Kal-El demo

[Pliablemoose]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBvaDtshLY8

Wow, that's pretty impressive

 

[sciwizam]

Like Anand said in his article on this Kal-El demo, while what's coming maybe be actually interesting, Nvidia's marketing guys are pros at keeping you interested in what's coming.

Imagine this chip in your Padfonemer. :awe:

 

[gsaldivar]

Insanely great

 

[sciwizam]

Some additional info: The Glowball demo is made by Madfinger, the same company that made Samarai II: Vengeance and looks like ~4to ~6hrs of gameplay on a single charge, according to the CEO of Nvidia.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/228968/nvidia_shows_tablet_running_quadcore_tegra_chip.html

Huang said Kal-El will provide better graphics for gamers and for non-gamers, and run their existing applications with greater energy-efficiency, which should mean longer battery life.

"Kal El will do everything the Tegra 2 can do but at lower power," according to Huang.

Nvidia showed the chip running a game from MadFinger in which a ball illuminated from the inside rolls around a dark arena. Shadows cast by the ball were rendered in real time and at more than 30 frames per second, Huang said.

With all four cores in use, the tablet can run the game for four to six hours on a single charge, according to Huang.

 

[tonygeor]

Nvidia has a lot of competiton in qualcomm, powervx, and samsung

 

[Malak]

Scores of teenage girls that absolutely must have the latest phone/tablet won't even get the reference to the name...

 

[Aikouka]

After Tegra 2's somewhat lackluster performance, I'm a bit cautious to their claims. It certainly looked nice, but was there some slowdown after the ball got knocked around like crazy? Wasn't sure if it was just slowdown or quick movement.

 

[EightySix Four]

After Tegra 2's somewhat lackluster performance, I'm a bit cautious to their claims. It certainly looked nice, but was there some slowdown after the ball got knocked around like crazy? Wasn't sure if it was just slowdown or quick movement.

It was a slowdown, sitll better than what any other chip on the market can do right now. I kind of felt like Tegra 2 was overhyped and it underperformed, but that was just me.

 

[Rayb]

Nvidia has a lot of competiton in qualcomm, powervx, and samsung

Having a competition and showing up to compete are two very different scenarios.

With TI OMAP 4430, PowerVR SGX543, Samsung Exynos and Qualcomm’s MSM8660 are all competing with 1.5 year old tech of Tegra 2. If only Kal-El has doubled the performance (not the projected 5x) it should be an interesting release, at least the software development won't be as bad this time around.

 

[Aikouka]

It was a slowdown, sitll better than what any other chip on the market can do right now. I kind of felt like Tegra 2 was overhyped and it underperformed, but that was just me.

You mean "still better than any chip on the market has shown"? I'd be curious to see if a PowerVR SGX543 MP4+ (Sony's NGP is using this one) could perform in a similar fashion.

When I first heard about nVidia entering the mobile sector, I thought it'd be a good addition. What I didn't expect is that their offering would almost be equivalent to what they do in the discrete market. What I mean by that is how it seems that both nVidia and AMD release new offerings that seem to best their previous offering by only 10-20% ( maybe adding a fancy new feature or two as well ). If you look at the GPU portions in Anandtech's LG Optimus 2X review ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/4144/...gra-2-review-the-first-dual-core-smartphone/8 ) you will see that it can only beat the SGX540 by a ~20% margin (give or take a few percents per test).

Well, that's all fine and dandy in the discrete market, but the mobile sector is moving along at a brisker pace right now. That really showed when the iPad 2 came out... what was it... about a month and a half after the first Tegra 2 device debuted, and the PowerVR SGX543 MP2 just trounced Tegra 2's small dominance.

Honestly, I hope Tegra 3 is good, but I just have much less faith that nVidia won't do something dumb again.

 

[BenSkywalker]

What I mean by that is how it seems that both nVidia and AMD release new offerings that seem to best their previous offering by only 10-20%

Tegra2 is significantly more then 20% faster then the first Tegra.

If you look at the GPU portions in Anandtech's LG Optimus 2X review ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/4144/l...e-smartphone/8 ) you will see that it can only beat the SGX540 by a ~20% margin (give or take a few percents per test).

