Rambus Micro-Threading For DRAM 4X Boost In 3D

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companiesspecializing in high-speed chip interfaces, today unveiled an architecturalbreakthrough of applying micro-threading to DRAM cores. This innovationsignificantly increases memory subsystem efficiency, resulting in up to fourtimes greater performance when compared to a traditional DRAM in applicationssuch as 3D graphics, advanced video imaging, and network routing and switching.

Micro-threading increases memory system efficiency by enabling DRAMs toprovide more usable data bandwidth to requesting memory controllers. A singlecore operation of a typical mainstream DRAM provides a larger amount of datathan needed by many applications. As a result, large amounts of memory bandwidthare used to deliver a small amount of relevant data. Micro-threading enables theDRAM to provide several smaller relevant pieces of data in place of a singlelarger piece of data, resulting in higher memory bandwidth efficiency whileminimizing power consumption.

"By applying micro-threading to a DRAM core, we are continuing our traditionof innovation by designing and developing advanced technologies to improve thebandwidth between DRAMs and their associated memory controllers," said LauraStark, vice president of Platform Solutions at Rambus. "We look forward toworking with our various DRAM partners to bring this exciting new technology tothe market in high-volume applications."

With the application of micro-threading to a DRAM core, separate addressesare provided to different DRAM core partitions, enabling the requestingcontroller to generate multiple micro-RAS and micro-CAS operations in the sametime it would take to generate a single RAS or CAS command to a standard DRAM.Simultaneously accessible banks allow for concurrent retrieval of data, whichare then bundled into a single transmission.

Realistic interactive 3D applications such as games and visualizationsoftware require more complex scenes, composed of increasingly smaller texturedpolygons or triangles. A Rambus analysis showed that a standard GDDR SDRAM beingused in a 3D application can deliver between 50 and 125 million triangles persecond. If the same GDDR SDRAM were to be enhanced with micro-threading, therate of delivered triangles would increase to between 100 and 500 milliontriangles per second. By enabling higher triangle rendering rates,micro-threading, as it is applied to a DRAM core, benefits the end userexperience by providing richer visuals.

Micro-threading may be applied to existing DRAM cores with relatively lowincremental cost. To benefit from the performance increase, DRAM controllersinterfacing with micro-threaded DRAMs need to be optimized for the newtechnology. This patent pending micro-threading technology is available forlicensing today. For more information on micro-threading and other Rambusinnovations, please visit www.rambus.com

Sola joins the ranks in Sony Xperia family

The new Sony Xperia sola claims to incorporate the companys proprietary technology to offer users premium entertainment they want. It features a unique "floating touch" navigation that allows users to browse the web, and their home screens by hovering their finger above the screen, without actually touching it. The smartphone is also NFC-enabled and comes with two NFC Xperia SmartTags in the box, which can be personalized with up to 10 commands. Powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor, the Xperia sola sports a crisp 3.7-inch Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA Engine, xLOUD and 3D surround sound audio technology to deliver superb multimedia experiences. It also comes with fast capture that allows the phones built-in camera to activate from sleep in just over a second with a single key press.

Comes in black, white and red, the Sony Xperia sola will be available in Q2 this year, initially with Android 2.3 Gingerbread. And upgradeable to Android 4.0 ICS during summer 2012. Pricing details not available at press time.

XGI Volari 8300 For Desktop amp; Mobile

XGI Technology Inc., the world's third largest graphics chipset designcompany, today launched a new member of its graphics family, the Volari™ 8300,with a press event held in Beijing, inviting over 100 IT journalists to theaffair. The new PCI-Express based Volari™ 8300 graphics chipset is designed withXGI's flagship video processing technology, TrueVideo™ Engine, to satisfy theincreasing demand of video processing power for home PCs.

“The Volari™ 8300 has raised the bar for what we called an entry level graphicssolution” said Ralph Cheng, the Vice President of Marketing of XGI. “With thehigher demand in video quality, the Volari™ 8300 supports various videoenhancing features that can only be found in high-end competitor products.Moreover, Volari™ 8300 provides sufficient support for 3D gaming, making thisundoubtedly the most economical investment for everyday user.”

