Semiconductor GPU IP Faces Cloud Division

Grazed from ChipDesignMag. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing offers many challenges including the division of graphic-processing IP and rendering tasks between the mobile device and cloud-based servers.

Cloud computing has created new challenges for system designers in terms of the division of functionality between the mobile device and the cloud. This division will directly affect the design of system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors and graphic processing units (GPUs). Autodesk Media & Entertainment Tech Innovators asked the experts at Imagination Technologies and AMD to address the question of graphic processing and rendering partitioned between mobile devices and cloud-based servers. The answer, as is so often the case, depends on the use.

By and large, we think that the cost, silicon area, and power budget of our GPUs makes them efficient enough to be in the device rather than the cloud. This is especially true of the mobile space and most consumer devices…

But of course, there are often exceptions. Most creative professionals are, in our experience, running fairly slow and demanding apps anyway. They are very intolerant of any additional lag or performance hit. But there can be cases where – say, for a final render of a static image – they may be more willing to send it to the cloud…

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