And it was that time of the year again - Apple held one of its product announcements. This one focussed on the iPad mostly, and while some will call it a disappointment merely because virtually everything had already been leaked, I'm still in awe over the fact the newly announced iPad has a 2048x1536 display. My mind is blown.
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Member since:2008-06-09
But quad core graphics doesn't mean anything generally.
Do I have 480 core graphics since I have gf gtx 480?
I agree that fast graphics is important, but "quad core graphics" does not mean fast graphics (while quad core cpu generally does mean fast cpu). Does anyone outside Apple talk about quad core graphics?
Quad core CPU doesn't mean fast cpu either. It means more throughput not faster. For carrying cargo a truck has more throughput than a ferrari.
Apple markets the quad core gpu as means to drive the massive pixels in the new high res display. The new GPU was linked to the retina display announcement. 4x the number of pixels means you need the horsepower and throughput to put them on screen.
Edited 2012-03-09 15:50 UTC
Member since:2008-12-26
Well, it sort of does in practice.
Slow quad core cpu doesn't make sense, since 4 cores is the "high end". It's cheaper to make a dual core cpu that runs at a faster rate than quad core cpu, so if you have a slow quad core cpu, nobody's going to use it.
Yes, again, fast GPU is important.
Quick, can you name a devite with single core gpu? Or dual core GPU? How many GPU cores does a random ATI radeon have? Or Galaxy S 2?.
It's just marketing. And apparently it's fooling people even here ;-).
Member since:2012-02-15
*chokes*
You aware that graphics are massively parallelizable, right?
You have it the other way around. Graphics are much more parallelizable than general purpose computing. Hence the reason why you'll find a multitude of processing cores on modern graphic processors.
Edited 2012-03-09 17:19 UTC
Member since:2008-12-26
Member since:2005-07-11
In the realm of ARM, "quad-core" graphics literally means "4 GPUs". Especially when it comes to the PowerVR GPUs. An SGX543 has 1 GPU "core" (ie, 1 GPU). An SGX543MP2 has 2 GPU "cores" (ie, 2 GPUs). And, an SGX543MP4 has 4 GPU "cores" (ie, 4 GPUs).
In the ARM GPU sphere, "multi-core" means "multi-GPU". Think of it in terms of nVidia's SLI and Ati's CrossFire. Not in terms of processing units inside the individual GPUs.
Member since:2008-12-26
Now we are on to something.
People that know about this PowerVR convention are not the ones being targeted by the Apple marketing speak in the launch comms. Apple is using it to steer the eye away from the fact that they only have a dual core CPU.
Nothing wrong with that, of course.
Member since:2005-07-06
But it still isn't much of a differentiator - graphics are inherently parallel, also internally for GPUs, so one GPU might as well be faster than collection of four (heck, one can be as fast as, say, a thousand using the same amount of silicon; or it might very well end up faster, overheads and all)
It is, at most, an easy & digestible number to differentiate from the previous Apple SoC ...so, yeah, marketing.
Edited 2012-03-14 23:54 UTC
Member since:
2008-12-26
But quad core graphics doesn't mean anything generally.
Do I have 480 core graphics since I have gf gtx 480?
I agree that fast graphics is important, but "quad core graphics" does not mean fast graphics (while quad core cpu generally does mean fast cpu). Does anyone outside Apple talk about quad core graphics?