Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

ARM, the U.K. company that quietly designs chips used in cell phones worldwide, wants you to know that they're in the gaming business too.

And this goes beyond pushing around tiny figures on your tiny cell phone screen. ARM's Mali graphics processing unit (GPU) can scale up to four cores, according to Ian Drew, vice president of marketing at ARM, speaking in a phone interview last week. ARM got its graphics technology from Norway-based Falanx Microsystems, which ARM purchased in 2006.

ARM Mali graphics

(Credit: ARM)

The four-core Mali-400 MP GPU targets HD (high-definition) performance on mobile phones, set top boxes, and portable and console gaming. The GPU delivers up to one-billion-pixels-per-second graphics. Just to put this into perspective, though, Nvidia broke the one-billion-pixels-per-second barrier in 2000.

High-end game chips from Nvidia and AMD used in sophisticated PC graphics typically have hundreds of processing cores. But tamping down power consumption is job one for ARM graphics in small devices. "The graphics architecture is really about memory bandwidth. And memory bandwidth is the thing that eats the power," Drew said. So, ARM needs to keep memory bandwidth to a minimum, according to Drew.

The ability to scale up to four cores, however, allows ARM to tackle more demanding graphics than it has to date. As higher-end games come over from the PC space, the games--and the smartphones they run on--will be designed for "different screen resolutions and different bandwidths coming in and out," Drew said. For smartphones, "the bigger the screen, the more triangles (graphics) you can put on there" and the more graphics horsepower that is required.

The push into higher-performance graphics is also being driven by the need to do 1080p video on large-screen TVs via smartphones and other gaming devices, according to Drew.

Mali supports OpenGL ES, which consists of subsets of desktop OpenGL. Open GL is one of the most widely-used standards for PC and device graphics.

Mali technology has 27 licensees to date. The licensees include Amlogic, Broadcom, LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens.

The Mali-200 GPU is the most widely-licensed GPU from ARM today and uses programmable shader capabilities. Shaders are used to render graphics.

Updated on March 18 at 8:00 p.m. PST with additional information throughout.

Nvidia on Tuesday said it has signed a license agreement with Sony to provide PhysX technology for the PlayStation 3, whereby Nvidia becomes the official tools and middleware provider for Sony PS3.

Nvidia's PhysX technology--based on the laws of physics--enables game objects to respond in a realistic way to physical events. More conventional technology uses a canned response, in which the same response is repeated over and over.

For example, a window breaks, or a person falls the same way every time. In a PhysX-enabled football sports game, however, the angle and velocity of the impact is calculated by the graphics processor to generate a real-time response that is different practically every time.

The agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment covers tools and middleware for the PlayStation 3. Nvidia is now an official Tools and Middleware provider for Sony PS3, according to Bryan Del Rizzo, an Nvidia spokesman. "This new relationship means a couple of changes in how the PhysX SDK for PS3 is managed. As a Sony Computer Entertainment Tools and Middleware provider, Nvidia will now be exclusively responsible for maintaining and enhancing the PS3 PhysX SDK," he said.

Rizzo continued: "Additionally, while Sony has a license to distribute and support users of the binary version of the PhysX PS3 SDK, Nvidia will now be responsible for licensing the source code PhysX SDK for PS3 as well providing direct support to all source code-licensed PhysX PS3 developers," he said. "This newly announced tools and middleware relationship with Sony closely mirrors the licensing and support model that has existed for years with Microsoft and its Xbox 360 platform and complements our plans to support future console platforms."

Nvidia described the SDK as "a full-featured (application programming interface) and robust physics engine, designed to give developers, animators, level designers, and artists unprecedented creative control over character and object physical interactions by allowing them to author and preview physics effects in real time."

In December, Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software adopted Nvidia's PhysX technology.

Intel is back, pitching its processors for gaming graphics.

The chipmaker will attempt to promote its silicon for sophisticated game effects at the upcoming Game Developers Conference in March, as it strives to make a case for quad-core processors in lieu of graphics chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

The pitch goes like this: "Learn how to easily add real-time 3D smoke, fog and other fluid simulations to your game without using up the GPU." That's according to an Intel Web page entitled Intel at Game Developers Conference. (The CPU is the central processing unit, or main brains of a computer; GPU stands for graphics processing unit.)

The session abstract goes on to say that the "source code to a fluid simulator optimized for multi-core CPUs...can easily be integrated by game developers into their engines to produce unique 3D effects."

Intel's argument raises the question, how should the CPU and GPU divvy up their tasks? In games, the CPU can handle things like physics and AI (artificial intelligence), and certain older games actually run some graphics on the CPU. Generally, however, the GPU is much more efficient (that is, faster) at handling most of the high-end effects that the gamer sees on the screen.

