PowerVR

China Product


Implementations

Dreamcast

The second generation PowerVR2 ("PowerVR Series 2", chip codename "CLX2") chip found a market in the Dreamcast console between 1998 and 2001. As part of an internal competition at Sega to design the successor to the Saturn, the PowerVR2 was licensed to NEC and was chosen ahead of a rival design based on the 3dfx Voodoo 2. Thanks to the performance of the PowerVR2, several Dreamcast games such as Quake III Arena could rival their PC counterparts in quality and performance. However, the success of the Dreamcast meant that the PC variant, sold as Neon 250, appeared a year late to the market and was at that time mid-range at best. motorola bluetooth hs850

KYRO and KYRO II e2c

Kyro II. hs850

In 2001, STMicroelectronics adopted the third generation PowerVR3 for their STG4000 KYRO and STG 4500 KYRO II (displayed) chips. The STM PowerVR3 KYRO II, released in 2001, was able to rival the more expensive ATI Radeon DDR and NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS in graphic benchmarks of the time, despite not having hardware Transform and lighting (T&L). Unfortunately, as games were increasingly optimized for hardware T&L, the KYRO II lost its performance advantage. Today it is no longer supported by new released games.

STM's STG5000 chip was based upon the PowerVR4, which did include hardware T&L but it never came to commercial fruition.

Technology

The PowerVR chipset uses a unique approach to rendering a 3D scene, known as tile-based deferred rendering (often abbreviated as TBDR). As the polygon generating program feeds triangles to the PowerVR (driver) it stores them in memory in a triangle strip or an indexed format. Unlike other architectures, polygon rendering is (usually) not performed until all polygon information has been collated for the current frameence rendering is deferred.

In order to render, the display is split into rectangular sections in a grid pattern. Each section is known as a tile. Associated with each tile is a list of the triangles that visibly overlap that tile. Each tile is rendered in turn to produce the final image.

Tiles are rendered using a process similar to ray-casting. Rays are cast onto the triangles associated with the tile and a pixel is rendered from the triangle closest to the camera. The PowerVR hardware typically calculates the depths associated with each polygon for one tile row in 1 cycle.

This method has the advantage that, unlike a more traditional z-buffered rendering pipeline, no calculations need to be made to determine what a polygon looks like in an area where it is obscured by other geometry. It also allows for correct rendering of partially transparent polygons, independent of the order in which they are processed by the polygon producing application. (This capability was only implemented in Series 2 and one MBX variant. It is generally not included for lack of API support and cost reasons.) More importantly, as the rendering is limited to one tile at a time, the whole tile can be in fast onchip memory, which is flushed to video memory before processing the next tile. Under normal circumstances, each tile is visited just once per frame.

PowerVR is not the only pioneer of tile based deferred rendering, but the only one to successfully bring a TBDR solution to market. Microsoft also conceptualised the idea with their abandoned Talisman project. Gigapixel, a company that developed IP for tile-based deferred 3D graphics, was purchased by 3dfx, who were subsequently purchased by Nvidia. Nvidia currently has no official plans to pursue tile-based rendering.

Intel uses a similar concept in their integrated graphics solutions. However, their method, coined zone rendering, does not perform full hidden surface removal (HSR) and deferred texturing, therefore wasting fillrate and texture bandwidth on pixels that are not visible in the final image.

Recent advances in hierarchical Z-buffering have effectively incorporated ideas previously only used in deferred rendering, including the idea of being able to split a scene into tiles and of potentially being able to accept or reject tile sized pieces of polygon.

See Deferred shading for more details about how recent techniques make use of new shader models to implement deferred rendering.

PowerVR chipsets

Places where PowerVR technology and its various iterations have been used:

Series 1 (NEC)

VideoLogic Apocalypse 3Dx (NEC PowerVR PCX2 chip)

Product

Type

Chip Name

Clock Rate

Compaq 3D card

Supplied with some Presario systems

"Midas 3" chip set

66 MHz

Apocalypse 3d/3dx

3D PC add-in board

PCX-1 and PCX-2

60 and 66 MHz

Matrox m3D

3D PC add-in board

PCX-2

66 MHz

Series 2 (NEC)

Product

Type

Chip Name

Clock Rate

Dreamcast

Console

CLX2

100 MHz

Neon250

2D/3D PC Add-in Board

PowerVR 250PC

125 MHz

Sega NAOMI

Arcade Machine

CLX2

100 MHz

Sega NAOMI2

Arcade Machine

2 CLX2s + ELAN (Transform and Lighting processor)

100 MHz

Series 3 (STMicro)

