[techpowerup] ARM reviving powerVR a new workstation challenger approaches!!

[IonusX]

for those old enough to rememeber powerVR was a line of gpu's that existed around the time of the gf3 vs radon 8000 were walking the earth. powerVR got lost in the shuffle since.
ARM has now taken powerVR and with the help of some recent aquisitions wants to push her back out into the market as a real-time ray tracing workstation card to compete with the likes of quadro and firestream and will be ready for a release this year. does PowerVR have what it takes or will this be a repeat preformance??
source

 

[Nemesis 1]

Funny post . I liked the replies to link the best . NV will buy power VR . I will wager anyone anytime any place this will never haven . Between intel /apple they own around 49% of VR With intel the largest share holder of the 2.Tech powerup inserted ARM intothis some way or another . Medfield uses These gpus anything Arm can do intel can do better.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I wonder how long it will be before this ARM fad fades away.

 

[notty22]

I wonder how long it will be before this ARM fad fades away.

Not anytime soon..
This NVIDIA CUDA on ARM development kit.

 

[mak360]

It will be interesting to see powerVR succeed without stepping on a bucket full of Patents from AMD & nVidia.

 

[Fox5]

for those old enough to rememeber powerVR was a line of gpu's that existed around the time of the gf3 vs radon 8000 were walking the earth. powerVR got lost in the shuffle since.
ARM has now taken powerVR and with the help of some recent aquisitions wants to push her back out into the market as a real-time ray tracing workstation card to compete with the likes of quadro and firestream and will be ready for a release this year. does PowerVR have what it takes or will this be a repeat preformance??
source

This has nothing to do with ARM, other than PowerVR tech only currently being available on ARM socs. ARM actually has competing graphics technology to PowerVR now.
It will be interesting to see if PowerVR can actually compete. Their current mobile implementations have lower transistor density than competing solutions from AMD and Nvidia, and their main strength, tile based deferred rendering, has far less relevance now than it used to. (although it still makes a lot of sense on the bandwidth starved mobile phones)

However, the GPGPU and professional workstation market has very high margins currently. There's room for PowerVR to enter as the low cost competitor, especially if they can provide a compelling software solution to go along with it. Still, that's nvidia's market at the moment, where even AMD/ATI is already a lower cost competitor with minimal market share, and I can't see PowerVR packing more compute power on a card than AMD can.

Actually, upon further reading, I noticed the ray tracing spin. A dedicated ray tracing card could give them a unique advantage, as it's likely AMD and nvidia won't enter that market (other than OpenCL/CUDA) directly because they have too much invested in the status quo of the market. Can a dedicated ray-tracing accelerator beat out the compute density of AMD and nvidia?

 

[Dark Shroud]

Not anytime soon..
This NVIDIA CUDA on ARM development kit.

I'm well aware of Nvidia's push with ARM since it's their only option for expansion.

 

[Nemesis 1]

It will be interesting to see powerVR succeed without stepping on a bucket full of Patents from AMD & nVidia.

I don't think NV or AMD would make a move against VR . As they both know Intel would just outright buy VR. end of lawsuite. I don't believe NV wants to have a nights corner on the highend and Intel VR on the low end. But as close as imagination intel are I can certainly see were this heading with raytracing an intel pet project . If Arm tries to use the VR chips in this manner Intel steps in and buys imagination tech, This caustic buy out wasn't AMD or NV using caustic raytracing?

Keep in mind every year patents time expires and when was it NV bought VooDoo a holder of many many old patents that are at the end of their lives. That Why intel keeps adding things like AVX fresh patents A lot of patents must run out in the next 5 years as thats all the further intel would go with NV on there 6 year agreement At the end there will be NO new agreements. I just hope NV was smart enough to make sure Intel doesn't pull that which they received in the settlement . NV better have made sure the patents NV got from intel expire in the next 5 years or NV is screwed. Because Intel will not renew the agreement . As my wifes brother inlaw told us . Everthing NV gave intel patents run out befor agreement ends . So intel has no reason to set back down with NV to redo terms. Intel paid alot to NV for the use of those patents . Intels isn't going to forget. But I sure NV wouldn't build there system on intel patents that don't run out befor the agreement time expires

 

[Nemesis 1]

This has nothing to do with ARM, other than PowerVR tech only currently being available on ARM socs. ARM actually has competing graphics technology to PowerVR now.
It will be interesting to see if PowerVR can actually compete. Their current mobile implementations have lower transistor density than competing solutions from AMD and Nvidia, and their main strength, tile based deferred rendering, has far less relevance now than it used to. (although it still makes a lot of sense on the bandwidth starved mobile phones)

However, the GPGPU and professional workstation market has very high margins currently. There's room for PowerVR to enter as the low cost competitor, especially if they can provide a compelling software solution to go along with it. Still, that's nvidia's market at the moment, where even AMD/ATI is already a lower cost competitor with minimal market share, and I can't see PowerVR packing more compute power on a card than AMD can.

Actually, upon further reading, I noticed the ray tracing spin. A dedicated ray tracing card could give them a unique advantage, as it's likely AMD and nvidia won't enter that market (other than OpenCL/CUDA) directly because they have too much invested in the status quo of the market. Can a dedicated ray-tracing accelerator beat out the compute density of AMD and nvidia?

Actually Intel has medfield in production now using Vr gpus, do for release second qt. 2012 in China. I didn't know AMD had anything that would compete in This area . What is it the AMD has that goes into phones. Or did you just blow smoke rings . Also who has the best phone graphics? Fastest. not tegra

 

[Fox5]

Actually Intel has medfield in production now using Vr gpus, do for release second qt. 2012 in China. I didn't know AMD had anything that would compete in This area . What is it the AMD has that goes into phones. Or did you just blow smoke rings . Also who has the best phone graphics? Fastest. not tegra

You missed my point entirely. Let me summarize.

In performance per die size (which directly relates to cost), nvidia and AMD outperform any other graphics technology on the market. They have the best transistor density out there in graphics. AMD currently leads nvidia in this, but both have sizable advantages over PowerVR and Intel in this metric.

The AMD Brazos chip isn't low power enough for a phone, but the die size is comparable to Apple's A5, while being at a much higher performance level. Similar cost, much higher performance.
Tegra 3 is considerably smaller than Apple's A5, but fits in a quad core and about half the graphics power.

 

[wahdangun]

isn't powerVR owned by intel ????

 

[Dark Shroud]

isn't powerVR owned by intel ????

It's partially owned by Intel. There are a number of companies that Intel has their hands in.

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Also, to anyone interested in seeing what is being down with AMD APUs:

Don't worry the video isn't too long.

http://revision3.com/geekbeattv/ces2012-xi3