But there are exceptions. "Not all algorithms and processes map well to a GPU," said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. "You have to have a problem that is naturally parallel, and except for the rendering of, say, a water surface and subsurface and reflections, the wave motion equations will run just fine on a CPU," Peddie said.

Intel may also be seeking ways to make better use of its quad-core processors, according to Tom R. Halfhill, an analyst at the Microprocessor Report. But, he added: "I need to be convinced that a CPU can do those 3D effects better than a GPU can."

Then, there's also the Larrabee factor. Larrabee is an upcoming high-end graphics processor due late this year. "I'm sure some of it may also relate to Larrabee, which will include x86 cores, if or when it comes to market," said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat.

(This Mythbusters demonstration at an Nvidia conference is oversimplified and self-serving but it crystallizes the difference between CPUs and GPUs.)

In another GDC session, Intel is also pushing the CPU for physics and AI: "How can your game have more accurate physics, smarter AI, more particles, and/or a faster frame-rate? By threading your game's engine to take advantage of multi-core processors. Intel has built a threaded game engine and demo called 'Smoke' that shows one way of achieving this goal," the abstract states.

It continues: "This presentation examines the Smoke architecture and how it is designed to take advantage of all CPU cores available within a system. It does this by executing different functional and data blocks in parallel to utilize all available cores."

Intel won't stop there. It will also focus on the bane of many PC game developers: gaming on Intel integrated graphics silicon--a relatively low-performance platform that prohibits game titles from being displayed in all their glory at higher resolutions. The session will focus on "programming for scalable graphics applications" and cover "performance considerations when programming for integrated graphics in general with specific tips for Intel Integrated graphics."

Nvidia's PhysX engine is intended to bring more realistic motion to games such as Backbreaker.

(Credit: GameSpot)

Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software are adopting Nvidia's PhysX technology, bringing more realistic gaming to the PC.

The largest graphics chip supplier is announcing on Monday that Electronic Arts and Take-Two have licensed its PhysX technology as a development platform.

"PhysX is a great physics solution for the most popular platforms, and we're happy to make it available for EA's development teams worldwide," Tim Wilson, chief technology officer of EA's Redwood Shores Studio, said in a statement.

"We are very impressed with the quality of the PhysX engine, and we licensed it so our studios can use this solution early in development," Jacob Hawley, technology director of 2K, a publishing label of Take-Two, also said in a statement.

Nvidia got its physics technology when it acquired Ageia in February. PhysX runs on the graphics processing unit, or GPU. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, on the other hand, have been promoting technology that is executed on the central processing unit, or CPU. Intel's approach uses technology from Havok, a developer of a physics engine that Intel bought in September of 2007.

Adhering to the laws of physics
The goal of Nvidia's technology -- based on the laws of physics -- is to make game objects respond in a realistic way to physical events. More conventional technology uses a canned response, in which the same response is repeated over and over. For example, a window breaks, or a person falls the same way every time. In a PhysX-enabled football sports game, however, the angle and velocity of the impact is calculated by the GPU to generate a real-time response that is different every time.

The technology was meant to run on the GPU, according to Jon Peddie, whose firm tracks developments in the graphics chip industry. "It's a GPU thing, and the fact that EA and Take-Two are coming out (with support) gives you a clue why," Peddie said. "This really is a significant event," he said, "enabling the GPU to do physics."

Ujesh Desai, VP of product marketing at Nvidia, discusses physics strategy

(Credit: Brooke Crothers)

Ageia's secret sauce is its physics libraries, which are supported on Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii, as well as on the CPU and Ageia's own PPU (physics processing unit), Ujesh Desai, vice president of product marketing at Nvidia, said in an interview last week. "It's a very open platform. Something game developers really liked, which is why a lot of game developers adopted it," he said.

The launch pad for Ageia on the PC is Nvidia's CUDA, or Compute Unified Device Architecture. CUDA already has a large installed base of GPUs that can run a C program, "which is what PhysX is," Desai said. "We bought Ageia, (and) they ported their PhysX API to our GPU, using our C compiler on top of CUDA. So now there are 100 million GeForce (chips) out there that can do PhysX processing."

And PhysX-enabled games will offer much greater realism. "Today, the way they do sports games is motion capture. They capture the different animation--running, falling," Desai said. "What you realize is that for the first 5 to 10 minutes of the game (or movie), it looks believable, but after you play for a while, you realize, wait a minute, every time he falls, he falls the same way. Every time I make that tackle, it looks the same."

The game Backbreaker uses PhysX. "They're calculating those tackles in real time, based on how the body interacts and the body mechanics interact. So no two tackles are the same," according to Desai. Another game, Mirror's Edge, is coming out in January from a company called Dice. The PC version will have PhysX in it, according to Desai.