Product

Type

Chip Name

Clock Rate

KYRO

2D/3D PC add-in board

STG4000

115 MHz

KYRO II

2D/3D PC add-in board

STG4500

175 MHz

KYRO IISE

2D/3D PC add-in board

STG4800

200 MHz

VGX

PowerVR VGX150

MBX

With KYRO 3 (2D/3D AIB) products shelved due to STMicro closing its graphics division, PowerVR concentrated on the portable market with its next design, the low power PowerVR MBX. It, and its SGX successors, have become the de facto standards for mobile 3D, having been licensed by seven of the top ten semiconductor manufacturers including Intel, Texas Instruments, Samsung, NEC, NXP Semiconductors, Freescale, Renesas and Sunplus, and are in use in many high-end cellphones including the iPhone, Nokia N900, Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson P1 and Motorola RIZR Z8.

There are two variants: MBX and MBX Lite. Both have the same feature set. MBX is optimized for speed and MBX Lite is optimized for low power consumption. A MBX can be paired up with an FPU, Lite FPU, VGP Lite and VGP.

Freescale i.MX31BX Lite + FPU (VFP11) + ARM1136

DAVE Embedded Systems Qong (SOM)

ELSA PAL Mini Book e-A533-L

Garz & Fricke Adelaide

TQ Components TQMa31

iCEphone

Freescale i.MX31CBX Lite + FPU (VFP11) + ARM1136

Cogent CSB733 (SOM)

DAVE Embedded Systems Qong (SOM)

Freescale MPC5121eBX Lite + VGP Lite + PowerPC e300

CherryPal C114

DAVE Embedded Systems Aria (SOM)

LimePC range (UMPC, HandheldPC, PalmPC, LimePC HDTV set)

PhaedruS SystemS CSB781

GDA Technologies Bali Reference Board

Intel CE 2110BX Lite + XScale

ASUS set-top boxes

Chunghwa Telecom Multimedia on Demand set-top boxes

Digeo Moxi Multi-Room HD Digital Media Recorder

Digeo Moxi Mate

Digital Video Networks set-top boxes

OKI Next Generation Hybrid STB

ZTE set-top boxes

Marvell 2700G - discontinued - (was Intel 2700G)BX Lite (as a companion to the Marvell (was Intel) XScale processor PXA27x)

Advance Tech M.A.G.I.C.

Advantech UbiQ-350

Advantech UbiQ-470

Compulab CM-F82 (PowerPC Module)

Dell Axim X50v

Dell Axim X51v

Dresser Wayne iX

Gigabyte GSmart t600

Gigabyte GSmart MW998

Palm Foleo

Pepper Pad

PFU Systems MediaStaff DS

NXP Nexperia PNX4008BX Lite + FPU + ARM926

Sony Ericsson M600 and M608c

Sony Ericsson P1i and P1c

Sony Ericsson P990 and P990c

Sony Ericsson W950i and W958c

Sony Ericsson W960i and W960c

NXP Nexperia PNX4009BX Lite + FPU + ARM926

Sony Ericsson G700 and G700c

Sony Ericsson G700 Business Edition

Sony Ericsson G900

Sony Ericsson P200

Renesas SH3707BX + VGP + FPU + SH-4

Sega Aurora

Renesas SH-Mobile3 (SH73180), Renesas SH-Mobile3+ (SH73182), Renesas SH-Mobile3A (SH73230), Renesas SH-Mobile3A+ (SH73450)BX Lite + VGP Lite + SH-X(SH4AL-DSP)

Fujitsu F702iD

Fujitsu F901iC

Fujitsu F902i

Fujitsu F902iS

Helio Hero

Mitsubishi D702i

Mitsubishi D851iWM (MUSIC PORTER X)

Mitsubishi D901i

Mitsubishi D901iS

Mitsubishi D902i

Mitsubishi D902iS

Motorola MS550

Pantech PN-8300

SK Teletech (SKY) IM-8300

Renesas SH-Mobile G1BX Lite + VGP Lite + SH-X2(SH4AL-DSP)

Fujitsu F704i

Fujitsu Raku-Raku PHONE III (F882iES)

Fujitsu Raku-Raku PHONE Basic (F883i)

Fujitsu Raku-Raku PHONE IV (F883iES)

Fujitsu F903i

Fujitsu F903iX HIGH-SPEED

Fujitsu F904i

Mitsubishi D704i

Mitsubishi D903i

Mitsubishi D903iTV

Mitsubishi D904i

Renesas SH-Mobile G2BX Lite + VGP Lite + SH-X2(SH4AL-DSP)

