Mobile Graphics Acceleration: Past, Present and Future

1. Mobile Graphics Acceleration:Past, Present and Future Petri Nordlund, Bitboys

2. Agenda • Bitboys • Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration? • Brief History of Mobile Graphics Acceleration • Mobile Graphics Hardware Vendors • The Future • Demos

3. Bitboys

4. Bitboys Fact Sheet • Graphics hardware solutions company established in 1991 • Offices in Espoo and Noormarkku, Finland • Number of staff: 41 • Privately owned by management and investors • Cipio Partners (London, Munich) • Pohjola (Finland) • 4 smaller Finnish investors • Financially stable, profitable and growing • Turnover 2003: 2,9 (0,5) M eur • Turnover 2004: 4,7 (1,6) M eur

5. Bitboys Products • Bitboys G12 - OpenVG 1.0 vector graphics accelerator • Bitboys G34 - OpenGL ES 1.1 3D graphics accelerator • Bitboys G40 - OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics accelerator • Bitboys products are licensed tosemiconductor and mobile phonemanufacturers as IP (IntellectualProperty) cores • Bitboys cores are integrated into theSoC (System-on-Chip) semiconductorproducts manufactured by the licensorof Bitboys technology

6. Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration?

7. Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration? • By the end of this decade • Mobile gaming becomes serious business • Several new companies will enter the digital entertainment business • Games have to look good and play slick • Requires an integrated hardware graphics processor • Given that an average mobile phone chipset already incorporates tens of IP cores, a graphics processor is relatively inexpensive addition • On the other hand, already almost 10% of the silicon real-estate is reserved for graphics rendering

8. Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration? • The need for graphics acceleration on mobile phones is driven by • Need to differentiate • Need to look good, anything visual sells • Games need it, developers want it to create better content • User interfaces need to be more responsive and easier to use • All other computing platforms have it already • Soon more graphics processors will be shipped on mobile phones than PCs • In performance, mobile graphics hardware is five years behind PCs

9. 2D, 3D and Vector Graphics • The focus on PC graphics hardware is on 3D graphics • On mobiles, 2D bitmap and vector graphics have even a stronger pull on the market • Vector graphics • Used for graphical user interfaces, games, applications and maps • Vector graphics hardware is easy and cost-effective to integrate • Provides content scalability and small content size • Standardized APIs • OpenVG 1.0 (low-level rendering API) • SVG (file format) • Flash Lite (from Macromedia)

10. Content Examples

11. Brief History of MobileGraphics Acceleration

12. The Brief History • 2002 - “Year 0” - No mobile graphics API standards available - Basically no market for mobile graphics hardware - Imagination introduces PowerVR MBX graphics processor • 2003 - Khronos introduces the OpenGL ES 1.0 API - Bitboys introduces the G10 graphics processor - ATI and NVIDIA enter the handheld graphics processor market - First serious deals signed • 2004 - Khronos introduces the OpenGL ES 1.1 API - Bitboys introduces the G34 and G40 graphics processors - All major semiconductor vendors and mobile phone manufactures include 3D graphics acceleration on their roadmaps • 2005 - Khronos introduces the OpenGL ES 2.0 API, which supports vertex and pixel shaders - Khronos introduces the OpenVG 1.0 for vector graphics rendering - Bitboys introduces the G12 graphics processor

13. The API Standards • OpenGL ES 1.1 • Fixed-function (non-programmable) 3D graphics API • An embedded subset of the OpenGL 1.5 standard • OpenGL ES 2.0 • Programmable 3D graphics API, vertex shaders and pixel shaders • Includes OpenGL Shading Language (a subset) • An embedded subset of the OpenGL 2.0 standard • OpenGL ES EGL • Interface between OpenVG/OpenGL ES APIs and the OS windowing system • Similar to WGL in PC Windows environment • OpenVG 1.0 • Low-level API for 2D vector graphics • Mobile 3D Graphics API for J2ME™ • A retained and immediate mode 3D API for Java environment • Microsoft Direct3D Mobile • Part of Windows CE 5.0 • Similar to Direct3D on PC Windows

14. Currently Available Devices • Basically all devices with 3D graphics hardware accelerators have been introduced during the past two years • Handheld gaming devices leading the pack • Sony PSP (Sony proprietary) • Gizmondo (NVIDIA GoForce 3D) • A small selection of phones available • Mitsubishi D504i (DoCoMo) • LG SV360 (ATI Imageon) • Samsung SPH-G1000 (Samsung 3D hardware?) • PDAs • Dell Axim X50v (Imagination MBX) • Samsung SPH-M7000 (Imagination MBX)

15. Device Gallery Sony PSP Mitsubishi D504i LG SV360 Samsung SPH-G1000 Dell Axim X50v Samsung SPH-M7000

16. Mobile Graphics Hardware Vendors

17. The Players • The major players are: • ATI Canada • Bitboys Finland • Falanx Microsystems Norway • Imagination Technologies UK • Mitsubishi Japan • NVIDIA US • All companies of 3D graphics hardware IP for handheld devices • ATI and NVIDIA also offer multimedia chips, with integrated 3D graphics hardware

18. Typical Features • 2D graphics • BitBlt, fill, raster operations • Vector graphics • Native vector graphics support or implementation over the 3D pipeline • Polygon rasterization with anti-aliasing • Texturing and gradients (linear and radial) • 3D graphics • Geometry processing in hardware • Rasterization, supersample or multisample anti-aliasing • Two textures / pixel • Bilinear and trilinear texture filtering • Texture decompression • OpenGL ES 1.x pixel pipeline

19. Typical Performance • Geometry performance • 1-3M triangles/s • Realistically 15-20k polygons/frame • Pixel processing • 1 pixel per clock cycle => 100-200M pixels/second • Realistically 5 layers of pixels on QVGA/VGA resolution • Available memory bandwidth and power consumption are the two biggest limiting factors

20. The Future

21. Displays and CPU • Displays • Expect to see QVGA resolution displays next year on many phone models • Some gaming phones will use horizontal displays • VGA resolution in 2008 • CPU • 300 MHz ARM CPUs in 2006 • 600 MHz ARM CPUs in 2007-2008 • Close to 1 GHz in 2008 with the next ARM Cortex family CPUs

22. Mobile Graphics Hardware • Still expecting a breakthrough in 2006 timeframe • Several interesting product announcements made this year • Expect graphics hardware in smartphones/gaming phones by the end of the next year • Vector graphics acceleration will be widely adopted • Will take until 2007-2008 for graphics hardware to find its way to the high-volume basic phones • Expect full vertex and pixel shader support in 2007 with OpenGL ES 2.0 • Expect robust performance

23. Mobile Gaming • Consolidation of: • Gaming platforms • Mobile game vendors • Battle over gaming platforms • DoCoMo i-mode • Nokia N-Gage • Qualcomm’s BREW • Symbian OS • Casual and branded games will generatethe largest revenue • Content delivery may no longer be an issue • Handset vendors have recognized the problemand will provide solutions – WiFi, memory cards, …

24. User interfaces • Vector graphics and 3D graphics user interfaces • The main operating system GUI • Application specific user interfaces • Expect: • Animated backgrounds • Animated icons • Transparent windows • Customized skins • 30FPS!

25. Demo Time!