"Ageia changed the rules on this," Peddie said. "It's much, much more realistic."

Ageia's physics was originally done on an Ageia Physics Processing Unit, Peddie said. "This was the only way to make it work. But now this capability (software) has been ported to Nvidia GPUs, and this can be done on Nvidia silicon," he said.

Physics can also be used to make things look more photo-realistic. "In today's games, cloth and hair look very fake because you don't have the right physical properties," Desai said. But with PhysX, "all these things can be physically simulated."

Unreal Tournament 3, a la PhysX.

(Credit: Nvidia)

Havok--the company Intel acquired--was the first to introduce physics into games and bring out a physics library. Havok's physics has been run on the CPU in a time-scheduled way, Peddie said. "Because of that, there weren't many CPU resources to really do a great job on the physics," he said. "Nothing would really happen. What happened, at most, is that you would hit this thing (a window or a wall, for example), and it would apply a decal to indicate that there was some change in it. It's not very realistic."

AMD, for its part, will pursue a balanced platform. "The GPU is a great place to do processing. We'll do the offloading (to the GPU), where it makes sense," said Korhan Erenben, product marketing manager at AMD Graphics Products Group. "(But) we are aligned with Havok, in terms of working on a future direction of physics. Right now, it is on the CPU, and we think that serves the broad installed base. Taking it to the next step would be to have a capability on the GPU--where and when it makes sense."

Physics is better on GPUs
Peddie explained why physics is more suited for the GPU than the CPU. GPUs today typically have hundreds of processors that are good at doing many things in parallel. "If you have threads or processes that can be run simultaneously, (and) if you have processors available to deal with each one of those threads, then you can get your results a lot sooner," he said.

He described a technique called Same Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD). "The same instruction is the physics equation. Things fall toward Earth all the time. And the multiple data will be what the things are. It might be a rock, might be a person, might be the wheel of a car. You have to be able to process this stuff and have it behave in a realistic fashion. To do that, you have to process it very quickly," Peddie said. "The advantage that GPUs bring is that they have this humongous number of processors. Certainly as good as the (Intel) 486 ever was. So they're really good processors, and you've got hundreds of them literally inside the GPU."

There will be challenges for users, however. "The tricky part is, why would I want to take one graphics card and spend $500 on it, and then not use it for graphics but rather use it for physics?" he said. "The answer is, of course, I wouldn't."

Peddie suggested that a gamer might use the really good card for physics and employ the old card "that you got last year" for graphics, assuming that there are enough slots in the PC.

"The Future is Fusion." So Advanced Micro Devices would like you to believe.

AMD is turning to a new branding strategy with the hope of infusing new life into its processor platform and the company as a whole.

AMD's Fusion for Gaming is the first "proof point" of AMD's Fusion branding strategy.

(Credit: AMD)

The chipmaker on Thursday is expected to introduce a "smaller proof point" of the larger Fusion strategy dubbed "AMD Fusion for gaming," which is software that optimizes PCs for faster gaming.

Confused yet? Wait, there's more. To date, AMD has used the term to describe its future silicon graphics strategy that proposes to fuse the main processor and graphics chip onto one piece of silicon. AMD believes the broader Fusion concept "captures the benefits of this same collaborative initiative across a range of technology platforms."

Branding is one thing, execution another. Though AMD's graphics chip business has performed well since it brought out the 4800 series in June and--at the very least--made it competitive with Nvidia, the same can't be said about its processors.

It's a generation of process technology behind Intel and its vaunted and long-delayed "native" quad-core processors have not displaced Intel silicon in any significant way. Certainly not in the gaming world.

And AMD faces Intel's formidable Core 2 technology in the mobile space.

The company is also on the verge of a major restructuring--a strategy AMD calls Asset Smart.

AMD's Chief Marketing Officer Nigel Dessau describes the larger strategy as marrying innovation with collaboration. "Fusion is the most focused articulation yet" of this concept, he said in a statement.

We'll see. For now, the proof of concept is software that AMD claims can run a user's existing PC up to 10 percent faster and "simplifies the PC gaming experience," said Brent Barry, AMD's gaming strategist.

The Fusion for Gaming utility (a beta version can be downloaded from AMD's Web site now) will tweak the PC's settings. The first time it will run in "basic mode" and turn on "AMD Boost," according to Barry. This is "a set of registry changes and settings within the processor," he said.

"The other thing it does is shuts down background processes and services that you don't need to be running while playing a game. It frees up a lot of the memory space and CPU utilization," Barry said.

There's also a more advanced mode that shuts down features in Vista such as the Aero glass interface, the gadgets sidebar, and user applications. The expert mode gets into hard drive acceleration and CPU/GPU overclocking.

