Innosilicon graphics cards based on "Fantasy One" GPU feature up to 32GB GDDR6X memory
Today at the "Fantasy One GPU Product Press Conference", Innosilicon, a Chinese company offering graphics and memory solutions unveiled its first discrete GPU.
At the event, Innosilicon revealed its plans for the Fantasy One GPU. This processor is based on Imagination graphics IP (BXT to be specific) which brings tons of innovations to the discrete GPU solutions offered by the Chinese company.
As many as four products have been revealed, including dual-GPU and single-GPU solutions. Type A is a consumer/workstation graphics card featuring a single Fantasy One GPU, which is actually a multi-chip (chiplet) design. Unfortunately, none of the news reports from China on this announcement had the exact configuration of the Fantasy One.
According to the data provided by Innoslicon, this GPU offers up to 5 TFLOPS of single-precision compute power [and a fillrate of 160 GPixel/s]. It is equipped with DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, and VGA connectors. This card is to be equipped with up to 16 GB of GDDR6(X) memory across a 128-bit interface. So far, the G6X technology has been exclusive to NVIDIA/Micron Ampere GPUs, but apparently, Innosilicon made a lot of research in PAM4 signaling and was able to unlock up to 19 Gbps memory bandwidth for their GDDR6X implementation. A relatively short memory bus will have its toll on the maximum theoretical bandwidth though, which is to go up to 304 GB/s (so somewhere in between Radeon RX 6700XT and 6600XT).
[...] The Type B [...] is a dual-GPU solution featuring two Fantasy One GPUs connected by an interface known as Innolink. The company claims up to 10 TFLOPS of computing power and 320 GPixel/s fillrates. This card can offer 32 simultaneous 1080p/60FPS streams or 64 streams at 720/30FPS. It is to feature up to 32GB of GDDR6(X) memory but is again limited by dual 128-bit interfaces from each GPU. All these cards feature a PCI-Express 4.0 interface at full X16 width.
When people are willing to pay 2-4x as much for GPUs, competition is inevitable. Intel will be joining the market with "Alchemist" discrete GPUs in Q1/Q2 2022.
Previously: Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU
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Imagination has announced new B-series GPU designs focused on automotive and high-performance computing use cases, as it has become difficult for the company to compete in the mobile GPU market:
It's almost been a year since Imagination had announced its brand-new A-series GPU IP, a release which at the time the company called its most important in 15 years. The new architecture indeed marked some significant updates to the company's GPU IP, promising major uplifts in performance and promises of great competitiveness. Since then, other than a slew of internal scandals, we've heard very little from the company – until today's announcement of the new next-generation of IP: the B-Series.
The new Imagination B-Series is an evolution of last year's A-Series GPU IP release, further iterating through microarchitectural improvements, but most importantly, scaling the architecture up to higher performance levels through a brand-new multi-GPU system, as well as the introduction of a new functional safety class of IP in the form of the BXS series.
[....] Imagination's current highest-end hardware implementation in the BXT series is the BXT 32-1024, and putting four of these together creates an MC4 GPU. In a high-performance implementation reaching up to 1.5GHz clock speeds, this configuration would offer up to 6TFLOPs of FP32 computing power. Whilst this isn't quite enough to catch up to Nvidia and AMD, it's a major leap for a third-party GPU IP provider that's been mostly active in the mobile space for the last 15 years.
[....] Beyond the addition of safety critical features on the BXS series, the automotive IP also features some specific enhancements in the microarchitecture that allows for better performance scaling for workloads that are more unique to the automotive space. One such aspect is geometry, where automotive vendors have the tendency to use absurd amounts of triangles. Imagination says they've tweaked their designs to cover these more demanding use-cases, and together with some MSAA specific optimisations they can reach up to a 60% greater performance for these automotive edge-cases, compared to the regular non-automotive IP.
Related: Imagination Technologies Group Up for Sale
Imagination introduces Catapult RISC-V CPU cores
As expected, Imagination Technologies is giving another try to the CPU IP market with the Catapult RISC-V CPU cores following their previous unsuccessful attempt with the MIPS architecture, notably the Aptiv family.
Catapult RISC-V CPUs are/will be available in four distinct families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs.
