March 13, 2011

A5 Graphic Horsepower


Thanks to Anandtech, we can read some new features embebed with the new A5 ARM chip shipped with every iPad 2.

The GPU, which Apple is promising up to a 9x increase in performance, is an Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX 543MP2 with the following description from wikipedia:

PowerVR SGXMP chips are multi-core variants of the SGX series with some updates. It will be included in the Sony NGP (working title) portable gaming device with the MP4+ Model of the PowerVR SGX543, the only intended difference is the cores, where MP4+ denotes 4 cores with additional functionalities.

Anandtech said that architecturally the 543MP2 has more than twice the compute horsepower of the SGX 535 used in Apple's A4. Each shader pipeline can execute twice the number of instructions per clock as the SGX 535, and then there are four times as many pipes in an SGX 543MP2 as there are in a 535. There are also efficiency improvements as well. Hidden surface removal works at twice the rate in the 543MP2 as it did in the 535.


Of course, you can read the whole review in Anandtech, meanwhile here is a video with a little demo of what is coming for graphics improvement:

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