Hardware acceleration has long been proposed as the driver of console-style gaming on mobile. But can it also benefit the user interface, navigation and other mobile features?
Embedding a graphics processing unit in a phone can deliver huge improvements in gaming power - making it possible for a feature phone to run console style games.
But GPUs have been around for years without making much impression, and the market is now moving towards casual games and apps.
However, chip specialist ARM believes the GPU can bring benefits beyond hardcore gaming. Its 65nm Mali-55 is a first generation core in LG Electronics' Renoir phone, and its Mali 200 and 400 processors will be available later this year.
We asked Remi Pedersen, graphics product manager at ARM, some questions...
Most consumers don’t care about Xbox-style graphics, they want simple apps. Who are these processors aimed at apart from a small number of hardcore gamers?
While Mali does offer premium graphics for gamers, GPUs are not just for gaming; enhanced mobile browsing and video capabilities are set to become commonplace on more and more handsets, not just high-end smartphones. You’re right that if only hardcore gamers bought graphics enabled devices like these, then there might not even be a large enough market for most high-end game developers to get into. However, what we're seeing is that user interfaces, and in the near future also navigation, are driving the adoption of GPUs.
What's the benefit for non-games apps?
On a more limited system, developers have to spend a lot more time and effort to achieve the necessary performance, making it a complex and expensive task. With GPU acceleration developers can cut some corners and "throw more cycles at the problem", giving them shorter time-to-market and lower development costs, as well as a lower threshold for new developers to get started.
Is there a battery life issue with these GPUs?
The PC space, where most video and graphics originated, has been able to solve the problems by throwing more transistors, memory and watts into the system. If you simply take those devices and shrink them down to fit in a phone, you quickly end up with something that says "press here to empty battery".
What's different now is that companies like ARM are providing solutions designed specifically for the mobile/embedded space, changing it from an unused checkbox-feature to a natural part of how people use their phones.
In this way hardware acceleration is moving into the mass market and becoming something the handset manufacturers have to integrate if they're going to offer the functionality people expect, and this has to be done within a reasonable power budget.
Another interesting market that is developing is netbooks, where user experience will be compared to more traditional laptops but battery life is expected to be many-fold; not many architectures (certainly not from the PC space) will be capable of balancing this mix of performance and power.
We’ve had years of promises from Nvidia, ARM etc that hardware acceleration is coming and it’s wonderful. But there’s been little evidence of this. Why is now any different?
The technology to handle video and graphics has existed for quite some time, but the main factor that has stopped widespread uptake has been power. The number of mobile phones with hardware graphics acceleration is fairly small today, but in the wake of the iPhone, this is set to change - and ARM expects the market for embedded GPUs to be around 1 billion units per annum in 2012.
This is evidenced by the licensing trend for Mali GPUs, with volume and royalty licensing lagging by about 18 months to two years.
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