Are OES3.1 compute shaders comparable to DX11 and OGL4.3 compute shaders in functionality or are they closer to DX10 compute shaders? I ask, because many existing OES3.0 GPUs which are supposedly going to be OES3.1 compliant are only DX10 or even only DX9 compliant.
Ars Technica is reporting that some existing mobile gpus GPUs will be able to support ES3.1 with a new driver; and that other families will need new hardware to do so.
From my understanding, both tessellation and geometry shaders take up a lot of die space and are very inefficient compared t the rest of the pipeline. You'd end up with underpowered GPUs wasting more battery life. I think they have the right move here.
Tessellation doesn't work well with tile-based rendering. The whole point for tile based solutions is to compute geometry first and store it in a small buffer to avoid power hungry writes. Tessellation would take up way too much memory in that it could exponentially increase the number of polygons within a tile. This message would fill up the buffer too quickly and force main memory access and power hungry bandwidth.
Imagination and Adreno both have patents dealing with tesselation on tile based rendering but as far as I can tell they are about avoiding or minimizing tesselation.
I am confused as to why you think this is? Screen sizes are far smaller on mobile so I don't see why you'd benefit a lot from increased geometry alone?
Screen sizes on mobile may be small but most mobile devices these days are running on a resolution of ~1080p if not higher. This is equivalent to a typical home pc monitor resolution or that of the HDTV. Regardless whether or not you connect your mobile devices to your tv/monitor when @ home because you like to enjoy your mobile games on the big screen(which a lack of tessellation would be instantly apparent), the presence of tessellation would still be perceptible even on say a 4" screen as the increased poly-bumps simply makes everything more realistic and natural in appearance.
Yes but the important point to make is opengl ES is used by every mobile game,Nvidia's K1 demo's were based of Full opengl/unreal engine 4,neither of which are going to be used because no developer is going to dedicate resources to developing a game that will only be compatible with the tegra k1.
I don't know if nvidia will enable developers to have a opengl es version and the full opengl,but i think that sounds like too much work,again for the extremely small (and now non exsistant) k1 userbase.
Maybe we will see some smaller indie titles get an exclusive k1 version,but i think it will turn out to be pretty insignificant.
Until apple supports these standards your not going to see mainstream support for these new standards.
Since ES is like the handpicked features of everything we have learn and done on Desktop and Console for the last decade. I am wondering if ES will one day have a place on Desktop as well. Since it is now quite feature rich.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
17 Comments
Back to Article
ltcommanderdata - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Are OES3.1 compute shaders comparable to DX11 and OGL4.3 compute shaders in functionality or are they closer to DX10 compute shaders? I ask, because many existing OES3.0 GPUs which are supposedly going to be OES3.1 compliant are only DX10 or even only DX9 compliant.DanNeely - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Ars Technica is reporting that some existing mobile gpus GPUs will be able to support ES3.1 with a new driver; and that other families will need new hardware to do so.Haroon90 - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
According to this http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/opengl-es-3-1-goes-... ,All socs bosed on powervr 6 are compatible,so including ipad air and iphone 5s.TETRONG - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Baffling that they would omit Tessellation. One would think this would be supremely useful on mobile in terms of upping perceived graphical quality.Little typo in the article,
"Anyhow, as it turns out the early OpenGL ES Next announcement was surprisingly through."
inighthawki - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
From my understanding, both tessellation and geometry shaders take up a lot of die space and are very inefficient compared t the rest of the pipeline. You'd end up with underpowered GPUs wasting more battery life. I think they have the right move here.ZeDestructor - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Besides, there's nothing stopping SoC builders from adding tessellation anyways and exposing it as an extension taken straight from OGL 4.x.errorr - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Tessellation doesn't work well with tile-based rendering. The whole point for tile based solutions is to compute geometry first and store it in a small buffer to avoid power hungry writes. Tessellation would take up way too much memory in that it could exponentially increase the number of polygons within a tile. This message would fill up the buffer too quickly and force main memory access and power hungry bandwidth.Imagination and Adreno both have patents dealing with tesselation on tile based rendering but as far as I can tell they are about avoiding or minimizing tesselation.
See: www.seas.upenn.edu/~pcozzi/OpenGLInsights/OpenGLInsights-TileBasedArchitectures.pdf
Krysto - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link
Does anyone do tile-based rendering other than Imagination, anymore? Nvidia certainly doesn't.djgandy - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
I am confused as to why you think this is? Screen sizes are far smaller on mobile so I don't see why you'd benefit a lot from increased geometry alone?ShattaAD - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
Screen sizes on mobile may be small but most mobile devices these days are running on a resolution of ~1080p if not higher. This is equivalent to a typical home pc monitor resolution or that of the HDTV. Regardless whether or not you connect your mobile devices to your tv/monitor when @ home because you like to enjoy your mobile games on the big screen(which a lack of tessellation would be instantly apparent), the presence of tessellation would still be perceptible even on say a 4" screen as the increased poly-bumps simply makes everything more realistic and natural in appearance.Krysto - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link
Android developers can use those through the Android Extension Pack.blanarahul - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
NVIDIA Chimera??TETRONG - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Sort of neat..this ES 3.0 demo just popped up in my inbox if anybody wants to get an understanding of what's possible http://youtu.be/VtG0emfNAeUMondozai - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
The fur looked really warm and alive. Impressive.The textures were so-so. Compare those textures to the Nvidia K1 demo running Unreal Engine 4; not even close.
Haroon90 - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Yes but the important point to make is opengl ES is used by every mobile game,Nvidia's K1 demo's were based of Full opengl/unreal engine 4,neither of which are going to be used because no developer is going to dedicate resources to developing a game that will only be compatible with the tegra k1.I don't know if nvidia will enable developers to have a opengl es version and the full opengl,but i think that sounds like too much work,again for the extremely small (and now non exsistant) k1 userbase.
Maybe we will see some smaller indie titles get an exclusive k1 version,but i think it will turn out to be pretty insignificant.
Until apple supports these standards your not going to see mainstream support for these new standards.
iwod - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Since ES is like the handpicked features of everything we have learn and done on Desktop and Console for the last decade. I am wondering if ES will one day have a place on Desktop as well. Since it is now quite feature rich.If not, what feature is it missing?
Krysto - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
It can't be much of a 4.0 subset if they're still calling it 3.1, right? Unless they're going to call ES 4.0 the 5.0 subset.