Volari™ 8300 is designed with 0.13 um processing that supports DirectX 9.0, andshader model 2.0 with 64 bit DRAM memory interface. XGI introduced a new conceptwith Volari™ 8300, the eXtreme Cache™, an advanced technology that dynamicallyallocates system memory to support graphics processing. With the additionalbandwidth of PCI Express, eXtreme Cache™ is able to reach higher levels ofgraphics performance and effectively support up to 256MB of memory for graphicsprocessing. This flexible design ultimately enhances the cinematic graphicexperience from XGI™ graphic hardware and is a more cost-effective solution forthe intensive graphics support required from time-to-time.

As high definition contents are on the rise, the Volari™ 8300 has taken a stepfurther with their built-in true hardware video enhancement technology, theTrueVideo™ Engine, to satisfy the tough requirements from MCE. Thiscomprehensive video enhancement features the support for HDTV content up to1280x720p; inverse 3:2 Pull-down to convert movies back to its original form andDe-Interlacing, to remove the jaggy lines in motion graphics. Furthermore, theCoolPower II low power consumption design allows Volari™ 8300 to be built into afan-less graphics solution, making it the ideal solution for digital homeentertainment.

XGI™ continues to co-operate with industry leading content providers for bettersupport on Games and Software Applications. This year, XGI has worked closelywith US game vendor and top online game vendors in Asia, all in the efforts toensure top game play quality and stability on Volari™ 8300. Nonetheless, it hasalso qualified for the requirement of Microsoft® MCE, making XGI™ Volari™ 8300the Number 1 graphics solution for Entertainment on the PC.

Specifications

Native PCI Express Bus Interface

Ultra high-speed x16 (16-lane) PCI Express buses Revision 1.0aSupport x1/x8/x16 PCI Express Bus

Performance

Up to 300MHz engine and 300MHz memory clockPixel fill rate: 600 million PS-shaded pixels per second and 1.2 billionflat-shaded pixels per secondTexel processing rate: 4.8 billion texels per second5.6GB per second memory bandwidth

TruShader™ SE Graphics Engine

Hierarchical pixel tiling for page based rendering2x2 pixel pipelines and 4 independent Pixel Shaders2 pixels/clock with 8 texel/pixelTexture size up to 8Kx8K and non-power of 2Bi-linear, tri-linear and anisotropic texture filteringHigh order texture filtering up to 8x8 kernelLinear sRGB color formatMET and MRTFloating color buffer (up to 32 bit)Floating texture formats (up to 32 bit)Full anti-aliasing support for texts, lines, scenesSpecial multi-resolution depth bufferSpecial bandwidth reduction hardware via compressionMulti-level cachesFully OpenGL-compliant blending including fog & depth cueing

CoolPower™ II

Unified software & hardware architecture for power managementDynamic clock gating, frequency scaling, work load balancingSupports INTEL-defined Device Performance States (DPS)Supports PCI Express Active State Power Management (ASPM)Optional battery optimizer under user control

TrueVideo™ Engine

State-of-the-art pixel based motion and edge adaptive de-interlaceInverse 3:2 pull downMotion and object based adaptive edge smoothingOverdrive technology for Ultra Clear TFT LCD image qualitySupports HDTV resolution up to 1280x720pProvides cubical interpolation with edge recovery

DVD Support

Microsoft's DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA)Includes both Motion Compensation and IDCT hardwareReal-time playback (30 fps) of 9.8 Mbps MPEG-2 video bit stream

Output Displays

Three simultaneous outputs: CRT, DVI and TV outIntegrated TMDS for interface to DVI up to 1600x1200Integrated NTSC/PAL encoder up to 1024x768350 MHz RAMDAC for CRT up to 2048x153690° and 180° HW rotation support

