 40m
Pixels/sec* 250m – 1000m
2.6 mm2 – 12.5 mm2 Area (65nm process)

* Realistic, sustainable, SoC performance at 200 MHz (e.g. less In-car navigation and driver information than 50% shader load); peak performance significantly higher Electronic dashboards dependent on content and operating conditions. Ultra-mobile PCs, laptops and netbooks
​

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h...OWERVR_SGX_Series5XT_IP_Core_Family_[1.0].pdfPowerVR SGX Series 5XT specs sheet

POWERVR SGX Series5XT family Smart and feature phones
Family members
Series 5: SGX520/530/531/535/540/545
Series 5XT: SGX543/SGX543MP

Triangles/sec* 7m – 140m
Pixels/sec* 250m – 4000m
2.6 mm2 – 32 mm2 Area (65nm process)

* Realistic, sustainable, SoC performance at 200 MHz (e.g. less than 50% shader load); peak performance significantly higher dependent on content and operating conditions.
​

Those specs are well above the Tegra2. I'm looking forward to a SOC that provides the 545 pvr chip to see an eye to eye comparison.

Hope that's ok to share. It was publicly listed..



For future reference PowerVR's PDF download section: http://www.imgtec.com/downloads.asp#WhitePapers

Thanks for the links . You got ahead of were I wanted this topic ,At this time but good for you.

If you view the Topic starters Link to XS. You will notice its all about opinion with very little facts attached to those opinions . Thats what makes AT forums the Best . Please stay and keep posting as you did in your very first post . Thats what this forum is about.

Yes Imagination has a very formidable tech . Tegra II is in for a battle . But its what months away befor we truelly see this battle fought. At 40nm, On intel atom at 32(medfield) its should be awlsome

 

[Fox5]

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h.../POWERVR_SGX_Series5_IP_Core_Family_[2.3].pdfPowervr specs sheet

POWERVR SGX Series5 family Smart and feature phones
Family members SGX520/530/531/535/540/545
Triangles/sec* 7m – 40m
Pixels/sec* 250m – 1000m
2.6 mm2 – 12.5 mm2 Area (65nm process)

* Realistic, sustainable, SoC performance at 200 MHz (e.g. less In-car navigation and driver information than 50% shader load); peak performance significantly higher Electronic dashboards dependent on content and operating conditions. Ultra-mobile PCs, laptops and netbooks
​

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h...OWERVR_SGX_Series5XT_IP_Core_Family_[1.0].pdfPowerVR SGX Series 5XT specs sheet

POWERVR SGX Series5XT family Smart and feature phones
Family members
Series 5: SGX520/530/531/535/540/545
Series 5XT: SGX543/SGX543MP

Triangles/sec* 7m – 140m
Pixels/sec* 250m – 4000m
2.6 mm2 – 32 mm2 Area (65nm process)

* Realistic, sustainable, SoC performance at 200 MHz (e.g. less than 50% shader load); peak performance significantly higher dependent on content and operating conditions.
​

Those specs are well above the Tegra2. I'm looking forward to a SOC that provides the 545 pvr chip to see an eye to eye comparison.

Hope that's ok to share. It was publicly listed..



For future reference PowerVR's PDF download section: http://www.imgtec.com/downloads.asp#WhitePapers

If those are like the specs imgtec used to put out back in the day, they're taking into account the tile based deferred rendering of their chips. While of course it would offer some benefit, they typically marketed it at 5x to 10x the performance, whereas actual performance was 2x to 3x.

So that's 250mpixels base, and then with tbdr they go up to 1.25gpixels or maybe even 2.5gpixels. With their max specs listed, that probably means their top end chip does between 400mpixels to 800mpixels base, and realistically we could expect 2x to 3x that in actual performance.
Same for the polys really, though I often remember hearing that high polygon counts were a weakness of a tbdr, primarily because it's difficult to sort the polygons in a way that gets the full performance benefit.
I'm not sure of the specifics, but a tbdr basically collapses down the 3d image into a 2d one, and only renders what is visible. Normally fillrate and polygon counts would be eaten up by overdraw. This gives basically free multi-texturing and anti aliasing on a tbdr, and a big boost to usable fillrate (until you get into pixel shaders perhaps).

