If this is the case then the actual performance gains from using and combining smaller operations will depend on how often these operations are identical and can be bundled, though since we’re talking about parallel computing, it should be the case quite often.įrom an architecture perspective this is an interesting and unexpected departure from Imagination’s usual design. An example of this would be bundling 4 INT8 adds into what is essentially one large INT32 addition operation, an action that requires minimal additional work from the ALU. Imagination’s press release doesn’t offer a ton of detail in how they are doing this, however I suspect that they have gone with the traditional (and easiest) method, which is to simply bundle like-operations. One ALU can now process 1 INT32, 2 INT16s, or 4 INT8s.
Series7XT Plus significantly changes this: the integer ALUs can now combine operations into a single operation based on their width. Previously those formats would be run through the integer ALUs as INT32s, which though practical meant that there were few performance gains from using smaller integers since they weren’t really processed as smaller numbers. What has changed for Series7XT then is how those ALUs handle smaller INT16 and INT8 formats. Though Imagination hasn’t drawn out the integer ALUs in previous generations’ architecture diagrams, the architecture has always contained INT32 ALUs. First and foremost, Imagination is upgrading Rogue’s integer ALUs to more efficiently handle smaller integer formats. To accomplish this they are making two important changes to the Rogue architecture. With Series7XT Plus, Imagination is focusing first and foremost on improving Rogue’s compute performance and compute capabilities. To that end the company is using CES 2016 to announce the next iteration of the Rogue architecture, PowerVR Series7XT Plus. This year they are turning their efforts towards compute, with while also working on energy and memory efficiency on the side. Imagination also used Series7XT to lay the groundwork for larger designs containing more GPU clusters, giving the architecture the ability to scale up to a rather sizable 16 cores.Īfter modernizing Rogue’s graphics capabilities with Series7XT, for their follow-up Imagination is taking a slightly different path.
Shortly before CES last year we were introduced to the company’s PowerVR Series7XT family, a significant iteration on their base Rogue architecture that added full support for the Android Extension Pack to their GPUs, along with specific improvements to improve energy efficiency, overall graphics performance, and compute performance. A regular sight at CES at most years is a new PowerVR graphics announcement from the crew over at Imagination, and this year is no exception.