Barry said AMD also plans to bring out a more general-purpose Fusion application that allows users to fine tune their laptop PCs to save power when, for example, taking a long flight.

All of this, however, is only available on an AMD platform, Barry said. An AMD processor and AMD GPU are required. Though the utility won't check for an AMD chipset, the user will lose some features in a system that doesn't have an AMD chipset.

On the first beta, AMD is only supporting Windows Vista 32, Barry said.

AMD will work with game giant Havok to tailor Havok's game technology to AMD processors, the companies said Thursday.

The plans call for optimizing game-physics effects utilizing AMD's multicore processors and graphics processing units, or GPUs.

Game physics brings the laws of physics--or physical-world simulation--to a game. For example, explosions may be modeled differently depending on the terrain.

Havok, which Intel acquired in September of last year, provides development tools and services used by digital-media creators. Havok's technology has been used in game titles such as BioShock, Stranglehold, Halo 2, Half Life 2, and has been used to create special effects in movies such as The Matrix and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Physics code has traditionally run on a CPU such as an AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor. As part of the collaboration, Havok and AMD plan to further optimize Havok physics on AMD CPUs. Right now about 300 titles are optimized for Havok physics on the CPU, said Matt Skynner, vice president of marketing at AMD's Graphics Products Group.

AMD wants to take this CPU-centric approach a step further, however, and optimize certain components on the GPU, as well. "The plan is to work with them to leverage the right pieces of the physics (technology) that can be accelerated on the GPU," Skynner said.

"The feedback that we consistently receive from leading game developers is that core game play simulation should be performed on CPU cores," said David O'Meara, managing director of Havok in a statement. "Beyond core simulation, however, the capabilities of massively parallel (GPU) products offer technical possibilities for computing certain types of simulation," he said.

AMD is chasing Nvidia, which acquired Ageia Technologies in February. Ageia's PhysX software is widely used, with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii and gaming PCs, according to Nvidia.

And Nvidia has said that the conversion of Ageia's physics application interface to Nvidia's CUDA C language environment is under way. This means users will be able to get the benefits of a physics accelerator via a software download, Nvidia said.

Advanced Micro Devices will try to make buying a game PC more like selecting a game console.

"AMD Game!" will put badging on game PCs and set minimum standards for PCs that carry these badges. The idea is to allow gamers to select a PC like they would an Xbox 360 game console model and to drive home the point that an integrated graphics chip (from Intel, for example) is not good enough for a decent gaming experience.

AMD's specifications will target mainstream PC gamers, not high-end enthusiasts necessarily. Initially, the specifications will cover only desktops, with notebook standards coming later.

About a dozen resellers will launch systems with the badging, including Acer, Alienware, iBuypower, and Velocity Micro. Microsoft and Logitech will also support AMD Game!.

AMD Game! minimum requirements

(Credit: AMD)

AMD has good reason to revisit its game PC strategy. The PC gaming alliance estimates 263 million gamers worldwide, with global PC game (software) revenues estimated to be $9.6 billion in 2008. But more importantly, AMD's acquisition of ATI has put it in a unique position to be the only chip supplier in the x86 PC market that offers both a CPU (central processing unit) and discrete, high-end GPU (graphics processing unit).

And it needs a larger presence in the game PC market. Most of the game PCs from resellers like Falcon Northwest and Voodoo come with Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. An equally dangerous trend is the proliferation of PCs using Intel-based integrated graphics: These PCs are not capable of playing games the way they should be played, according to AMD.

"We're not doing a good job of getting that balanced solution to people," said Brent Berry, product marketing manager for AMD. By "balanced," Berry means a cost-effective solution that offers a more precise balance of CPU and GPU performance. Nvidia calls this the "optimized PC."

"Consumers are not getting a great gaming experience with IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor)," Berry added.

Badges will direct consumers "to solutions that are specifically validated for gaming," Berry said.

The standard AMD Game "user experience" target will be a system with 1280x1024-pixel high-definition (HD) resolution that can achieve 30 frames per second, Berry said. The AMD Game Ultra will be "beyond HD" at 1600x1200 pixel and 30 frames per second.

AMD Game! badging

(Credit: AMD)

"In North America, about 60 percent of consumers say they plan on using their PCs for video games," said Berry. "But when you do a check on what people actually did on their PCs, you find out that 80 percent actually played games on their PCs."

AMD Game! minimum requirements are an AMD Athlon 5600+ X2 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics, and an AMD 770 chipset or Nvidia nForce 500 series chipset.

AMD Game Ultra minimum requirements are a Phenom X4 9650 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics, and an AMD 770 chipset.

More at AMD Game.