Unfortunately, in the case of polygon rendering, I think the tech only works with front to back sorted polys (ie, the polygons are sorted in order of increasing depth from the view).

I don't know the specifics of why that is bad either, but since the tbdr tech relies on what is visible, having the polys sorted in a random or non-optimal order could break it. It might even mean that highly efficient static geometry is difficult to use on a tbdr, forcing it to use slower dynamic geometry. The other option is just to ignore the problems and render things incorrectly, which is part of the reason tbdrs failed on the desktop.
And in the case that the polygons ARE sorted front to back, then both nvidia and ati possess hidden surface removal tech to boost their polygon and fillrate counts. Because of how few apps are rendered like this, nvidia and ati don't boost their specs by including mention of it.

So basically, I'd say the fillrate counts imgtech is given out are overrated (unless you want to assume they're including high levels of anti aliasing in that fillrate, in which case it's a misleading way to say free anti aliasing). The polygon counts are practically outright lies, if my understanding of the limitations of the technology are correct.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Well we all know whats coming . You offered a sound opinion but thats all you offered . Soon enough well see .

 

[Fox5]

The SGX545 specs list it as doing 40 million polys/sec and fillrate of 1Gpixels/s, but that rate includes an overdraw of 2.5x (not unreasonable). That means actual fill rate is 400Mpixels/s.
The currently available SGX535 does 26 million polys/s.

Tegra's gpu specs are:
650 pixels/sec
47 million polys/sec
Which puts it in the same class as the sgx545.

The ATI gpu in qualcomm's snap dragon has a low fillrate, but does 80 million polygons, 100Mpixels/s, and 350MTexels/s.
And tegra 2's gpu is supposed to be 4x as powerful as tegra 1, though we haven't seen concrete specs yet. That would put it at over 2GPixels/s, and 200 Million polys/s.
That's just about desktop IGP performance.

Still, the PowerVR tech has achieved penetration into almost all high end smart phones, and that has to be due to low cost. The SGX series is TINY, and typically only adds 5 mm^2 to the die size. Even for a cell phone cpu, that's a marginal increase in cost.
Tegra and Tegra 2 on the other hand are premium chips that come at a premium cost.
The Omap 3430 (the most commonly used chip with an SGX) is 77mm^2, of which the SGX530 takes up about 5mm^2. The entire tegra 1 chip is about double the size, and tegra 2 might be 3x the size, despite being built on a 40nm process.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Actually that over draw means that 40 million is what is seen and no covered or hidden polygons . That 40 million is what well view in a scene . Since its already been posted now . Thats really they baby chip the power chips are the 4000m or 4 billion pixels and a 140m triangles. These are the 5xt seies @ 65nm . Its going to be very interesting this medfield chip. at 32nm. You can read it in one of the links I posted about the visable polygons

 

[Fox5]

Actually that over draw means that 40 million is what is seen and no covered or hidden polygons . That 40 million is what well view in a scene . Since its already been posted now . Thats really they baby chip the power chips are the 4000m or 4 billion pixels and a 140m triangles. These are the 5xt seies @ 65nm . Its going to be very interesting this medfield chip. at 32nm. You can read it in one of the links I posted about the visable polygons

The 40 million spec is without overdraw of any sort. However, it's hard to make a real game where the poly count benefits significantly from tbdr.
The 1Gpixel fillrate includes an overdraw of 2.5x, and this comes straight from ImgTech. 2.5x is typical of a normal game/application, 4 gpixel/s will only be achieved in tech demo.

What chip is medfield at 32nm? The Intel Atom processor? Tegra 2 is already pushing size limits for the cell phone market, Medfield won't be going into anything with a screen smaller than 5". And if Medfield's gpu is anything like Intel's last attempt to use a PowerVR IGP, it'll be hampered by horrible drivers that keep it from ever using its full feature set or performance.

Also, at the moment, PowerVR has nothing more powerful than the SGX545, which is a Tegra competitor. However, it can scale up to 8 cores, potentially targeted at the PC market but not cell phones. Given how tiny the powervr cores are, they might be able to fit 8 cores into the same space as one tegra 2.