Imagination's IMG DXT GPU unlocks scalable, premium ray tracing for all mobile gamers - Design and Reuse

Imagination Technologies launches IMG DXT, a groundbreaking ray tracing GPU that scales to unlock cutting-edge graphics for each mobile instrumentality users.

London, England – 11^th January 2023 – Imagination Technologies launches IMG DXT, a groundbreaking ray tracing GPU that scales to unlock cutting-edge graphics for each mobile instrumentality users.

The archetypal successful the D-Series family, IMG DXT offers mobile instrumentality manufacturers the accidental to integrate ray tracing into their SoCs to lucifer their plan goals, from premium to mainstream devices.

The marketplace measurement addressable by mobile ray tracing to day has been small. IMG DXT enables ray tracing to go a mainstream technology, justifying the involvement and concern of mobile crippled developers and OEMs.

The GPU scales from an area-efficient fractional ray acceleration clump (RAC) configuration up to a high-performance four-RAC plan – covering a wide scope of applications, from elemental shadowing successful hybrid implementations to premium ray-traced graphics for AAA content.

With enactment for Fragment Shading Rate (FSR) for Vulkan®, IMG DXT frees up show headroom for developers. FSR decreases the fig of fragments processed and importantly increases graphics show with minimal interaction connected ocular quality. At the aforesaid time, FSR makes ray-traced effects much businesslike arsenic less rays are sent into the scene, meaning realistic lights and shadows are achieved wrong a smaller silicon area.

The flagship DXT-72-2304 configuration delivers the show demanded by ultra-premium mobile devices, delivering 72 GTexels/s and 2.5 TFLOPs of FP32 arithmetic performance, with a 50% higher maximum single-core show compared to the erstwhile generation. DXT cores connection 20% amended show density per country than the IMG CXT GPUs, portion importantly reducing powerfulness requirements.

David Harold, Chief Marketing Officer, Imagination says: “The increasing mobile gaming marketplace comes with a request to equilibrium low-power usage against the tendency for realistic and immersive graphics. As manufacture leaders successful businesslike ray tracing for mobile, we are accelerating ray tracing adoption and driving ecosystem growth. Last year, we launched and licensed the archetypal mobile ray-tracing GPU. Our caller scalable IMG DXT cores enactment astatine aggregate levels of implementation, starting with basal graphics integrations, up to flagship SoCs with desktop-level ray-traced visuals. The mobile GPU launches today, and we person already licensed the IP successful aggregate segments. We are besides speaking with pb partners successful automotive, desktop and information centre.”

Michael Inouye, Principal Analyst, ABI Research, says: “Mobile gaming’s accessibility and immediacy has driven it to go the largest gaming level contiguous and into the future. A cardinal operator has been the crossover from PC and console games to mobile platforms, closing the spread successful types of gaming and prime of experience, engendering a wide marketplace request for delivering high-performing devices that tin equilibrium graphics output wrong constricted mobile powerfulness budgets. Ray tracing, erstwhile the domain of premium PC gaming has trickled down to existent gen consoles creating a premier accidental for OEMs to bring businesslike graphics with ray tracing to mobile devices, giving them a competitory borderline and further bringing parity to the gaming market. Imagination is starring mobile GPU innovation, paving the mode successful democratising high-end graphics with its Photon ray tracing architecture. It’s latest DXT GPU is simply a contender to ticker successful this space.”

Dr Jon Peddie, President and Founder, Jon Peddie Research, says: “Imagination has a 20-year way grounds successful mobile GPU development, and it is unsurprising that its PowerVR architecture continues to clasp a sizeable mobile marketplace share. It volition beryllium breathtaking to spot however acold DXT’s scalable cores volition propulsion mobile ray tracing, particularly for lower- and mid-range devices. The manufacture is afloat of imaginable for this technology, not conscionable for smartphone gaming, but besides for XR, robotics and automotive applications – wherever ratio and show spell manus successful hand.”

Ray tracing for everyone

The IMG DXT GPU comes successful respective configurations and show points. Mainstream instrumentality manufacturers looking to differentiate their offerings tin take the area-efficient half-sized ray acceleration clump (RAC) configuration. OEMs looking for precocious show tin prime from a single, dual, oregon quad-RAC configuration for the eventual mobile ocular experience.

DXT’s Photon architecture is the lone ray tracing plan that sits astatine Level 4 connected the Ray Tracing Levels System (RTLS), which means it delivers its market-leading visuals successful the astir power-efficient mode disposable successful the industry. Imagination’s ray tracing solutions beryllium astatine Level 4 careless of RAC configuration, ensuring DXT offers usable ray tracing astatine up to 40% little country cost, compared to the aforesaid mobile configuration arsenic CXT.

Fragment Shading Rate (FSR) for Vulkan®

The fragment shader successful a GPU draws the colours from a country onto the framebuffer. FSR is simply a method wherever the fig of times the fragment shader runs is reduced with astir nary alteration successful representation prime arsenic a result. This cuts bandwidth usage and lowers powerfulness consumption. Developers power however aggressively FSR is used, the astir utmost mode executes the shader codification lone erstwhile for a 4×4 fragment zone, resulting successful a adjacent 94% simplification successful workload with matching powerfulness and bandwidth benefits. The show this frees up enables developers to bash much with the hardware and offers players a higher-quality gaming experience.

