Go through the brief history of graphics devices to understand what areas of focus there were in the evolution of the devices.

1. Brief History of
Graphics Devices
Tat Iwamoto
2014

2. Around 1980
•
1977: Apple II
•
1983: NES

3. Apple II
•
1977: $1,298 to $2,638
•
MOS Technology 6502 @ 1MHz
•
4KB to 48KB RAM
http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/

4. http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/

5. NES / Family Computer
•
Famicom
•
•
1983: ￥14,800
Nintendo Entertainment System
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1985: $299
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Ricoh 2A03 CPU: MOS6502@1.79MHZ
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Ricoh 2C03 Picture Processing Unit: Custom @5.37MHz
•
2KB Work RAM + 2KB VRAM

6. http://133fsb.wordpress.com/

7. NTSC 480i
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Vertical: 192 lines
•
•
•
29.97Hz, 525 lines, interlace
240 active / field, ~10% overscan
Horizontal: about 160 color pixels
•
•
•
Composite color subcarrier 3.579545MHz
227.5 color phase / line, 16% blanking,
~10% overscan
Roughly 1M Pixels / second

8. Wow, I can show Video!
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Designed simply to show of video on TV
•
To generate NTSC video signals
•
Full bitmap required a lot of memory / bandwidth
•
DRAM was expensive
•
Reduced color resolution
•
Sprite tables

9. Around 1980 was…
Dawn of Interactive Graphics Devices
Generating Video Signal Itself Was a
Challenge for both computer and
consumer devices
Very different price point

10. Around 1990
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1987: IBM PS/2 VGA
•
1994: PlayStation

11. IBM PS/2 w/VGA
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1987: $1,695 to $10,995
•
CPU:
•
•
8086 8MHz to 80386 20MHz
VGA:
•
640x480 16/16M colors
•
256 KB VRAM
http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de

12. http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de

13. PlayStation
•
1994: ￥39,800
•
CPU:
•
•
•
MIPS R3000 @33.8688MHz
Geometry transformation engine
GPU:
•
•
•
256×224 16M Color
Rasterization & shading
1MB SGRAM

15. PC Evolution
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More bandwidth for video memory!
•
Full bitmap color / High resolution /
Progressive
•
•
Better text legibility
Dedicated RGB video connector
•
For higher resolution display

16. Consumer Device Evolution
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Hardware acceleration
•
•
•
3D graphics
Movie playback
Output remains NTSC

17. Around 1990 was…
Divergence of Evolution
•
PC for office productivity
•
•
High res / memory bandwidth
Consumer for multimedia
•
Dedicated hardware / SD resolution

18. Around 2000
•
GeForce 2
•
PlayStation2

19. GeForce 2
•
2000: $400 (Pro)
•
Obviously, you need a DesktopPC with AGP 4x, too
•
VRAM: 64MB 128bit DDR-DRAM @400MHz 6.4GB/s
•
Core: @200MHz
•
Direct 3D 7
•
Hardware Transform & Lighting
•
800MOp/s, 800MPixel/s, 1600MTexel/s
http://www.ixbt.com/

20. Playstation2
•
2000: ￥39,800
•
Memory: 32 MB Direct RDRAM
•
CPU "Emotion Engine”
•
•
64bit MIPS+Vector Units @294.912 MHz
GPU "Graphics Synthesizer”
•
VRAM 4 MB 2560bit eDRAM @147.456 MHz 48GB/s
•
20M-75M Polygon/s

22. Around 2000 was…
Seeing convergence
•
PC
•
More bandwidth for fill and texture
•
HW feature advances rapidly
•
•
Largely driven by DirectX
Consumer
•
Still SD resolution
•
Feature advance getting caught up by PC
•
More fill bandwidth with specialized memory

23. Around 2005
•
GeForce 7
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Radeon X1xxx
•
PlayStation3
•
Xbox 360

24. Geforce 7
•
2005: $400 (7800GT)
•
Obviusly, you need a DesktopPC with PCIe 16x, too
•
VRAM: 256MB 256bit GDDR3-DRAM @1000MHz 32GB/s
•
Core: @400MHz
•
Direct 3D 9.0c
•
Vertex and Pixel Shader Units
•
8GPixelOp/s, 6.4GROP/s, 8GTexel/s, 0.7GVertexOp/s

