PowerVR

PowerVR is the business division of the processor design and implementation company, Imagination Technologies (formerly VideoLogic), which designs the IP for the visual processors part of their business. Graphics, video, and display are included in the types of visual processors they address.

PowerVR chipsets were once a popular choice for personal computers, but now live on inside many mobile devices such as palmtops and cellphones. PowerVR 3D accelerators are not manufactured by PowerVR, but instead the IP is licensed to other companies such as NEC.

The primary competitor to the PowerVR set of 3D chips in the late 1990s was the Voodoo series from 3dfx which would eventually become the market leader, before serious competition by ATI and NVIDIA expelled both companies from primary roles in the PC industry. Since 2002, many PC games no longer officially support PowerVR.

Implementations

Sega Dreamcast

The second generation PowerVR2 chip found a blooming life in the Sega 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.

KYRO and KYRO II

In 2001, STMicroelectronics adopted the third generation PowerVR3 for their STG4000 "KYRO" and "KYRO II" chips. The STM PowerVR3 KYRO II, released in 2001, was able to rival the costlier ATI Radeon DDR and NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS in benchmarks of the time, despite not having hardware transform and lighting. Unfortunately, as games were optimised for hardware transform and lighting, the KYRO II lost its performance advantage and is not supported by most modern games.

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

PowerVR MBX/SGX

With the high end PC market secured by ATI and NVIDIA, PowerVR is now concentrating on the portable market with its latest designs, the low power PowerVR MBX and high performance PowerVR SGX, which 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 in use in many high-end cellphones including the Apple iPhone, Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson P1, and Motorola RIZR Z8.

Products that have MBX/SGX on board, but do not necessarily use it:

Freescale i.MX31 -- MBX Lite + FPU + ARM11

Garz & Fricke Adelaide

Freescale i.MX31C -- MBX Lite + FPU + ARM11

Freescale MPC5121e -- MBX Lite + VGP Lite + PowerPC e300

Intel CE 2110 -- MBX Lite + XScale

ASUS Set-Top Boxes
Digeo Moxi Multi-Room HD Digital Media Recorder
Digeo Moxi Mate
Digital Video Networks Set-Top Boxes
OKI Set-Top Boxes
ZTE Set-Top Boxes

Intel Canmore -- SGX + x86

Intel Diamondville -- SGX + x86 Silverthorne derivative (CPU)

Intel Poulsbo -- SGX535 (part of the Menlow platform, along with the Silverthorne CPU)

Intel Moorestown -- SGX + x86

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

Advance Tech M.A.G.I.C.
Advantech UbiQ-350
[Anders Electronics UMR-X10]http://www.anders.co.uk/displays_families.asp?prodLineID=4136
Compulab CM-F82 (PowerPC Module)
Dell Axim X50v
Dell Axim X51v
Dresser Wayne iX
Palm Foleo
Pepper Pad
PFU Systems MediaStaff DS

NEC NaviEngine1 -- SGX535 + ARM11 MPCore (Quad)

Alpine Car Information Systems (Spring 2010)

NXP Nexperia PNX4008 -- MBX Lite + FPU + ARM9

Sony Ericsson M600
Sony Ericsson M608c
Sony Ericsson P1i
Sony Ericsson P1c
Sony Ericsson P990
Sony Ericsson P990c
Sony Ericsson W950i
Sony Ericsson W958c
Sony Ericsson W960i
Sony Ericsson W960c

NXP Nexperia PNX4009 -- MBX Lite + FPU + ARM9

Renesas SH3707 -- MBX + VGP + FPU + SH-4

Sega Aurora

Renesas SH7770 (SH-Navi1) -- MBX + VGP + FPU + SH-4, Renesas unidentified -- MBX + SuperH