2D Dual-Rate Texturing

Many cutting-edge games trust connected dense texture sampling to instrumentality precocious filter effects. The IMG DXT GPU has an innovative patented peculiar mode wrong its texture processing portion (TPU) that creates a “fast path” for these post-processing effects. The effect is simply a adjacent doubling of bilinear filtering show with minimal country maturation and an wide simplification successful powerfulness consumption. It accelerates tasks specified arsenic post-processing effects successful games and computational photography filter processing. The higher throughput of the GPU besides enables improved ray-traced representation prime done faster and much power-efficient denoising algorithms.

Industry feedback

Hansen Hong, Director of Software Technology Planning, OPPO, says: “Imagination is simply a spouse of OPPO successful O3DF’s Mobile Device Working Group and we are moving intimately unneurotic to optimise show for next-gen GPU architectures. IMG DXT brings caller opportunities to integrate market-leading, realistic graphics crossed smartphone ranges, unlocking ray tracing and FSR for much mobile gamers. We look guardant to moving with Imagination connected gathering retired the O3DE mobile renderer and enabling developers to instrumentality afloat vantage of this game-changing, open-source technology.”

Royal O’Brien, General Manager of Digital Media and Games, says: “The members and assemblage person been focusing connected optimising and reducing the footprint of O3DE’s mobile code. O3DE and unfastened root is shaping the aboriginal of mobile gaming by delivering high-quality amusement experiences to users crossed instrumentality segments. Developers tin freely entree next-generation ray tracing done the collaboration of the assemblage and partners specified arsenic Imagination nether the Apache 2.0 licensed open-source Open 3D Engine. With the caller capabilities and motorboat of the caller IMG DXT GPU, we are excited to spot what developers build, arsenic this brings the aforesaid innovative ray tracing to mainstream mobile segments, opening the doors to premium gaming graphics for adjacent much players.”

Rui LI (Marcus), Technical Expert, Timi Studio, Tencent Games, says: “Ray tracing is revolutionising immersion, enabling developers to make graphically compelling games that connection users unsocial ocular experiences each clip they play. A cardinal situation for mobile gaming is packing each that processing powerfulness into a tiny country of silicon. Imagination has spearheaded the ray tracing gyration for mobile devices, and we’re excited for the motorboat of the caller DXT GPU, which scales the PowerVR architecture to little silicon footprints for maximum graphical output. We volition proceed moving intimately with Imagination to signifier the aboriginal of mobile gaming.”

Jian Cong Huang, Principal Engineer, Tech Center of LightSpeed Studios, Tencent Games, says: “For gaming graphics and rendering, ray tracing is the astir expected technology, enabling developers to plan and make highly realistic worlds. We are ever looking to enactment with the astir technologically precocious solutions successful the world, to interruption done the unsocial challenges successful mobile crippled design. The motorboat of Imagination’s caller DXT GPU, we believe, volition assistance developers plan a amended graphical acquisition connected an businesslike powerfulness budget. We are moving with Imagination closely, hoping to dive deeper into ray tracing and different caller GPU technologies successful the future.”

Travis Boatman, CEO, Carbonated Inc, says: “Founded by veterans of the gaming industry, Carbonated’s ngo is to make genuinely immersive, edge-of-your-seat, multiplayer mobile games. Delivering real-time PVP enactment requires a highly businesslike and high-performing GPU architecture that doesn’t compromise connected graphics experience, adjacent connected smartphone powerfulness budgets. Imagination’s caller DTX GPU is acceptable to present scalable, industry-leading mobile ray tracing, arsenic it allows developers to present high-octane 3D graphics starting from mainstream and up to flagship devices.”

Qi Hu LIN, Senior Technical Expert, NetEase Games, says: “At NetEase, we prioritise prime successful gaming arsenic the instauration for delivering exceptional experiences. In concern with Imagination, we person optimised our games for some Messiah and our proprietary NeoX engine. By moving intimately together, we purpose to empower developers to usage PowerVR’s precocious show and vigor ratio to make unthinkable gaming experiences for players. With Imagination’s IMG DXT GPU, we are bringing industry-leading mobile ray tracing to the mainstream, enabling immersive graphics for a wider audience.”

Improved texture and compute performance

The IMG DXT GPU features a caller shader processing portion (SPU) design. The SPU is simply a silicon artifact that contains some an arithmetic logic portion (ALU) for compute tasks and a texture processing portion (TPU) for shading pixels, geometry processing and rasterisation logic.

The DXT GPU delivers 50% much top-end compute and texture (ALU/TPU) show per SPU, acknowledgment to a caller triple Universal Shader Cluster (USC) plan (3x ALU/TPU units), wherever erstwhile architectures focused lone connected a dual-USC plan (2x ALU/TPU units). This improved gathering artifact enables the instauration of Imagination’s highest-performance premium mobile GPU, the DXT-72-2304, which boasts 72 GTexels/s and 2.5 TFLOPs FP32 astatine a timepiece frequence of 1 GHz.

Advanced bundle support

Imagination continues to connection optimal show for its GPU products with its award-winning PowerVR SDK and developer tools. The DDK enables ray tracing capabilities crossed the stack – with Vulkan RT enactment included.

DXT includes enactment for a wider scope of compression technologies to maximise bandwidth efficiency. This includes Khronos ASTC HDR, enabling textures to person a greater dynamic scope betwixt agleam and acheronian areas portion retaining detail.

Committed to RISC-V

Imagination shows an ongoing committedness to RISC-V crossed its merchandise line. Featuring a caller RISC-V compliant firmware processor, already proven successful its automotive BXS range, DXT offers up to 40% firmware show gains. IMG DXT besides benefits from RISC-V powerfulness domain features with a absorption connected reducing its idle power, turning disconnected parts of the GPU that are not successful use, and optimising show connected casual workloads.