25. Radeon X1xxx
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2005: $400 (X1800XL)
•
Obviusly, you need a DesktopPC with PCIe 16x, too
•
VRAM: 256MB 256bit GDDR3-DRAM @1000MHz 32GB/s
•
Core: @500MHz
•
Direct 3D 9.0c
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Vertex and Pixel Shader Units
•
8GPixelOp/s, 8GROP/s, 8GTexel/s, 1GVertex/s
http://www.3dnews.ru/

26. PlayStation3
•
2006: $599 (60GB)
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CPU: “Cell Broadband Engine”
•
•
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1x PPE, 7x SPEs @3.2 GHz
Memory: 256 MB 32bit XDR-DRAM @3.2GHz 25.6GB/s
GPU: RSX “Reality Synthesizer”
•
VRAM: 256MB 128bit GDDR3-DRAM @700MHz 22.4GB/s
•
Core: @550MHz
•
Vertex and Pixel Shader Units
•
13.2GPixelOp/s, 4.4GROP/s, 13.2GTexel/s, 1.1GVertexOp/s

28. Xbox 360
•
2005: $399 (Premium)
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Memory:
•
•
CPU “Xenon”
•
•
512 MB 128bit GDDR3-DRAM @700 MHz 22.4GB/s
PowerPC x3 @3.2 GHz
GPU “Xenos”
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VRAM 10MB eDRAM @700MHz 32/256(ROP) GB/s
•
Core: @500MHz
•
Unified Shader
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24GShaderOp/s, 4GROP/s, 8GTexel/s,

29. anandtech.com

30. Around 2005 was…
Convergence of Desktop PC and Home
Console Graphics
•
Taken over by PC GPU technology
•
Home TV now HD

31. Around 2010
•
Direct3D 11 GPU
•
iPhone4

32. PC GPU
•
GeForce GTX480
•
•
•
2010: $499
1.3TFLOPS, 177.4GB/s
Radeon HD5870
•
•
•
2009: $379
2.7TFLOPS, 153.6GB/s
Features:
•
Direct3D 11
•
GPGPU (OpenCL, Compute Shader)
ixbt.com

33. iPhone 4
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2010: $600 (?)
•
Memory 512MB LPDDR2-DRAM @200MHz 3.2GB/s
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CPU: ARM Cortex-A8 @1GHz
•
GPU: PowerVR SGX535 @200MHz

34. surflightroy.net

35. Around 2010 was…
Desktop PC no longer relevant
•
Continues to grow performance but…
•
Evolving into dinosaur territory
Rise of mobile devices
•
iPhone only launched in 2007 !
•
Industry focus shifted
•
Absorbing technology from PC
•
Integrated into small form factor / low power

36. 2013
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iPhone 5S / iPad Air
•
•
Champion devices
Snapdragon 800
•
Powering the competing devices

37. 2013 was…
•
Mobile GPU migrated to new architecture
•
•
Adreno 2xx to 3xx
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Tegra3 to 4
•
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PowerVR SGX to R6xxx
Mali T4xx to T6xx
Catching upto DX10/11 level features

38. 2014
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Feature mostly caught up to desktop
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Higher performance per Watt
•
Pressure to lower price point

39. Summary
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1980: Barely driving video output. More bandwidth!
•
1990:
•
•
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PC wants more bandwidth for office
Consumer wanted multimedia
2000:
•
PC start embracing 3D graphics & multimedia
•
Consumer push for bandwidth but still on SD
•
2005: Converge to PC technology
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2010: Mobile devices emerge. Smaller form factor, lesser power
•
2013: Mobile devices catch up with PC features
•
2014: Mobile leads evolution

40. Also be Aware of…
•
Price point of the product
•
•
Determines the market for the device
Logic board pictures
•
Big logic board with many parts
== expensive

41. Conclusion
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Focus for graphics hardware kept
shifting
•
Bandwidth vs HW features
•
To small and low power
!
Which way does it evolve to next?