Graphics Standard

MICROSOFT® graphics standard for Windows® XP and 2000DX9.0 Vertex Shader 2.0 Extended and Pixel Shader 2.0DX9.0c software compatibleOpenGL 1.5 compatible

Software

Windows® XP, 64-Bit Edition, 2000Windows® Vista (Longhorn)DirectX 9.0, 8.1 and 7.0OpenGL ICD 1.4 and 1.5LINUX (Red Hat and SuSE)

Quad Core Opteron Series Unveiled

Quad Core Opteron FamilySeriesQ3 2007Q4 2007Q1 2008Q2 2008

Opteron 8xxx"Barcelona"
(4x512KB L2, 2MB Shared L3, HT 1.0, DDR2-667)8000 SE
(120W)8270 SE(2.5GHz)
8268 SE (2.4GHz)8272SE (2.6GHz)8000
(95W)8266 (2.3GHz)
8264 (2.2GHz)
8262 (2.1GHz)8268 (2.4GHz)8000 HE
(68W)8260 HE(2.0GHz)
8258 HE (1.9GHz)Opteron 2xxx"Barcelona"
(4x512KB L2, 2MB Shared L3, HT 1.0, DDR2-667)2000 SE
(120W)2270 SE(2.5GHz)
2268 SE (2.4GHz)2272 SE(2.6GHz)2000
(95W)2266 (2.3GHz)
2264 (2.2GHz)
2262 (2.1GHz)2268 (2.4GHz)2000 HE
(68W)2260 HE(2.0GHz)
2258 HE (1.9GHz)Opteron 1xxx"Budapest"
(4x512KB L2, 2MB Shared L3, HT 3.0, DDR2-667)1000 SE
(120W)1270SE (2.5GHz)
1268SE (2.4GHz)1000
(95W)1266 (2.3GHz)
1264 (2.2GHz)
1262 (2.1GHz)

Sony Ericsson Unveils C510

Sony Ericsson unveils the C510 Cyber-shot™ and introduces Smile Shutter™ technology

Sony Ericsson today announces its first mobile phone with Smile Shutter™ technology,wrapped up in its most affordable Cyber-shot™ phone to date; the C510 Cyber-shot™. The Smile Shutter™ technology will also be added to the 8.1 megapixel camera phone C905 Cyber-shot™, launched in November 2008.

Singapore – January 8, 2009 – Sony Ericsson today introduces the beautifully simple
C510 Cyber-shot™, its most affordable Cyber-shot™ phone to date, and an application
upgrade to the C905 Cyber-shot™ phone, currently at the top of the charts across the
globe.

The Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot™ portfolio has topped 32 million handsets sales worldwide demonstrating Sony Ericsson’s market leadership in bringing exciting new camera phone technology to consumers around the world.

The C510 Cyber-shot™ will make Sony Ericsson’s camera phone experience accessible to even more consumers and markets worldwide.

C510 Cyber-shot™
More consumers can now enjoy the Cyber-shot™ experience, without compromising on quality at an affordable price. Sony Ericsson continues to push design and innovation, as well as work with the best partners in the industry, to provide existing consumers and consumers in new markets the chance to enjoy the benefits of mobile photography.

The C510 Cyber-shot™ phone was rated “best imaging experience,” in the 3-megapixel range of camera phones, according to a research conducted in Germany by TESTfactory.

The accessible C510 Cyber-shot™ handset is jammed packed with the highest quality
imaging technology and encased in a stylish handset design expected from Sony Ericsson.