Fujitsu F905i

Mitsubishi D905i

Sharp SH905i

Sony Ericsson SO905i

Sony Ericsson SO905iCS

Fujitsu F906i

Fujitsu F706i

Sharp SH906i

Sharp SH906iTV

Sharp SH706i

Sharp SH706ie

Sharp SH706iw

Sony Ericsson SO906i

Sony Ericsson SO706i

Renesas SH-Navi1 (SH7770)BX + VGP + FPU + SH-X(SH-4A), Renesas unidentifiedBX + SuperH

Alpine Car Information Systems

Clarion MAX960HD

Clarion NAX963HD

Clarion NAX970HD

Clarion NAX973HD and MAX973HD

Clarion MAX9700DT

Clarion MAX9750DT

Mitsubishi HDD Navi H9000

Mitsubishi HDD Navi H9700

Pioneer Carrozzeria HDD CyberNavi AVIC-VH009

Pioneer Carrozzeria HDD CyberNavi AVIC-ZH900MD

Renesas SH-Navi2G (SH7775)BX + VGP + FPU + SH-X2(SH-4A)

Samsung S3C2460BX Lite + FPU + ARM926

Samsung S5L8900BX Lite + VGP Lite + FPU (VFP11) + ARM1176

iPhone

iPhone 3G

iPod Touch

iPod Touch 2nd gen

iPod Nano 4th gen

iPod Nano 5th gen

SiRF SiRFprimaBX Lite + VGP Lite + MVED1 + FPU + ARM11

Dmedia G400 WiMAX MID

CMMB K704

CMMB T700

ACCO MID Q7

ACCO P439

FineDrive iQ500

RMVB C7

Vanhe T700

WayteQ X610, X620, N800, N810, X810, X820

YFI 80T-1

Sunplus unidentifiedBX

Texas Instruments OMAP 2420BX + VGP + FPU (VFP11) + ARM1136

Motorola MOTO Q 9h

Motorola MOTO Q music 9m

Motorola MOTO Q PRO

Motorola MOTORIZR Z8

Motorola MOTORIZR Z10

NEC N902i

NEC N902iS

NEC N902iX HIGH-SPEED

Nokia E90 Communicator

Nokia N82

Nokia N93

Nokia N93i

Nokia N95 (Classic, US, SoftBank X02NK Japanese, and 8 GB versions) ( N95 RM-159 / 245 = TI OMAP DM290Z WV C-68A0KYW EI )

Nokia N800

Nokia N810

Nokia N810 Wimax edition

Panasonic P702iD

Panasonic P702iS

Panasonic P902i

Panasonic P902iS

Sharp SH702iD

Sharp SH702iS

Sharp SH902i

Sharp SH902iS

Sharp DOLCE SL (SH902iSL)

Sony Ericsson SO902i

Sony Ericsson SO902iWP+

Texas Instruments OMAP2430BX Lite + VGP Lite + FPU + ARM1136

ASUS M536

Fujitsu F1100

NEC N903i

NEC N904i

NEC N905i

NEC N905i

Palm Treo 800w

Panasonic P903i

Panasonic P903iTV

Panasonic P903iX HIGH-SPEED

Samsung SGH-G810

Samsung SGH-i550

Samsung SGH-i560

Samsung innov8 (SGH-i8510)

Samsung GT-i7110

Sharp SH704i

Sharp SH903i

Sharp SH904i

Sony Ericsson SO704i

Sony Ericsson SO903i

Texas Instruments OMAP2530BX Lite + VGP Lite + FPU + ARM1176

Thinkware iNAVI K2

Digital Cube iStation T5

APSI LM480

PowerVR Video Cores(MVED/VXD)

Marvell PXA310/312VED

Airis T483 / T482L

Blackberry Bold 9700

Geeks'Phone ONE

General Mobile DSTL1

Gigabyte GSmart MS808

HP iPaq 11x/21x

HKC Prado

HKC Mopad 8/E

HKC G920, G908

i-MATE 810F (Hummer)

Motorola FR68 and FR6000

NIM1000

NDrive S400

Pharos 565

Qigi AK007C, i6-Goal, i6-Win, i6C, U8/U8P

RoverPC Pro G7, X7, evo V7

Samsung i780, i900 Omnia, i907 Epix, i908 Omnia, i910 Omnia, SCH-M490 T*OMNIA, SCH-M495 T*OMNIA

