Cwright: after all the GMA bashing we've done over the years, do you realise it's the same GPU as the iphone?
Not quite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_500
Not sure which GMA models but at least the newer ones I think have a PowerVR SGX GPU hiding inside. I've not heard much complaint about it on iphone though, maybe it's intel's drivers sucking compared to imaginations? Or maybe it's only the newer GMA chips that have the SGX, they do seem to have improved a bit (and remember, we're talking an "upgrade" to a mobile GPU in a desktop/laptop here!)
(note: I'm entirely out of my league when it comes to mobile stuff, so I may be totally wrong on this -- feel free to smack me around if that's the case ;)
MacBooks from 2006-era were GMA950s, and later bumped to X3100s. both of those were developed in-house at Intel, as far as I can tell.
Early iphones and maybe ipod touches (first gen only?) were PowerVR MBX (OpenGL ES 1.0 only -- no programmable pipelines at all -- this is different from even the GMA950, which _did_ have a hardware fragment shader, and simulated vertex + geometry shader in software).
Later mobiles (including the current iPad) use the PowerVR SGX, which supports OpenGL ES 2.x, and does have programmable pipelines (vertex and fragment only, no geometry as far as I can tell).
Intel has _licensed_ the SXG 535 from Imagination Technologies, and branded it the GMA500 -- similar name, entirely different technology. It's often used in netbooks, and, like you said, it's considered an "upgrade" (because it uses less power, and likely has features that Intel never got around to implementing). This isn't used in any Apple products that I'm aware of. All mobiles use PowerVR + ARM cpu, all desktops and laptops use X86 CPU + nvidia, ATI, or Intel GPU (now the "GMA HD" branding).
This all gets really confusing because intel calls _everything_ the by the same name as some other, different thing. Core i5 actually has 2 or 3 very different designs, and i7 also has 3: Bloomfield (first gen), Lynnfield (second gen, and also called i5 sometimes, and also called Xeon sometimes(!?)), and Clarksfield, which is a mobile variant for i7. This easy to understand history probably has something to do with the recent-ish AAPL price trends ;)
-- [ christopher wright ] cwri...@kineme.net http://kineme.net/ _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Quartzcomposer-dev mailing list (Quartzcomposer-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/quartzcomposer-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
