Brief History of Graphics Devices

Tat Iwamoto 2014

Around 1980

• 1977: Apple II

• 1983: NES

• 1977: $1,298 to $2,638

• MOS Technology 6502 @ 1MHz

• 4KB to 48KB RAM

Apple II

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http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/

• Famicom

• 1983: ￥14,800

• Nintendo Entertainment System

• 1985: $299

• Ricoh 2A03 CPU: MOS6502@1.79MHZ

• Ricoh 2C03 Picture Processing Unit: Custom @5.37MHz

• 2KB Work RAM + 2KB VRAM

NES / Family Computer

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NTSC 480i• Vertical: 192 lines

• 29.97Hz, 525 lines, interlace

• 240 active / field, ~10% overscan

• Horizontal: about 160 color pixels

• Composite color subcarrier 3.579545MHz

• 227.5 color phase / line, 16% blanking, ~10% overscan

• Roughly 1M Pixels / second

Wow, I can show Video!• Designed simply to show of video on TV

• To generate NTSC video signals

• Full bitmap required a lot of memory / bandwidth

• DRAM was expensive

• Reduced color resolution

• Sprite tables

Around 1980 was…

Dawn of Interactive Graphics Devices

Generating Video Signal Itself Was a Challenge for both computer and consumer devices

Very different price point

Around 1990

• 1987: IBM PS/2 VGA

• 1994: PlayStation

IBM PS/2 w/VGA• 1987: $1,695 to $10,995

• CPU:

• 8086 8MHz to 80386 20MHz

• VGA:

• 640x480 16/16M colors

• 256 KB VRAM http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de

http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de

PlayStation• 1994: ￥39,800

• CPU:

• MIPS R3000 @33.8688MHz

• Geometry transformation engine

• GPU:

• 256×224 16M Color

• Rasterization & shading

• 1MB SGRAM

PC Evolution• More bandwidth for video memory!

• Full bitmap color / High resolution / Progressive

• Better text legibility

• Dedicated RGB video connector

• For higher resolution display

Consumer Device Evolution

• Hardware acceleration

• 3D graphics

• Movie playback

• Output remains NTSC

Around 1990 was…Divergence of Evolution

• PC for office productivity

• High res / memory bandwidth

• Consumer for multimedia

• Dedicated hardware / SD resolution

Around 2000

• GeForce 2 • PlayStation2

GeForce 2• 2000: $400 (Pro)

• Obviously, you need a DesktopPC with AGP 4x, too

• VRAM: 64MB 128bit DDR-DRAM @400MHz 6.4GB/s

• Core: @200MHz

• Direct 3D 7

• Hardware Transform & Lighting

• 800MOp/s, 800MPixel/s, 1600MTexel/s

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Playstation2• 2000: ￥39,800

• Memory: 32 MB Direct RDRAM

• CPU "Emotion Engine”

• 64bit MIPS+Vector Units @294.912 MHz

• GPU "Graphics Synthesizer”

• VRAM 4 MB 2560bit eDRAM @147.456 MHz 48GB/s

• 20M-75M Polygon/s

Around 2000 was…Seeing convergence

• PC

• More bandwidth for fill and texture

• HW feature advances rapidly

• Largely driven by DirectX

• Consumer

• Still SD resolution

• Feature advance getting caught up by PC

• More fill bandwidth with specialized memory

Around 2005

• GeForce 7 • Radeon X1xxx • PlayStation3 • Xbox 360

Geforce 7• 2005: $400 (7800GT)

• Obviusly, you need a DesktopPC with PCIe 16x, too

• VRAM: 256MB 256bit GDDR3-DRAM @1000MHz 32GB/s

• Core: @400MHz

• Direct 3D 9.0c

• Vertex and Pixel Shader Units

• 8GPixelOp/s, 6.4GROP/s, 8GTexel/s, 0.7GVertexOp/s

Radeon X1xxx• 2005: $400 (X1800XL)

• Obviusly, you need a DesktopPC with PCIe 16x, too

• VRAM: 256MB 256bit GDDR3-DRAM @1000MHz 32GB/s

• Core: @500MHz

• Direct 3D 9.0c

• Vertex and Pixel Shader Units

• 8GPixelOp/s, 8GROP/s, 8GTexel/s, 1GVertex/s

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PlayStation3• 2006: $599 (60GB)

• CPU: “Cell Broadband Engine”

• 1x PPE, 7x SPEs @3.2 GHz

• Memory: 256 MB 32bit XDR-DRAM @3.2GHz 25.6GB/s

• GPU: RSX “Reality Synthesizer”

• VRAM: 256MB 128bit GDDR3-DRAM @700MHz 22.4GB/s

• Core: @550MHz

• Vertex and Pixel Shader Units

• 13.2GPixelOp/s, 4.4GROP/s, 13.2GTexel/s, 1.1GVertexOp/s

Xbox 360• 2005: $399 (Premium)

• Memory:

• 512 MB 128bit GDDR3-DRAM @700 MHz 22.4GB/s

• CPU “Xenon”

• PowerPC x3 @3.2 GHz

• GPU “Xenos”

• VRAM 10MB eDRAM @700MHz 32/256(ROP) GB/s

• Core: @500MHz

• Unified Shader

• 24GShaderOp/s, 4GROP/s, 8GTexel/s,

anandtech.com

Around 2005 was…

Convergence of Desktop PC and Home Console Graphics

• Taken over by PC GPU technology

• Home TV now HD

Around 2010

• Direct3D 11 GPU • iPhone4

PC GPU• GeForce GTX480

• 2010: $499

• 1.3TFLOPS, 177.4GB/s

• Radeon HD5870

• 2009: $379

• 2.7TFLOPS, 153.6GB/s

• Features:

• Direct3D 11

• GPGPU (OpenCL, Compute Shader)

ixbt.com

iPhone 4

• 2010: $600 (?)

• Memory 512MB LPDDR2-DRAM @200MHz 3.2GB/s

• CPU: ARM Cortex-A8 @1GHz

• GPU: PowerVR SGX535 @200MHz

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Around 2010 was…Desktop PC no longer relevant

• Continues to grow performance but…

• Evolving into dinosaur territory

Rise of mobile devices

• iPhone only launched in 2007 !

• Industry focus shifted

• Absorbing technology from PC

• Integrated into small form factor / low power

2013

• iPhone 5S / iPad Air

• Champion devices

• Snapdragon 800

• Powering the competing devices

2013 was…• Mobile GPU migrated to new architecture

• PowerVR SGX to R6xxx

• Adreno 2xx to 3xx

• Tegra3 to 4

• Mali T4xx to T6xx

• Catching upto DX10/11 level features

2014

• Feature mostly caught up to desktop

• Higher performance per Watt

• Pressure to lower price point

Summary• 1980: Barely driving video output. More bandwidth!

• 1990:

• PC wants more bandwidth for office

• Consumer wanted multimedia

• 2000:

• PC start embracing 3D graphics & multimedia

• Consumer push for bandwidth but still on SD

• 2005: Converge to PC technology

• 2010: Mobile devices emerge. Smaller form factor, lesser power

• 2013: Mobile devices catch up with PC features

• 2014: Mobile leads evolution

Also be Aware of…• Price point of the product

• Determines the market for the device

• Logic board pictures

• Big logic board with many parts == expensive

Conclusion• Focus for graphics hardware kept

shifting

• Bandwidth vs HW features

• To small and low power

!

Which way does it evolve to next?