Samsung SPH-M4800 Ultra Messaging II

SoftBank 930SC Omnia

WayteQ X520 , X-Phone

SI Electronics unidentifiedXD380

NEC EMMA 3TLXD380

Series5 (SGX)

PowerVR SGX (pixel, vertex, and geometry shader hardware)

next generation fully programmable universal scalable shader architecture

exceeding requirements of OpenGL 2.0 and up to DirectX 10.1 Shader Model 4.1

licensed to Apple Inc, Sony, Intel, Nokia, Renesas, NEC, TI, MediaTek, NXP Semiconductors, Samsung, Sigma Designs, SigmaTel, SiRF and others

size from 2.6mm 2to 12.5mm 2(@65nm)

6 variants announced:

SGX520 (7 MPolys/s, 250Mpx/s@200MHz) for the handheld mobile market

SGX530 (14 MPolys/s, ?Mpx/s@200MHz)for the handheld mobile market

SGX531

SGX535 (28 MPolys/s, 400Mpx/s@200MHz, Max Memory Band (GB/s) 4.2GB/s)for handheld high end mobile, portable, MID, UMPC, consumer, and automotive devices (Intel calls it the GMA 500)

SGX540 (twice performance of SGX530)

SGX545 (40 MPolys/s, 1000Mpx/s@200MHz)

Products that include the SGX:

Apple unidentifiedGX535 + VXD (Samsung manufactured)

Apple iPhone 3GS

Apple iPod Touch 3rd Gen (32GB/64GB)

Intel CE 3100GX535(Intel GMA500) + Pentium M

Conceptronic YUIXX

Gigabyte GN-MD300-RH

Metrological's Mediaconnect TV

Routon H3

Samsung STB-HDDVR

Toshiba Connected TVs

Toshiba Network Player

TCL IPTV

Fujitsu

Intel CE4100GX535 + Atom-based CPU

Orange STB

Intel CE4130GX535 + Atom-based CPU

Intel CE4150GX535 + Atom-based CPU

Intel System Controller Hub US15/W/LGX535(Intel GMA500) + VXD370

Abit (USI) MID-100

Abit (USI) MID-150, MID-200

Acer Aspire One AO751h

Advantech MICA-101

Aigo MID P8860, P8880, P8888

Arbor Gladius G0710

Archos 9

ASUS EeePC T91

ASUS EeePC S121, EeePC 1101HGO

ASUS R50A, R70A

Averatec (TriGem) MID

BenQ Aries2

BenQ S6

Clarion MiND

CLEVO TN70M, TN71M, T89xM

Colmek Stinger

Compal jAX10

CompuLab Fit-PC2

Cowon W2

Dell Inspiron Mini 12, Inspiron Mini 10, Inspiron Mini 1010 Tiger

Digifriends WiMAX MID

DT Research DT312

DUX HFBX-3800

EB mobile internet device

FMV-BIBLO LOOX U/C40, LOOX U/C30

Fujitsu UMPC U2010

Fujitsu LifeBook U2020

Fujitsu LifeBook U820, UH900

Fujitsu FMV-BIBLO LOOX U

Gigabyte M528

Hanbit Pepper Pad 3

Kohjinsha/Inventec S32, SC3

Kohjinsha W130, SX3KP06MS, SC3KX06A

Kohjinsha/Inventec X5

Kohjinsha PM series

Lenovo IdeaPad U8

LG XNote B831, LGX30

MaxID BHC-100, iDLMax

mis MP084T-001G

MSI Wind U115, U110

MSI X-Slim 320

NEC VersaPro UltraLite type VS

NEXCOM MRC 2100, MTC 2100, MTC 2100-MD

Nokia Booklet 3G

NOVA SideArm2 SA2I

OMRON Panel PC

Onkyo NX707

OQO Model 2+

Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1

Panasonic CF-H1 Mobile Clinical Assistant

Portwell Japan UMPC-2711

Quanta mobile internet device

Sony Vaio P series, Vaio X series

TCS-003-01595 - Intel ATOM Rugged Tablet PC 8.4"

Terralogic Toughnote DB06-I Intel Atom Industrial Grade Rugged UMPC

Terralogic Toughnote DB06-M Intel Atom Military Grade Rugged UMPC

Toshiba mobile internet device

Trigem LLUON Mobbit PS400

UMID Clamshell

Viliv (YuKyung) S5, S7, X70

WiBrain i1, M1

WILLCOM D4 (Sharp WS016SH)

Various system boards and computer on modules including:

