TI Shows off OMAP5430 GPU Performance before Computex
by Brian Klug on June 3, 2012 11:55 PM ESTBefore MWC 2012, TI showed off OMAP5 performance in a video which compared CPU performance to Nvidia's Tegra 3 SoC. The occasion this time around is Computex, and TI has delivered once more with a video comparing GPU performance on the OMAP5430 to the iPad 3's A5X. As a reminder, OMAP 5430 is designed for a 28nm process and consists of two ARM Cortex A15s and two Cortex M4s alongside SGX544 MP2 graphics, whereas Apple's A5X is two Cortex A9s alongside SGX543MP4 graphics.
The video shows the OMAP5430 tablet running GLBenchmark 2.5 at 1080p (the newest upcoming version we're eager to get our hands on) alongside what is basically without doubt an iPad 3.
Update: I asked TI for the specific GLBenchmark 2.5 beta version, and was told that the GLBenchmark 2.5 version is C24Z16 and the resolution is 1080p in all tests (on and off screen).
Performance on the OMAP5430 tablet is shown to be 38 FPS on screen (1080p) and 45 FPS offscreen without vsync, compared to 34 FPS and 43 FPS respectively for the "market-leading tablet." There's another slide showing comparisons to OMAP4470 which consists of two Cortex A9s alongside SGX544MP1 graphics.
You might be wondering how an SGX544MP2 can match an SGX543MP4 - the answer is most likely just higher clocks on OMAP5430's 544s compared to A5X's 543s (Update: As reader Jeff points out, TI has already disclosed OMAP5430's SGX544MP2 clocks as up to 532 MHz). It's hard to know for certain, but this is the most logical answer - you can ultimately either increase ALUs or increase clocks to get to a given performance target. Either way, TI's OMAP5430 is shaping up to be quite a performant SoC both in CPU and GPU at this point, and we look forward to seeing and benchmarking a lot more of it before summer is over.
Source: Texas Instruments
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duffman55 - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
You can't just look at graphics processing power. You have to consider power consumption, cost of the chip, etc. Increasing the GPU performance significantly over the A5X would likely be pointless. GLBenchmark doesn't exactly give you a complete picture of what a particular SoC is capable of either.Mike1111 - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
Of course you're right. But Anandtech's article was only about the GPU performance, so was my comment.Torrijos - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
Exactly!This only proves how invested Apple is in bringing performance hardware months before the competition.
Still another point of contention with this kind of comparisons...
The iPad 3 is an actually produced hardware device that has to run in a metal enclosure and as such has been tuned to so its thermal output doesn't destroy the device (or burn the owner).
What about the TI test platform? Most of the time it's a bare motherboard with plenty of air circulation that allows them to clock everything a little bit higher, and still they only manage to barely beat the iPad.
Roland00Address - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
What the big deal is that they are beating the Ipad 3 GPU with a new GPU that uses the same architecture but with half the shaders. The GX544 MP2 graphics and SGX543MP4 are the same silicon cores but the GX544 is direct x compliant. The MP2 stands for dual core (shader) graphics vs quad core (shader graphics). They are able to achieve this higher performance with just clocks alone.Furthermore it is not just the GPU that increased performance with the die shrink, they went from a Cortex A9 design to a Cortex A15 design. Cortex A15 dual cores should perform better than Cortex A9 quad cores. See here for video
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5571/ti-posts-omap-5...
In that video they have a comparison of two android 4 tablets doing the following at once as a benchmark
1) Loading 20 webpages where you can't start the next one till the first one completely loads
2) Download two videos all the while loading those 20 webpages
3) Playing a mp3 simultaneously
The cortex a15 dual score completed the test in 95 seconds compared to the quad core A9's in 201 seconds.
hamsteyr - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
I believe that Anandtech had an article about this before, about the GPU's in Mobile devices such as this.Indeed, people should be excited, even if the improvements don't look like much. Why? Simple.
The SGX544MP2 in the OMAP5 is a Dual Core GPU
The SGX543MP4 in the A5x/ PS Vita is a Quad Core GPU.
While it may not seem like much, what you're effectively seeing is a Dual core besting a quad core GPU, which is certainly big news.
Core for core, that seems like a lot more power.
aryonoco - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
TI sure loves comparing their upcoming (sometimes more than a year before release) products from "competitors" which are currently on the market.Fact is, since I started paying attention to the SoC space a few years a go, TI has never been the performance leader. They've been talking about OMAP5 and promising its breakthrough performance for a long time now, and yet there are no products even announced with it and it's probably at least another 7-8 months away from showing up on shelves.
Right now, their top-of-the-line product is the OMAP 4460 and that loses every performance benchmark to the likes of A5X and Krait and even Tegra 3 and the new Exynos. Which means, performance-wise, they are behind all their major competitors.
Not to mention confusing product launches. What was the point of 4460 and how is it different from 4430 anyway? 4460 was supposed to have ~20% higher clock speeds, but other than Archos (i.e., a niche manufacturer) I don't know of any shipping product where it was released with that clock. Evey manufacturer just clocked it at 1.2 Ghz (presumably cause it sucked too much power at 1.5 Ghz) which put it exactly on par with 4430. What was the point of it then?
Don't get me wrong, I love TI very much. They are a very open source friendly company, they are involved in Linaro and a bunch of other initiatives and I respect them for that. But the SoC space is a tough one, they have been winning designs solely based on price, as their performance hasn't been competitive in a long time. This strategy hits the bottom line hard and can't continue forever.
thunderising - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
I was hoping for A15 with A7 couple and Power VR Rogue SeriesSeriously where are they
jalexoid - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
They might be utilizing the M4 cores to assist graphics as well.dagamer34 - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
Ti told us 3 months ago that the clock speed of the PowerVR GPU is up to 532Mhz: http://newscenter.ti.com/index.php?s=32851&ite...