The new 32-/64-bit RISC-V cores will be scalable to up to eight asymmetric coherent cores-per cluster, offer a "plethora of customer configurable options", and support optional custom accelerators. What you won't see today are block diagrams and detailed technical information about the cores because apparently, all that information is confidential even though some Catapult RISC-V cores are already shipping "in high-performance Imagination automotive GPUs". The only way to get more details today is to sign an NDA.
Also at AnandTech and Phoronix.
Previously: Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU
Imagination Technologies Plans to Design RISC-V Cores
Related: Innosilicon Graphics Cards Based on "Fantasy One" GPU Feature Up to 32GB GDDR6X Memory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @07:56AM (5 children)
Or even just unsigned firmware, so we can actually make sure it runs the firmware/code we want/expect it to with provisions to secure it ourselves if something nasty is discovered?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @03:56PM (4 children)
Imagination Tech had a change of heart. They are in the process of opening their drivers.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Imagination-New-Open-Graphics [phoronix.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 30 2021, @04:16PM
Do they have a Management Engine?
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @05:48PM (2 children)
Haha, *this time* it will be different.
You actually trust these guys to deliver when they've been promising for a decade?
Powervr is synonymous these days with low end Mediatek products that aren't particularly FOSS friendly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @02:35AM (1 child)
Certainly not buying something on a promise. But, if they come through with the free drivers, hopefully folks will not punish them for doing the right thing because they hold a grudge.
Modern Mediatek wireless chipsets are very well supported by free software today*. They are an excellent choice to use for e.g., creating an AP with hostapd.
There aren't many companies where their support for free software isn't a mixed bag.
* as long as you are willing to use a non-free firmware. This is not Mediatek specific, there isn't a single 802.11ac and above wireless chipset, from *any* vendor, that doesn't require a non-free firmware.
(Score: 3, Funny) by sgleysti on Wednesday December 01 2021, @04:18AM
I guess Stallman is stuck on earlier 802.11 standards. Be sure to check https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html [stallman.org] for updates...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday November 30 2021, @09:34AM (7 children)
But you didn't mention the one thing that people actually care about:
Is it available?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday November 30 2021, @12:04PM (5 children)
Hell no!
It's just an announcement, and even after it becomes available, that availability will likely be limited to China for practical purposes. It is an interesting development though, and keeps Imagination graphics alive. In fact, this is the BXT design that was mentioned last year [soylentnews.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 30 2021, @12:20PM
More survival for Imagination [cnx-software.com]:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday November 30 2021, @02:38PM
And like a lot of other Chinese silicon, it'll most likely be high throughput but even higher latency: It'll finally appear in about five years' time, but in the meantime there'll have been announcements of half a dozen successor products which in turn will take five or more years to appear.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday November 30 2021, @02:54PM (2 children)
In this case, another crucial part is missing: Why the hell should I care?
Seriously, if you announce products, at least make sure that they have a chance to not be obsolete by the time they finally become available. Else, why the hell should anyone give a fuck?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @06:46PM (1 child)
yeah, and i don't care about whores' slaveware either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @09:05PM
You're getting whored out right now.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday November 30 2021, @05:11PM
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @12:28PM (1 child)
the gtx 1080 was prolly the last "honest" grafic card for gamers.
from now on, grafic cards will be for peoples from families that have a boat on a lake and/or golf club membership and/or two cars.
the rest will be on console and 3year-throwaway-phones ...
srsly, the price of a gtx3080 would get me TWO niu gova g3 e-scooters (panasonic batt 2kwh, ~2kw motor, 60-70km range, 65km/h "topspeed") -or- one of the above and 8kW-string on-grid w/ inverter, so basically your own " solar-sailing-vehicle-plus-refill-station". tho beware the foot-dragging of local license plate issuing department (asshats). a icengine vehicule is like a weapon, needs to be registered because it emits stuff/wastes/pollutes.
a electric vehicule should be self-buildable and be registerable, if it has demonstrable working 1)brakes, 2)brake-lights, 3)turning light, 4) horn 5) night time driving lights. a tachometer is not necessary, speed cameras apply. up to you.
consider, a e-vehicule is basically just a electric-hub-motor, battery and controller...
everything "renewable" is just crazy hampered.
high-grafic gaming is dead. sad VR is never going mainstream :(
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday November 30 2021, @03:06PM
Wrong. The silicon shortage will change into silicon oversupply, and at least three companies will be competing with low to high-end GPUs.
GTX 1080 level of performance will be in APUs within a few years (not counting Apple).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]