The best I can say to that is check out something written for Tegra like RiptideGP. Most of the graphics tests we see utilized in benchmark showdowns look like something on the N64 and run like crap- GLBenchmark/Quadrant being great examples of that; RiptideGP looks like something the PS2 wouldn't be able to run and is silky smooth on Tegra2. When I see visuals a couple generations beyond the benchmark running faster then the bench in an actual game, I start to question how well the bench is coded. For all of Futuremark's faults, at least their benches are visually stunning when they hit.

After Tegra 2's somewhat lackluster performance, I'm a bit cautious to their claims.

Utterly dominating the UP market for a quarter with noone close to competitive is lackluster, I really am a bit baffled by this line of "thought". Has there ever been any chip more dominant in this sector for longer? I hear a lot of talk about the other trade show demos, I've owned a Tegra2 part since February and it has only been a matter of days since I've been able to buy anything that is comparable from a phone. I really have no clue what people expect from a new part, but Tegra2 was certainly far more dominant when it started shipping then anything we are seeing coming out now.

 

[ponyo]

Utterly dominating the UP market for a quarter with noone close to competitive is lackluster, I really am a bit baffled by this line of "thought". Has there ever been any chip more dominant in this sector for longer? I hear a lot of talk about the other trade show demos, I've owned a Tegra2 part since February and it has only been a matter of days since I've been able to buy anything that is comparable from a phone. I really have no clue what people expect from a new part, but Tegra2 was certainly far more dominant when it started shipping then anything we are seeing coming out now.

If you mean by long as in a week, then yes. PowerVR SGX540 in the Galaxy S dominated the competition from June '10 til Tegra2 release in Feb-March '11. Tegra2 held the crown for month or two til SGX543 in Apple iPad2 was released. Last thing I would call Tegra2 is dominating. Adequate would be more like it.

The thing I'm disappointed in Tegra2 is not the game graphics but HD video aspect. It's sad when previous gen will play videos better than Tegra2. That's simply unacceptable to me.

 

[SunnyD]

Notice, the nvidia PR man held off till the absolute end to say the demo leverages all four CPU cores AND the new GPU in kal-el. My guess is that the GPU had more to do with it than the four cores, despite the canned demo showing otherwise.

 

[Aikouka]

Tegra2 is significantly more then 20% faster then the first Tegra.

The point of the initial paragraph wasn't meant to be taken as "Tegra 2 bests Tegra by only 20%" but rather "Tegra 2 bests Hummingbird by only 20%". Hence why I linked to that exact benchmark page. My initial spiel on their discrete changes may have been a bit confusing with that though.

The best I can say to that is check out something written for Tegra like RiptideGP. Most of the graphics tests we see utilized in benchmark showdowns look like something on the N64 and run like crap- GLBenchmark/Quadrant being great examples of that; RiptideGP looks like something the PS2 wouldn't be able to run and is silky smooth on Tegra2. When I see visuals a couple generations beyond the benchmark running faster then the bench in an actual game, I start to question how well the bench is coded. For all of Futuremark's faults, at least their benches are visually stunning when they hit.

Heh, I've actually wondered why the screen shots don't look too great compared to the frame rates that are shown in the graphs, but I figured that there may be other visual effects that we don't see.

I'm a bit wary of relying on device-specific benchmarks. There's a reason why benchmarks are typically written for common APIs (DirectX, OpenGL, etc). Although, it may be interesting for a review to show these if games released for the Tegra Zone will be using these custom APIs.

Utterly dominating the UP market for a quarter with noone close to competitive is lackluster, I really am a bit baffled by this line of "thought". Has there ever been any chip more dominant in this sector for longer? I hear a lot of talk about the other trade show demos, I've owned a Tegra2 part since February and it has only been a matter of days since I've been able to buy anything that is comparable from a phone. I really have no clue what people expect from a new part, but Tegra2 was certainly far more dominant when it started shipping then anything we are seeing coming out now.