Alpine Car Information Systems
Clarion MAX960
Clarion NAX963HD
Clarion MAX973
Mitsubishi HDD Navi H9000
Mitsubishi HDD Navi H9700
Pioneer Carrozzeria HDD CyberNavi AVIC-VH009
Pioneer Carrozzeria HDD CyberNavi AVIC-ZH900MD

Renesas SH7775 -- MBX + VGP + FPU + SH-4

Renesas SH73180 (SH-Mobile3), Renesas SH73182 (SH-Mobile3+), Renesas SH73230 (SH-Mobile3A), Renesas SH73450 (SH-Mobile3A+) -- MBX Lite + VGP Lite + SH-4

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 G1 -- MBX Lite + VGP Lite + SH-4

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 G2 -- MBX Lite + VGP Lite + SH-4

Fujitsu F905i
Mitsubishi D905i
Sharp SH905i

Renesas SH-Mobile G3 -- SGX + SuperH

Samsung S3C2460 -- MBX Lite + FPU + ARM9

Samsung S5L8900 -- MBX + FPU + ARM11

Apple iPhone
Apple iPod touch

SiRF unidentified -- MBX Lite + ARM

Sunplus unidentified -- MBX

Texas Instruments OMAP2420 -- MBX + VGP + FPU + ARM11

Motorola MOTO Q 9h
Motorola MOTO Q music 9m
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 and 8 GB versions)
Nokia N800
Nokia N810
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 OMAP2430 -- MBX Lite + VGP Lite + FPU + ARM11

NEC N903i
NEC N904i
NEC N905i
NEC N905iμ
Panasonic P903i
Panasonic P903iTV
Panasonic P903iX HIGH-SPEED
Samsung SGH-i400 (MBX Lite not enabled)
Samsung SGH-i520 (MBX Lite not enabled)
Sharp SH704i
Sharp SH903i
Sharp SH904i
Sony Ericsson SO704i
Sony Ericsson SO903i
Sony Ericsson SO905i
Sony Ericsson SO905iCS

Texas Instruments OMAP3420 -- SGX520 + Cortex-A8

Texas Instruments OMAP3430 -- SGX530 + Cortex-A8

Pandora (console)

Texas Instruments OMAP4xxx -- SGX + Cortex-A9

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 triangle strip format. Unlike other architectures, polygon rendering is not performed until all polygon information has been collated for the current frame – hence 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. With each tile is associated 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.

The advantage of this method is that, unlike with a more traditional z buffered rendering pipeline, work is never done determining 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. However, this capability was only implemented in Series 1 and 2. It has been removed since for lack of API support and cost reasons. More importantly, as the rendering is circumscribed to a tile at a time, the whole tile can be in fast onchip memory, which is flushed to video memory before passing on to render the next tile. Note that, under normal circumstances, each tile only needs to be visited 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, were bought by 3Dfx, who were subsequently bought by Nvidia. Nvidia has no official plans to pursue tile based rendering at present.

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.

PowerVR chipsets

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

Series 1 (NEC)

Product	Type	Chip Name	Clock Rate
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
Sega 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	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

Series 4 (STMicro)

KYRO 3 (2D/3D AIB) product shelved due to STMicro closing graphics division.

Series 5

PowerVR SGX

Series 6

Under development - 2010 & beyond?

Mobile

PowerVR MBX/MBX Lite
PowerVR SGX (pixel, vertex, and geometry shader hardware)
- next generation fully programmable universal scalable shader architecture
- exceeding requirements of OpenGL 2.0 and DirectX 10.1 Shader Model 4.1
- licensed to Intel, Renesas, NEC, TI (for OMAP 3), Apple and others
- 7 variants announced:
  - SGX510, SGX520, and SGX530 for the handheld mobile market
  - SGX535 and SGX540 for handheld high end mobile, portable, MID, UMPC, consumer, and automotive devices
  - SGX540, SGX545, SGX 550 and SGX555 for advanced consumer devices, laptop, and desktop products

???

References

PowerVR Developer Relations

External links

Official website