6.7 GPU

The 3D graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerates 2-dimensional (2D) and 3-dimensional (3D) graphics and compute applications. It is based on the POWERVR SGX544-MP subsystem from Imagination Technologies.

SGX is a new generation of programmable POWERVR graphics and video processing subsystems. The POWERVR SGX is a scalable architecture which efficiently processes a number of differing multimedia data types concurrently:

• Pixel Data
• Vertex Data
• General Purpose Processing

• API support for industry standards:
  • OpenCL™-EP 1.1
  • Direct3D® Feature Level 9.3
• Single-core GPU architecture:
  • 1 × SGX544 core
  • System level cache of 64 KiB
• Tile-based deferred rendering architecture:
  • Reduces external bandwidth to SDRAM
• Universal Scalable Shader Engine (USSE™):
  • Multithreaded engine incorporating vertex and pixel shader functionality
  • Automatic load balancing of vertex and pixel processing tasks
• Present and texture load accelerator (PTLA):
  • Enables to move, rotate, twiddle, and scale texture surfaces
  • Supports RGB, ARGB, YUV4:2:2, and YUV4:2:0 surface formats
  • Supports bilinear upscale
  • Supports source color key
• Fully virtualized memory addressing for operating system (OS) in a unified memory architecture:
  • Memory management unit (MMU)
  • Up to 4-GiB virtual address space

The 3D-GPU subsystem generates a single (aggregate) interrupt connected to the device Interrupt Crossbar. This allows for this interrupt to be programmatically mapped to multiple device host interrupt controllers.

• Texture support:
  • Cube map
  • Projected textures
  • Non-square textures
• Texture formats:
  • RGBA 8888, 565, 1555, and 1565
  • Monochromatic 8, 16, 16f, 32f, and 32int
  • Dual channel, 8:8, 16:16, and 16f:16f
  • Compressed textures:
    • PVRTC-i 2 bpp
    • PVRTC-i 4 bpp
    • PVRTC-ii 2 bpp
    • PVRTC-ii 4 bpp
    • ETC1
    • DXT 1-5 and BC 4-5
  • Programmable support for YUV formats:
    • Programmable matrix in hardware, coefficients on 12 bits
    • YUV4:2:2, YUV4:2:0, two planes (NV12 or NV21); YUV4:2:0, three planes
• Resolution support:
  • Frame buffer maximum = 4096 × 4096
  • Texture maximum size = 4096 × 4096
• Texture filtering:
  • Bilinear, trilinear
  • Independent minimum and mag control
• Anti-aliasing:
  • 4× multisampling
  • Programmable sample positions

For more information, see chapter 3D Graphics Accelerator of the device TRM.