"Project Logan" Brings Direct X 11 To Smartphones

[Steven Bogos]

"Project Logan" Brings Direct X 11 To Smartphones

Nvidia's new mobile GPU uses less than one-third the power of the iPad 4's GPU, while still performing the same rendering.

Nvidia have offered a sneak peak [http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/07/24/kepler-to-mobile/] at the nuts and bolts behind it's new "Project Logan" mobile GPU, and boy does it look impressive. Project Logan supports the full spectrum of OpenGL - including the just-announced OpenGL 4.4 - and it also supports DirectX 11, Microsoft's latest graphics API. For comparison, those of you that remember the good ol' 8800 GTX series of videocards, Project Logan is a bit better than those. If you told me four years ago that a smartphone would have a be able to outperform my PC, i'd have said you were talking crazy, but here we are.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney confirmed that Project Logan will be able to run Unreal Engine 4, empowering mobile devices with "the same high-end graphics hardware capabilities exposed via DirectX 11 on PC games and on next-generation consoles."

Being a mobile GPU, power efficiency is a very important factor. There's no point in being able to produce gorgeous graphics if your phone dies after ten minutes. The good news is that Project Logan uses less than one-third the power of GPUs in leading tablets, such as the iPad 4, while performing the same rendering. "We took Kepler's efficient processing cores and added a new low-power inter-unit interconnect and extensive new optimizations, both specifically for mobile."

Be sure to check out the video above, which shows a mobile device with Project Logan running that rather impressive FaceWorks render [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123974-Play-With-Nvidias-Lifelike-Human-Face-Render] we saw being run by Nvidia's horrendously expensive and equally powerful Titan series of graphics cards.

Project Logan achieves these feats of strength by utilizing Nvidia's revolutionary Kepler architecture. "This is as big a milestone for mobile as the first GPU, GeForce 256, was for the PC when it was introduced 14 years ago," said Nvidia's Jonah Alben. "I am really excited to start showing it off to the world."

The project is still in the prototyping phase, so don't expect to see it anytime in the immediate future.

Source: Nvidia [http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/07/24/kepler-to-mobile/]

Permalink

 

[james.sponge]

So many EMOTIONS!

 

[Fasckira]

I didn't much care for my phone battery anyway.

 

[omicron1]

I didn't much care for my phone battery anyway.

Hearsay has it it's got less power draw than current smartphone graphics processors - on the order of 3 watts. So, you may not care, but you don't need to sacrifice either.

 

[Chubbs99]

Thats great that the GPU uses little power, However the screen being on is what usually kills my battery first. That our poorly made games that will use up more power then the screen being on, and can kill a phone when its plugged in to a wall charger...

 

[Araksardet]

This is great news, at least the OpenGL part. I was just starting to hope that OpenGL might become a reasonably well-adopted standard, what with its massive dominance on mobile platforms and the (seemingly) increasing popularity of OSX and Linux derivatives. Then they went and added DirectX.

Still, here's to hoping that in the future OpenGL ES goes the way of the dodo and gets replaced by standard OpenGL.

 

[Weaver]

I still don't want to game on a phone though.

 

[MHzBurglar]

I still don't want to game on a phone though.

Agreed. It doesn't matter how sophisticated the graphics processor gets; I still hate mobile gaming. If for no other reason than the bloody touch controls (but there are other reasons.)

The argument could be made that this chipset could be thrown into a device like the Ouya or that a tablet/phone could be hooked up to a TV and synced with a controller, but why bother when there are larger form factor devices (PCs, consoles) that can do the same thing with proper full-sized GPUs that have proper heat distribution and cooling? These factors allow for better clock speeds and framerates than a mobile chipset could ever dream of.

Also, to re-iterate, touch-screen limitations...

 

[Weaver]

I still don't want to game on a phone though.

Agreed. It doesn't matter how sophisticated the graphics processor gets; I still hate mobile gaming. If for no other reason than the bloody touch controls (but there are other reasons.)

The argument could be made that this chipset could be thrown into a device like the Ouya or that a tablet/phone could be hooked up to a TV and synced with a controller, but why bother when there are larger form factor devices (PCs, consoles) that can do the same thing with proper full-sized GPUs that have proper heat distribution and cooling? These factors allow for better clock speeds and framerates than a mobile chipset could ever dream of.

Also, to re-iterate, touch-screen limitations...

Agreed, it's really the controls that kill it for me. Physical input is just better for that form factor, in my personal opinion anyways. I'm excited what this could mean for "actual" mobile gaming, like on the NVidia Shield, whatever the next Sony handheld is, etc;

 

[RicoADF]

I didn't much care for my phone battery anyway.

I hear you, playing GTA3 on my Samsung Galaxy S4 looks wonderful and is alot of fun for the 30mins (I think if that) the battery lasts from a full charge. I must say a phone with this new GPU would be HOT..... and I don't mean the awesome type either, I mean literally hot to touch. Phones are already getting close to being heaters in your hand as it is.....

 

[Strazdas]

Oh, great, so our mobile phones will ahve to deal with clumsy, resource hogging (there is a reason games run better on directx 10 and 9) software that is created for nothing but Microsoft monopolizing another market?
No thanks.
<Raises OpenGL banner.

 

[Evil Smurf]

So many EMOTIONS!

I'm crying right now.