The world’s ‘tiniest GPU’ heads to production — 200,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 can render gamepad-manipulated 3D images with up to 1K triangles in real-time

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The world's ‘tiniest GPU’ heads to production — 200,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 can render gamepad-manipulated 3D images with up to 1K triangles in real-time

However, Vichit also took part in TT7 with what was dubbed the Tiniest GPU . It was interesting to compare this enthusiast’s original and newest Tiny GPU projects, but they are quite different beasts, with the first model extremely lean, with its support for a maximum of two polygons (much less than the 1,000 of v2). Its simplicity meant the Tiniest GPU, at 50 MHz, could real-time render 640 x 480 pixel imagery with 6-bit color depth at up to 60fps. On screen render output was manipulated using keyboard cursor controls.

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bit_user The article said: In terms of performance, the v2.0 at 25 MHz only manages frame rates between 7.5 and 15 fps. Moreover, this is for rather low-polygon 3D models, at render resolutions of 320 x 240 pixels (or below) and using 4-bit color Honestly, I think my 386DX-25 could do software rendering faster than that – and in 256-color mode! Also, I'm curious how this compares to the Super FX chip, included in some SNES game cartridges, starting in 1993. So far, all I can tell is that the clock speeds are similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_FX IMO, the only reason to even bother producing custom silicon is just for the experience of having made a chip, end-to-end (which I respect!). If all you wanted was better performance, I'm sure you could get that by simply using a higher-end FPGA. If I were doing something like this, I'd definitely try to target some OpenGL 1.x feature level and write an actual driver for it. That's the minimum probably needed for it to be useful in some retro-computing projects. OpenGL 2.0 is when they introduced programmable shaders – probably impractical for such a project. Reply

hwertz I wondered that too, and even i it might be running some small custom CPU like SuperFX (I mean LIKE, not suggesting it's running a clone of something like this.) So this isn't TERRIBLY useful in and of itself (the gratification of having done it. I'm in no way suggesting they shouldn't have made it). But I wonder if the design can be expanded and improved on to have a true open GPU (well this is one, but like scaled up to more than 200K transistors, OpenGL, 16 or 24 bit color depth, and so on. I. e, no longer as tiny as possibe but more capable of running some off the shelf items.) Reply

bit_user hwertz said: I wonder if the design can be expanded and improved on to have a true open GPU (well this is one, but like scaled up to more than 200K transistors, OpenGL, 16 or 24 bit color depth, and so on. I. e, no longer as tiny as possibe but more capable of running some off the shelf items.) Yeah, like turned into a proper "soft GPU", for synthesis as a small block in larger FPGAs? That's another direction I think would be quite useful to go in. Here's one example of an open source soft GPU, but I think it's quite a bit more ambitious (and should be corresponding larger): https://github.com/vortexgpgpu/vortex Sadly, it's only a "GPGPU", meaning that it's designed for compute loads and lack graphics features. It supports OpenCL 1.2, but apparently no graphics stack. Reply

fiyz It could make great visuals on disposable vapes? Reply

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  1. The world’s ‘tiniest GPU’ heads to production — 200,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 can render gamepad-manipulated 3D images with up to 1K triangles in real-time
  2. The world’s ‘tiniest GPU’ heads to production — 200,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 can render gamepad-manipulated 3D images with up to 1K triangles in real-time
  3. The world’s ‘tiniest GPU’ heads to production — 200,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 can render gamepad-manipulated 3D images with up to 1K triangles in real-time
  4. The world’s ‘tiniest GPU’ heads to production — 200,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 can render gamepad-manipulated 3D images with up to 1K triangles in real-time

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