Beautifully simple C510 Cyber-shot™ features include:
• Reliable 3.2 megapixel Cyber-shot™ camera with protective slide-in lens cover
• Smile Shutter™ – clever technology that detects a person’s smile and immediately takes the photo!
• Face Detection – focusing technology of up to three faces at a time
• Auto-rotation – alter the landscape and portrait view by rotating the mobile phone
• Illuminated imaging shortcut keys for fast access to camera functions
• Snapfish by HP – pre-installed application allows users to send print orders from the
phone to Snapfish and have quality photo prints delivered to their homes.
• YouTube™ enabled – upload your videos and images straight to the web
• Photo Fix – adjust light balance, brightness and contrast simultaneously
• SMS conversation style – see your entire SMS conversation history at a glance
• Auto focus – take the best shot

“We have been leaders and innovators in the camera phone segment since the company was started,” said Jack Tan, General Manager, Singapore at Sony Ericsson. “Now we are delighted to unveil the C510 Cyber-shot™, our most accessible Cyber-shot™ phone to date which includes a host of new features normally found on more premium phones.

Features like Smile-Shutter™, YouTube integration and Snapfish by HP integration make
the C510 Cyber-shot™ a really fun mobile phone to use. This phone will enable us to
engage new markets and consumers to our Cyber-shot™ phone experience.”

C905 Cyber-shot™upgrade
The fantastic C905 Cyber-shot™ phone is now even better thanks to new software
announced today by Sony Ericsson. The 8.1 megapixel camera phone has received
tremendous feedback across the globe. According to TESTfactory*, the C905 Cybershot
™ phone delivered the “best imaging experience,” in the 8-megapixel class of camera
phones.

This upgrade is designed to add extra value to a consumer’s camera phone experience,
and make a fantastic product even better. Consumers who already own a C905 Cybershot ™ phone can easily download the new applications from mid-February 2009 at http://www.sonyericsson.com/.

Capture the spontaneous moments in life with the C905 Cyber-shot™ upgrade, which features:
• Smile Shutter™
• YouTube™
• WayFinder 8
• Snapfish by HP – high quality, best value prints. Place print orders directly from the mobile phone – no memory cards, cables or offload needed
• SMS/MMS conversation style - users can switch between the generic inbox or conservation chat where the entire message chain is presented at a glance.

Also announced today is a new colour of C905 Cyber-shot™, Tender Rose, available from March 2009 in Singapore and IM502, a new camera phone tripod, available in stores soon.

The C510 Cyber-shot™ supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 and UMTS/HSPA
2100. C510 Cyber-shot™ will be available in Singapore from Q1 2009 in the colours
Future Black and Radiation Silver.

PowerVR SGX Shader Cores

Imagination Technologies – a leader in silicon IP cores – debuts its PowerVRSGX Shader Graphics Accelerator family, the future of wireless mobile embeddedgraphics and video technology.

The PowerVR SGX cores for wireless applications are part of Imagination’sPowerVR Series5 scalable and fully programmable unified shader graphics andvideo core family, previously codenamed Eurasia. The first cores from thisfamily target mainstream and performance mobile graphics with state-of-the-artsupport for 2D and 3D and an industry leading feature set that exceeds OGL 2.0shader and Microsoft Vertex and Pixel Shader Model 3 requirements.

PowerVR SGX is available for licensing in three scaled variants (PowerVR SGX510,SGX520, SGX530) with sizes ranging from less than 2mm2 to 8mm2 in 90nmtechnology. These variants will enable a wide range of mobile devices from basicphones and entry-level feature phones to mainstream feature phones and advancedfeature and smart phones.

“Despite its very small size PowerVR SGX will set a tough benchmark that anycompetitors will have to stretch to compare with and, with advancedprogrammability and state-of-the-art shader features, will enable contentdevelopers to create a distinct new generation of mobile games andapplications,” says Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination Technologies.

PowerVR SGX enables the highest performance, most efficient and lowest powerconsumption solution for handheld 3D graphics and video. Each scalable PowerVRSGX variant provides highly flexible support for video codecs with zero siliconoverhead, using the advanced programmability of the core.

PowerVR SGX builds on the architectural benefits found in Imagination’s PowerVRMBX family, which is already the de facto standard for mobile graphics withlicensees including six of the world’s top 10 semiconductor manufacturers. Thefirst PowerVR SGX deliverables will be available for shipping to lead partnersfrom next quarter.

