Nokia and 3D graphics chips - is it a match made in heaven or a short-lived affair?

I agree with the main point of the article, it's about bill of materials, and the GPU would go unused in most phones, but there are a few errors in the article:

GPU's are not exclusively for 3d, although the current generation is much more useful with 3d than with 2d. With OpenGLES 2 around the corner, though, the GPU will be a lot more useful in general, with shaders being very useful in eg. the UI. GLES 2 hardware is available, but is very new, so these chipsets still haven't been used in any devices (that I know of).

You don't actually have to write your own 3d engine for phones without a GPU, as software implementations of OpenGLES have been included in all S60 phones since the 6630. So having an actual GPU doesn't actually speed up the development process at all, as you'll use the same API.

So having an actual GPU doesn't actually speed up the development process at all, as you'll use the same API.

(sigh) 🙄

When I was discussing this on another site I was told that GPUs definitely did speed up the development process.

I'm not actually a developer and have no personal experience of this, so I have to go by what other people say. Thanks for correcting me on this, I'll try to be more careful in the future. I did do a bit of research but if you're right then it was obviously in the wrong places. :frown:

So what you're saying is, currently used 3D chips in phones just let you have nicer-looking graphics but don't have any effect on the development process at all?

Yes that's right (I think, I'm not a developer either).

However for the N-Gage specifically much of the technical development (all games - not sure?) [i.e. not artwork etc.] is done with the N-Gage SDK. Support for co-processor GPU was not supported in the initial versions (I think thats right), but will be in the future. I would assume support for it in the SDK, especially if done via some type of abstraction layer, may help speed up development of games in onse sense (especially if we end up with two versions of each game).

Also bear in mind that you may need different versions of game artwork (though they probably come from the same source material).

3D chips are about nice looking graphics, but they are also about managing resources better. You use less power with a dedicated chip that you do when do the same thing with a standard one. This is similar to the difference between decoding H.264 via hardware rather than software (e.g. N96 and DVB-H battery life). Clearly power is important in mobile.

Its about hardware in a resource constrained environment too. Of course having a GPU means more resource availability for other aspects of the game too.

Well given the direction ARM are taking with their MALI ip and ofcouse the market leaders Imagination Technologies - PowerVR being used properly in the iPhone and soon in the SGH-i8150 from Samsung it is clear that Nokia missed a trick, lets hope come next year when OMAP3430 debuts they fully utilise the PowerVR SGX not just for the UI but for enhanced gaming as iPhone 3.0 with SGX/VXD (video acceleration alongside OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics) will have come to market.

iPhone and iPod touch games and UI are fully OpenGL ES.1.1 compliant.

Hmmm...I read on this site the other day that none of the current NGage games make use of the 3D chip anyway, so it's basically redundant in the phones that have it.

Secondly, what is this about having to write a game specifically for the hardware if it's present thus producing 2 versions of a game? I don't know, but common sense would be an implementation like Android's where developers just write for the API and the OS automatically uses the hardware if present...

Short question about the SGH-i8150, aka INNOV8: Is it definitive true that it will include the TI OMAP2 with PowerVR MBX? And will it make use of the graphics accellerator?

I think all nseries phones should have 3d hardware simply for the fact they are not cheap phones.

Considering 3d is in every iphone/3g and we've seen analysis on what it actually costs apple to make, Nokia just does not want it complete on the graphical candy of games nor phone os.

HEY MAN tell where do you see that the n96 not have a 3D chip??????????????????????? send me a web site or something...

The N96 have tv out man... Soooooooooooooooo i most have 3D CHIP in other ways on the TV would look like crap with full pixelation, and that�s where the 3D chip work... wait until n96 came out... test the Quake II and tell me later ok............... you have no idea!!!

Just take a look, Nokia N96 is based in OMAP 2420 , here is some info about it:

OMAP2420 - 330 MHz ARM11 + 220 MHz C55x DSP + PowerVR MBX 2D/3D Graphics Accelerator + IVA (ARM7TDMI+iMX+VLC+SEQ)

You can check your self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMAP

Does anyone have any guesstimate of how much a 3D chip would cost? That's not the only consideration of course, but would be fun to know how much it might add to the price tag (not taking into account the added development costs, perhaps need for software optimization or what not... ).

That's a pity.
iPhone has 620 MHz arm and GPU since day 1. And I must say combined with accelerometer it's real fun. I can't wait to change my Nseries. S60 was OK a few years ago but now the UI looks dated, slow and hard to use.

Don't think the MBX costs that much Apple manage alright after all, yes the Samsung uses MBX lite in the new Innov8, no the N96 does not use OMAP2x it uses a ST Micro ARM9 SoC with hardware video acceleration.