You know, I'm actually not even sure why no one is really using other parts in their phones. All I see with new releases are either Tegra 2 (GeForce ULP), Adreno 205 or PowerVR SGX540, and the latter two are from last generation. Although, you could probably argue that the Adreno 205 is more or less this current generation since it only recently started becoming available in phones (Thunderbolt, etc), but it's performance is certainly not from this generation given it can't even best a SGX540:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4240/htc-thunderbolt-review-first-verizon-4g-lte-smartphone/9

Apple's iPad 2 has shown that the PowerVR SGX543 in its dual-core variation is a rather potent contender and given that there's also a quad-core variant (as I mentioned, Sony is using this in the NGP), but no one else is using either. I wonder if the first phone that will use it will actually be Apple's "iPhone 5".

EDIT:

Notice, the nvidia PR man held off till the absolute end to say the demo leverages all four CPU cores AND the new GPU in kal-el. My guess is that the GPU had more to do with it than the four cores, despite the canned demo showing otherwise.

I'm wondering if the physics were actually being handled by the CPU, which might explain why it was taxing all four cores pretty heavily.

 

[poofyhairguy]

The thing I'm disappointed in Tegra2 is not the game graphics but HD video aspect. It's sad when previous gen will play videos better than Tegra2. That's simply unacceptable to me.

Amen. That plus a lack of NEON support is why I don't have an Atrix or Transformer right now.

 

[maziwanka]

neat

 

[alent1234]

Nvidia has a lot of competiton in qualcomm, powervx, and samsung

kind of like the 1990's and ATI, Red something, 3dfx and a few others i can't remember anymore

the first nvidia graphics card sucked so bad it was funny. the Riva TNT was good. the Riva TNT 2 was the best one on the market at the time unless you bought a voodoo 2 add on.

after the Riva TNT 2 it was goodbye competition

 

[Genx87]

kind of like the 1990's and ATI, Red something, 3dfx and a few others i can't remember anymore

the first nvidia graphics card sucked so bad it was funny. the Riva TNT was good. the Riva TNT 2 was the best one on the market at the time unless you bought a voodoo 2 add on.

after the Riva TNT 2 it was goodbye competition

It will be interesting to see if they can replicate that tactic in this market as well.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I'm a bit wary of relying on device-specific benchmarks.

Unfortunately that's all we really have. What I use under those circumstances is the same standard I use when looking at other technology fields with comparable limitations in place- show me the best looking example you have.

All I see with new releases are either Tegra 2 (GeForce ULP), Adreno 205 or PowerVR SGX540, and the latter two are from last generation.

We all knew about Tegra2 at the beginning of 2010, if we were to see benches of it against the phones available at the time, it would have utterly obliterated all of them. At the beginning of 2010, nVidia could have shipped them and had them in phones. You can't get a design into the UP market nearly as quickly as you can in something like a tablet. On a comparable basis, we saw Kal-El hardware running several months ago too, time to market is a big factor and one what all the players have to deal with.

I'm wondering if the physics were actually being handled by the CPU, which might explain why it was taxing all four cores pretty heavily.

They were running on the CPU, if nVidia had CUDA running on Tegra believe me we wouldn't be able to avoid hearing about it if we wanted to.

If you mean by long as in a week, then yes. PowerVR SGX540 in the Galaxy S dominated the competition from June '10 til Tegra2 release in Feb-March '11.

Really?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3957/samsung-fascinate-review-verizons-galaxy-s-smartphone/7

Tegra2 held the crown for month or two til SGX543 in Apple iPad2 was released.

I stated the UP market, so link me up where there is a pocketable device using said processor please. Also note, I haven't been talking about the GeForce graphics chip, I've been talking about the SoC, on that note-

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4225/the-ipad-2-review/4

The CPU on the A5 isn't much worth talking about, the PowerVR built GPU included is the only thing that makes the A5 stand out in any sense.

The thing I'm disappointed in Tegra2 is not the game graphics but HD video aspect. It's sad when previous gen will play videos better than Tegra2. That's simply unacceptable to me.

Most videos play back flawlessly on T2, only certain types of encodes have issues which are those that use NEON to decode in the players.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Most videos play back flawlessly on T2, only certain types of encodes have issues which are those that use NEON to decode in the players.

If by most videos you mean almost non of the HD content out there. I have over 1000 HD movies, NONE play on a friend's Atrix. Its more than a lack of NEON support, its a lack of high profile support (which is the standard for HD content).

Meanwhile reports say the SGS2 plays any mkv you throw at it.