A very exciting discovery has been found inside the iOS 4.3 beta regarding the future performance we’ll see from our iDevices. Even though it isn’t used currently, the PowerVR SGX543 which is the smallest OpenCL-capable graphics core, has been included in the beta which points to the potential that Apple is looking to incorporate it into at least one of its future devices. If the iPad or iPhone were to use the power of this co-processor, we could expect to see performance that is comparable to laptop computers.
Imagination Technology’s PowerVR SGX535 is what Apple currently uses as a graphics co-processor in the A4 chip. iPhone 3GS, Motorola’s Droid, Samsung’s Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab are all using this chip as their GPU. The A4 supports OpenGL 2.0 and renders a max of 28 million polygons per second and has a fillrate of 500 million pixels per second. Now compare those numbers with the next-gen SGX543 which puts out 35 million polygons per second and 1 billion pixels per second for its fillrate. Also supporting OpenCL which would mean a drastic boost in power as programs would be able to access the GPU as a non-graphical processing resource. A stacked multi-core configuration is possible but, right now space inside the successor to the A4 system could limit it to a single graphics core only. iOS devices all have a history of being known for quality software rather than speed of the hardware, which isn’t a bad thing at all. If the rumors of a multi-core processor are true and the chip is released this year, we could see a change in what the iOS devices are known for. Which Apple device do you think needs the biggest upgrade in processing power first?
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[Source: Appleinsider]
Authors: V_Geek