The N96 have tv out man... Soooooooooooooooo i most have 3D CHIP in other ways on the TV would look like crap with full pixelatio

Yes, that's exactly what I said on AAN when the N96 was launched.

But I was then flamed by all the people who had seen the N96 launch where Nokia's product manager specifically said it DIDN'T have 3D acceleration.

I know the TV Out chip is supposed to provide 3D acceleration too, but apparently it doesn't in this case.

you have no idea!!!

That's EXACTLY what people said to me when I claimed the N96 had 3d acceleration at its launch. 😊

Does anyone have any guesstimate of how much a 3D chip would cost?

...there would also be the matter of what would have been in the phone instead. If a non-3d graphics chip is smaller, maybe they could fit an extra feature in like more internal memory or something.

iPhone and iPod touch games and UI are fully OpenGL ES.1.1 compliant.

...and the iPhone costs 600 euros. What's your point?

The success of N-Gage will come from its cheapest models that are bought by large numbers of people, the ones that cost 200 euros or less. The first of these will be the 5320 launching soon, and there will probably be even cheaper models next year.

As I said in the article, the success of a gaming platform isn't determined by the graphics but by the number of people who buy the games. If N-Gage ends up on cheap mass market phones, that means they could reach an audience of potentially hundreds of millions, compared to the tens of millions that the iPhone would reach.

Games publishers don't care what the hardware can do, all they really care about is how many games they can sell on it. That's why the PS2 beat the Xbox and Gamecube despite having inferior hardware to both.

N-Gage's trump card is that it can be deployed on low-price handsets that are getting cheaper all the time. If they stray away from that, they will lose their only advantage over the competition.

N96 is not omap based.

the iPhone costs 600 euros, where? Its free or up to $199/$299 or equivelent in most countries where the 3G model has launched.

Here the N95 costs (or costed a few months ago) 700 EUR. What's your point?iPhone is not more expensive.

The TV-out connector has nothing whatsoever to do whether 3D graphics accelleration hardware is present or not. What makes you think they are connected somehow?

the iPhone costs 600 euros, where? Its free or up to $199/$299 or equivelent in most countries where the 3G model has launched.

It's 600 euros if you're just buying the iPhone on its own.

The $199 figure is just the first installment on a long term contract, it's NOT the price of the iPhone. And of course buying a phone on contract means you are actually paying for it in installments, with the total price being much higher (probably the same as the 600 euro sim-free price).

Here the N95 costs (or costed a few months ago) 700 EUR. What's your point?iPhone is not more expensive.

The point is that N-Gage is available on the 5320 which will cost 200 euros, and it's likely that most of N-Gage's future sales will come from even cheaper models because cheaper models sell in greater numbers. IPhone on the other hand will probably remain very expensive and only bought by smaller numbers of people, so it will be serving a slightly different market.

The TV-out connector has nothing whatsoever to do whether 3D graphics accelleration hardware is present or not. What makes you think they are connected somehow?

When discussing the N93 and N95, it was quite common to hear people say that the TV Out function comes from the same chip as the 3D acceleration.

I don't really know anything about chips, so I can't say if this is accurate, but that's what a lot of people said at the time those phones came out.

Unregistered wrote:Just take a look, Nokia N96 is based in OMAP 2420 , here is some info about it:

OMAP2420 - 330 MHz ARM11 + 220 MHz C55x DSP + PowerVR MBX 2D/3D Graphics Accelerator + IVA (ARM7TDMI+iMX+VLC+SEQ)

You can check your self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMAP

The N96 is NOT based on the OMAP architecture and, it seems, it will NOT have 3D acceleration at all. I've elaborated on this subject (along with all the new chipsets, including that of the iPhone) back in February in my MWC reports - read them if interested.

Unregistered wrote:Here the N95 costs (or costed a few months ago) 700 EUR. What's your point?iPhone is not more expensive.

I'm pretty sure the N95's price have plummeted in the meantime. In the US, you can get it for US$ 400.

Rafe wrote:This is similar to the difference between decoding H.264 via hardware rather than software (e.g. N96 and DVB-H battery life). Clearly power is important in mobile.

I only wish the CorePlayer folks managed to make use of the hardware H.264 decoding acceleration to make for example high-quality YouTube videos playable. They have been promising it for quite long but still haven't come up with it.

Tzer2 wrote:When discussing the N93 and N95, it was quite common to hear people say that the TV Out function comes from the same chip as the 3D acceleration.

I don't really know anything about chips, so I can't say if this is accurate, but that's what a lot of people said at the time those phones came out.