The PowerVR SGX family will co-exist alongside PowerVR MBX, which is currentlyintegrated in a variety of devices including mobile handhelds, car navigationand entertainment systems.

PowerVR SGX510, SGX520 and SGX530 are compatible with content created forPowerVR MBX. PowerVR SGX is backwardly compatible with key features from thePowerVR MBX family like the vertex shader programs and 2 and 4-bit PVR-TC™texture compression. These compatibilities, and continued support for allexisting PowerVR extensions to OpenGL ES 1.1, allow comprehensive softwaresupport developed on the PowerVR MBX platform to be carried forward to PowerVRSGX.

The PowerVR SGX Difference
The new-generation PowerVR SGX offers all the advantages of PowerVR’s highlyefficient tile based architecture. Unlike traditional graphics solutions thatdemand expensive memory or very large silicon areas, PowerVR's unique, patentedtile-based rendering and deferred pixel shading architecture allows a very smallsilicon die to deliver higher performance and higher image quality, at lowerpower consumption, than competing technologies.

PowerVR SGX takes the PowerVR architecture to the next level with a unifiedscalable shader engine (USSE™), which combines vertex shader and pixel shaderfeatures in a single scalable processing unit, enabling mobile semiconductor anddevice manufacturers to plan a roadmap where PowerVR will continue to enable thebest performance in the most efficient architecture for the mobile industry.

Shader technology enables superior realism and advanced features when rendering3D objects and, by making 3D effects more programmable, gives freedom to contentdevelopers to create more visually compelling and unique games and applications.

Continues Yassaie: “With its PowerVR deferred pixel shading architecture thePowerVR SGX family has the lowest core and system power demands. It’s ideal forunified memory systems plus integrated CPU designs in mobile and cost sensitiveapplications. Couple that with wide standards compatibility, high scalabilityfrom a unified shader architecture, pipeline scalability from 1x to 8x andbeyond and video encode and decode for free, and you have a solution that isdemonstrably superior to any other offering on the market.


“With PowerVR SGX we expect to maintain our hard-won leadership position onsize, power and performance – and its scalability means it’s suitable for a widerange of end-user products. The specification says it all: this is the premierwireless graphics solution and will enable our partners to continue thereshaping of the mobile multimedia market they have already begun using ourtechnology.”

Says Dr. Jon Peddie, the leading market researcher in graphics: “The mobilephone is advancing in functionality at a 3X pace compared to the PC, and futurehigh-end phones will incorporate the OpenGL ES 2.0 API with shader capabilities,similar to features found on high-end PCs. Imagination Technologies, with designwins in most of the major handsets, continues its lead by being the first tointroduce a design with support for this new API and we expect this newtechnology to fuel the next wave in modern advanced mobile phones.”

Inside PowerVR SGX
The PowerVR SGX family features the USSE™ unified scalable shader engine, whichcombines vertex shader and pixel shader features in a single programmable andhighly scalable processing unit. Maximum gate utilisation is achieved by sharingthe unit for both vertex and pixel processing with optimal automatic loadbalancing of vertex and pixel throughput, which are often different fromapplication to application.

PowerVR SGX’s USSE supports advanced geometry and pixel processing capabilitiessuch as procedural geometry (e.g. higher order surfaces, data instancing, pathbased geometry, point-sprite expansion etc.) and textures, advanced per pixeland vertex lighting effects (e.g. parallax bump mapping, refraction andreflection etc). Further, the highly flexible nature of the USSE architectureallows this programmability to be applied to many other tasks such as othermultimedia related activities (e.g. physical modelling), flexible video andimage processing and many more. This unified approach to processing also has thebenefit of requiring a single unified programming model with one compiler,reducing hardware and software qualification time.