Adlink Express-MLC

Advantech SOM-5775

AXIOMTEK PICO820

Congatech conga-CA

Congatech-IVI Starterkit

CoreExpress-ECO

Eurotech Catalyst, Isis, Proteus

IBASE IB822

Inhand FireFly

Kontron nanoETXexpress-SP, microETXexpress-SP, KTUS15/miTX

LiPPERT CoreExpress-ECO COM

MEN Micro XM1

MSI MS-9A06

MSC Q7-US15W

Portwell PEB-2736, PCS-8230, NANO-8044, WEBS-2120 (Nano-ITX), WEBS-1310/1320 (ECX)

PROTEUS COM EXPRESS

RadiSys Procelerant Z500, Procelerant CE5XL, Procelerant CE5XT

Woodpecker Z5xx Micro COM Express

Xilinx XA Spartan-3E FPGA

Intel LincroftGX + Atom-based CPU

LG GW990

OpenPeak OpenTablet 7

Aave Mobile

NEC EMMA Mobile/EV2GX530 + Cortex-A9 MPCore (Dual)

NEC NaviEngine EC-4270, EC-4260GX535 + ARM11 MPCore (Quad)

Alpine Car Information Systems (Spring 2010)

NEC Unidentified GX + PowerVR video & display

NEC Medity M2 GX + PowerVR video & display

NEC N-01A, N-02A, N-03A, N-04A, N-05A, N-06A, NEC N-07A, NEC N-08A, N-09A

NXP PNX847x/8x/9xGX531

Renesas SH-Mobile G3GX530 + SH-4

Fujitsu F-01A , F-02A, F-03A, F-04A, F-08A, F-09A

Sharp SH-01A, SH-02A, SH-03A, SH-05A, SH-06A, SH-07A, SH-06A NERV

Renesas SH-Mobile G4 (in development)GX540 + SH-4

Fujitsu (in development)

Sharp (in development)

Renesas SH-Mobile APE4 (R8A73720)GX540 + Cortex-A8

Renesas SH-Navi3 (SH7776)GX530 + SH-X3(SH-4A (Dual))

Samsung S5PC110GX540 + Cortex-A8

Samsung GT-i9000

Samsung S8500 Wave

Meizu M9

Samsung S5PV210GX540 + Cortex-A8

Texas Instruments OMAP3420GX530 + Cortex-A8

Texas Instruments OMAP3430GX530 + Cortex-A8

Nokia N900

Nokia N87

Emblaze ELSE

Palm Pre

Palm Pre Plus

Samsung i8910, i8320

Samsung (Vodafone) 360 H1, 360 M1

Sony Ericsson Satio

Motorola Droid / Milestone

Motorola MOTOROI

Motorola XT800

HTC Qilin/Dopod T8388

Texas Instruments OMAP3440GX530 + Cortex-A8

ARCHOS Android IMT

ECS T800 800Mhz

Texas Instruments OMAP3450GX530 + Cortex-A8

ECS T800 1Ghz

Texas Instruments OMAP3515GX530 + Cortex-A8

Texas Instruments AM3517GX530 + Cortex-A8

DAVE Embedded Systems Lizard (SOM)

Texas Instruments OMAP3530GX530 + Cortex-A8

Always Innovating Touch Book

Beagle Board

Beagle MID

Gumstix Overo(TM)ater, Fire

ICETEK-OMAP3530-MINI

Pandora (console)

OMAP35x EVM Mistral Solutions

ISB Corp. Android STB

Kopin Golden-i

GDA Technologies' OMAP3530 based PMP/PND

Texas Instruments OMAP3620GX530 + Cortex-A8

Texas Instruments OMAP3621GX530 + Cortex-A8

Texas Instruments OMAP3630GX530 + Cortex-A8

Synaptics Fuse

Sony Ericsson U5i "Vivaz"

Sony Ericsson U8i "Vivaz pro"

Texas Instruments OMAP3640GX530 + Cortex-A8

Texas Instruments OMAP4430GX540 + Cortex-A9 MPCore (dual)

Texas Instruments OMAP4440GX540 + Cortex-A9 MPCore (dual)

Series5XT (SGXMP)

PowerVR SGXMP variants available as single and multi-core IP

Performance scales linearly with number of cores and clock speed

Available in single to 16 core variants

SGX543 (single core) 35M poly/s @200 MHz

SGX543MP4 (four cores) 133M poly/s, fill rates in excess of 4Gpixels/sec @200 MHz

Rumoured PlayStation Portable2

SGX543MP8 (eight cores) 532M poly/s, fill rates in excess of 16Gpixels/sec @400 MHz

External links

Official website

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