I don't want to dig out the OMAP specs (or even find my MWC reports with the links) as I'm really tired, but with non-OMAP architectures this isn't necessarily the case. Think of, for example, the Xscale PXA-255/270 + ATI duo in the Toshiba e750/e800 or the HTC Advantage / x7501/ x7510. They all had TV (with the Toshi, VGA) out but no 3D acceleration at all. (Unlike with, say, the Intel 2700g-based Dell Axim x50v/x51v and, of course, the N93/N95.)

Tzer2 wrote:The $199 figure is just the first installment on a long term contract, it's NOT the price of the iPhone. And of course buying a phone on contract means you are actually paying for it in installments, with the total price being much higher (probably the same as the 600 euro sim-free price).

Also add that it isn't even available in several countries SIM / country-free. For example, I've just heard that you need to have an Italian tax number to be able to purchase a SIM-free device there AND only two devices can be bought per person. I don't know how for example Verkkokauppa will import these gadgets to Finland with such restrictive policies. (Let's hope for the best though. I might also be contacing Apple to send me a freebie now that our papermag officially switches to / starts supporting iPhone and I've been the Windows Mobile tech editor so far...)

Tzer2: I thought we are talking about N96. I don't think it's going to be any cheaper than iPhone and iPhone has proper 3D acceleration and a 600MHz ARM processor and according to AllAboutSymbian folks it's overpriced. Now, if iPhone is sooo overpriced then I want at least the same stuff from Nokia plus a lot more.

Unregistered wrote:Don't think the MBX costs that much Apple manage alright after all, yes the Samsung uses MBX lite in the new Innov8, no the N96 does not use OMAP2x it uses a ST Micro ARM9 SoC with hardware video acceleration.

But, of course, it's H.264 HW decoding "only", not 3D acceleration.

Unregistered wrote:Tzer2: I thought we are talking about N96. I don't think it's going to be any cheaper than iPhone and iPhone has proper 3D acceleration and a 600MHz ARM processor and according to AllAboutSymbian folks it's overpriced. Now, if iPhone is sooo overpriced then I want at least the same stuff from Nokia plus a lot more.

The N96 is a niche device ONLY meant for DVB-H fans, noone else. This, unfortunately, means it's only usable in very few countries. (I really wish Nokia has put in DVB-T, for Asians, T-DMB and, for the US folks, MediaFlo support in it. Then, I'd buy it in a minute. Unfortunately, DVB-H isn't widely supported, even when compared to DVB-T - not even in Finland. I plan to discuss the situation in a later article.) That is, it's in no way the "next high-end model". Other folks will want to stick with the N95.

Tzer2: I thought we are talking about N96.

The article this thread is discussing is about 3D acceleration on Nokia phones. The N96 is an example of an upcoming high price model that doesn't have 3D acceleration, that's all. The main topic is whether Nokia should use 3D acceleration on games, and whether they should include 3D chips in their phones.

Menneisyys wrote:Also add that it isn't even available in several countries SIM / country-free. For example, I've just heard that you need to have an Italian tax number to be able to purchase a SIM-free device there AND only two devices can be bought per person. I don't know how for example Verkkokauppa will import these gadgets to Finland with such restrictive policies. (Let's hope for the best though. I might also be contacing Apple to send me a freebie now that our papermag officially switches to / starts supporting iPhone and I've been the Windows Mobile tech editor so far...)

This is what gets me down about iPhone, not the hardware itself but the way it's being sold. It's going in totally the opposite direction to the sim-free movement. Apple are not only forcing people to buy locked phones wherever possible, they're also forcing people to use them with just one network operator. It's not good for competition, it's not good for the consumer.

Steve Jobs could have changed the American phone market if he'd offered the iPhone sim-free, no network would have refused to allow its use, and US phone users would have realised they could use the same phone on many networks. But instead he's just reinforcing the status quo which has made the US phone industry lag behind the rest of the developed world.

Apple getting a share of the phone bill makes it even worse, it gives them no incentive to sell the phones SIM-free at all.

There is absolutely no benefit to consumers from phone locking, it ought to be banned under anti-trust laws. If people want to buy phones in installments they can still do that without the phone being locked, contracts are legally binding even if the phone is unlocked. I could buy a car in installments without it being locked to one kind of petrol.

That is, it's in no way the "next high-end model". Other folks will want to stick with the N95.

Well... if Nokia didn't want comparisons with the N95, they shouldn't have named it the N96. They were asking for these kinds of comparisons.

I'd like to see the 3d used all over the phone, ie, a menu system using 3d, 3d photo transitions etc. It really is a shame to see that no ngage games use it. Remember CD32? Specifically the statements that they made in my beloved amiga format, about seeing the future for gaming in video, not 3d? Commodores decision to not go with 3d really killed it, and I can't believe that Nokia would go down the same path and expect to use ngage as a drawcard.