PowerVR SGX’s latency tolerant architecture provides geometry processing andrasterisation decoupled to achieve minimal stalling as well as no pixel shadingof non-visible pixels and on-chip support for multiple render targets (MRT). Alarge proportion of PowerVR SGX’s peak throughput is achievable in realapplications and the architecture has the lowest bandwidth requirements asPowerVR SGX’s deferred pixel shading gives 2x - 3x fill rate compared to othersolutions at the same bandwidth. Across the wireless PowerVR SGX family partseffective fillrate performance is from 200Mpix/sec to 1200Mpix/sec @ 200MHz(with even higher Z and stencil rates) and polygon throughput is from 2Mpoly/secto 13.5Mpoly/sec @ 200Mhz.

Z and Stencil tests are performed on-chip requiring no external stencil orZ-buffer memory or bandwidth. Pixel shading and blending are also performedon-chip and compressed texture support is just part of an industry leadingfeature set which also supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OGL 2.0 and Microsoft ShaderModel 3.0 capable shaders, procedural geometry and MRTs.

PowerVR SGX enables compelling image quality via Internal True Colour™ -enabling colour operations to be performed on-chip using high precisionmathematics at arbitrary pixel colour precision up to 128bit/IEEE32 floatingpoint - combined with comprehensive programmable multi-sampling imageanti-aliasing for free.

A key benefit of PowerVR SGX’s tiling architecture is on-chip multiple rendertargets (MRT). This technology is unique to PowerVR tile based rendering andcannot be replicated by an immediate mode renderer (IMR) in a cost-effectivemanner. IMRs use conventional external MRTs with huge external memory storageand bandwidth. PowerVR’s on-chip MRTs result in low geometry processing with noadditional external memory cost and no additional memory bandwidth cost.

All major 2D operations are accelerated, including: BLTs, Alpha Blend BLTs, ROP2, 3 & 4s, lines and surface rotation.

PowerVR SGX fully supports the broadest range of mobile standards includingOpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.X, D3D Mobile, OpenVG, JSR184 and JSR239, DX9+ andOpen GL 2.0 APIs running under Linux, Symbian, WinCE and Windows Mobile OS.

Video For Free
Because of PowerVR SGX’s fully programmable architecture it can support videoacceleration for free, without increasing the size and complexity of the core.

Video is a core competence of handheld graphics processors and is increasingly amust-have feature, not just in Personal Media Player products, but also othermobile devices. PowerVR SGX provides outstanding image quality and frame rates,offloading video codec processing (including MPEG-4 and H.264) from the mainCPU. For video operations the host CPU load is minimal and the PowerVR SGX partcan perform motion estimation, motion compensation and transform, residualgeneration, transform, quantisation, inverse quantisation, inverse transform,image reconstruction, and deblocking (H.264), making it possible to efficientlyoff load the tasks associated with video compression/decompression from the hostCPU.

As well as enabling the playback of users own personal media content, PowerVRSGX’s advanced video capabilities will enable mobile services such asTV/video-on-demand and video messaging. PowerVR SGX also supports still imagestandards including JPEG and JPEG2000.

Report AMD Radeon HD 6970 priced $450; releasing December 15th

Fudzilla reports that AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 6970 is set to retail at$450, effectively bisecting the GTX 570 and GTX 580 on price. Therelease date is scheduled for December 15th, with decent availabilityexpected. Radeon HD 6950 is also schedules for December 15th, although with lesser quantities.

The Radeon HD 6950's price is suggested to be under $330. However, with the HD 6870's prices now inflated to on average of $260, and considering the possibility of excess demand at release, the launch prices may be closer to $350.

While the rumour mill is working overtime, performance indications are fairly divided. The pricing does seem to suggest that the Radeon HD 6970 will end up slightly slower or on par with GTX 580, but then, the Radeon HD 4870 was similarly expected to end up slower than the $100 pricier GTX 260 (HD 4870 was faster) back in 2008.

One of the reasons for the delay from the original November 22nd launch is suggested to be driver tweaking. Being a new architecture, and AMD's most major revision since 2007, driver optimizations will undoubtedly result in significant benefits.

Reference: Fudzilla, Fudzilla