Published in Graphics

PowerVR powers Poulsbo

by on03 April 2008

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A blast from the past

We almost fell off our chairs when we read that the new Intel Poulsbo chipset for the Atom processor has a 3D core from PoverVR, a division of Imagination Technologies. Many moons ago, PowerVR was a force to be reckoned with in the 3D graphics market and they were also the company behind the graphics in the last Sega console, the Dreamcast.

PowerVR has always done things differently from its competitors in the graphics business and its Kyro and Kyro II graphics chips held their own back in the day, thanks to tile based rendering which allowed them to stay ahead of ATI at the time and not far behind Nvidia's Geforce 2 GTS.

But that was then and this is now. PowerVR is no longer a contender in the graphics chip industry, instead the company specializes in IP and the license with Intel isn't new, as Intel signed a contract with Imagination Technologies to use its PowerVRs SGX graphics technology back in July 200,6 and this is the graphics core used in the Poulsbo chipset.

Intel is also using the PoverVR VXD HD video engine in the Poulsbo chipset, but the 2D part is an in-house development. The PowerVR SGX offers support for DX10.1, Shader Model 4.1 and OpenGL 2.0, although the initial drivers from Intel will be limited to DX9.

It looks like the most basic of platforms from Intel will have a better 3D feature set than the best of Nvidia's discrete cards, although we wouldn't worry about the Poulsbo chipset stealing any market share from Nvidia, as even though there's support for the latest 3D API's, it's very unlikely there's enough grunt in the hardware to run the latest games on it.

You can find the official press release here
Last modified on 03 April 2008
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