Imagination Announces A-Series GPU Architecture: "Most Important Launch in 15 Years"
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 2, 2019 8:00 PM ESTPPA Projections - Significant, If Delivered
Moving on, the A-Series improvements don’t mean much if we can’t put them into context in the competitive landscape.
As mentioned in the introduction, Imagination seem aware of the current PPA deficit that GPU vendor IP offers versus custom designs by more vertically integrated SoC vendors.
Starting off with a comparison between current generation Qualcomm GPU against an Arm GPU. Imagination didn’t specifically mention which designs we’re talking about here, but we do clearly see from the die shots that the SoCs being compared are the Snapdragon 855 and the Exynos 9820.
Here Imagination describes that for a similar performance level, Arm’s Mali GPUs are using ~184% the silicon area compared to Qualcomm’s Adreno implementation.
I do have some doubts about the validity of the comparison being made here, as these SoCs were not made on the same process node – Qualcomm's design is built on TSMC's denser 7nm process, while Samsung's Exynos uses their larger 8nm process. With that in mind, we take the metrics presented with a huge grain of salt as Imagination does say the figures are based on analysis of multiple Arm IP implementations rather than a single data-point.
Projecting the A-Series against a current Mali-G76 implementation, targeting a performance level equivalent to current generation flagship implementations (~100fps in Manhattan 3.0), an A-Series GPU would achieve a significantly smaller GPU implementation requiring much less die area. The comparison implementation here would be an AXT-16-512 implementation running at slightly lower than nominal clock and voltage (in order to match the performance).
If a customer were to choose to use more die area to go wider and slower in clock (more efficient), while still maintaining an estimated area that would be smaller than a Mali GPU, it would roughly achieve a 75% performance advantage. The comparison here would be an AXT-32-1024 running quite far below nominal, giving it a large power efficiency advantage.
Of course, Imagination’s comparison here were made against the current generation Qualcomm and Arm GPUs, which aren't what it'll actually be competing against. Instead, by the time A-series SoCs ship, it will be competing against the next-generation Adreno as well as Mali-G77. We know Arm’s promised goals for the G77 and the improvements in performance per mm² and performance perf/W is around 1.2-1.4x, which we could generalize to 1.3x. Samsung’s upcoming Exynos 990 only promises a 20% performance increase, which is slightly below this projection. On the Qualcomm side and the upcoming Adreno generation, we’ll have to wait a few more days to be able to talk about details, but generally we expect improvements in the same ballpark.
Fortunately for Imagination, the projected PPA figures and advantages for the A-Series are high enough that they would still be notably ahead of both Qualcomm and Arm’s upcoming next generation GPUs, keeping a comfortable lead in either GPU area, or performance, depending on the configuration.
So far everything looks quite splendid – what remains to be seen if Imagination and their licensees are able to deliver on the projected figures.
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The_Assimilator - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
So what you're saying is that this "fastest GPU IP ever created" has theoretical throughput figures that are lower than a two-generation-old midrange desktop parts.Man, it's gonna be exciting when this is released and it's total unmitigated shite, like every mobile GPU ever.
ET - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
For me a more useful comparison point is the consoles. Xbox One S is 1.4 TFLOPS, PS4 is 1.84 TFLOPS, and, more to the point, Switch supposedly reaches 1 TFLOPS for 16 bit at maximum, but in practice, and for 32 bit, it's around 400 GFLOPS (when docked).So in theory the AXT-64-2048 could make for quite a decent low power console chip, and a good upgrade venue for Nintendo.
(Sure, Xbox and PS have moved a little forward since then, and will move more next year, but, as an owner of a One S, I still find it quite impressive what can be achieved with this kind of GPU power.)
mode_13h - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Nintendo Switch uses the Tegra X1, which was made to be a high-end tablet SoC. So, by extension, it's not surprising that a modern candidate for that application would potentially be a worthy successor for the Switch.Speaking of set top consoles, you're citing 2013-era models (okay, the One S is more recent, but really a small tweak on the original spec). If you instead look at the PS4 Pro and One X, then you'll see that the set top consoles have moved far beyond this GPU.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
The just lost it, now even qorse with amd makibg its return to arm socs.melgross - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Imagination was in trouble for a long time. The reason Apple, and Microsoft before that, left, was because Imagination refused to go along with requests from both companies for custom IP. Apple, for example needed more work on AI and ML. Imagination refused to work on that for them, which was a major mistake, as Apple was half their business, and generating more than half of their profit.When Apple announced they were developing their own GPU, they said that within two years they would no longer be using any Imagination IP. Imagination confirmed that. The assumption there was that older SoCs that Apple would continue to use for other devices would still incorporate the IP until they had been superseded by newer versions.
It’s believed that newer Apple SoCs contain no Imagination IP.
It’s interesting to see that this new Imagination IP seems to be close to what Apple wanted, but what Imagination refused to give them. A fascinating turnabout. Now it remains to be seen whether this serious improvement upon their older IP is really competitive with the newest IP from others, when it actually is in production, assuming it will really be used.
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
> When Apple announced they were developing their own GPU, they said that within two years they would no longer be using any Imagination IP. Imagination confirmed that.The only thing Imagination confirmed is that Apple told them that. Ironically all those press releases and all official mentions of this have disappeared from both companies, which is essentially a sign that the two companies burried the hatchets and they came under some form of agreement.
> It’s believed that newer Apple SoCs contain no Imagination IP.
Well no, we're still here two years later. Apple's GPUs still very much look like PowerVR GPUs with similar block structures, they are still using IMG's proprietary TBDR techniques, and even publicly expose proprietary features such as PVRTC. Saying Apple GPUs contain none of IMG's IP is just incompetent on the topic.
melgross - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Well, I’m going by what Apple themselves have said. So if you think they’re lying, good for you. But I’ll take their statements as fact first.Qasar - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
just like you seem to do with intel ???mode_13h - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
You saw that Andrei worked there 'till 2017, right? So, yeah, go ahead and argue with him. You're obviously the expert, here.Korguz - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
mode_13h, of course he is. he believes all the lies and BS that intel is also saying....