Looking at the current PC game field, if you want to name the hottest and most influential screen-related technology, then "game super score" will undoubtedly occupy the top spot. In fact, whether it is the discussion on social platforms, or the enthusiasm of graphics card manufacturers and game manufacturers, the status of "game super score" today far exceeds ray tracing, sampler feedback, variable rendering rate, mesh rendering, etc., and a series of other next-generation graphics technologies that were almost launched at the same time.
In fact, this is not surprising, after all, although the "light chase" is gorgeous, and the "sampler feedback" is amazing, the cost of both hardware and software adaptation is not low. In contrast, whether it is NVIDIA's DLSS (Deep Learning Hypersampling), NIS (NVIDIA Image Sharpening), or AMD's FSR or RSR, which was just launched some time ago, it can be exchanged for a significant increase in frame rate at the cost of almost no image quality.
More importantly, these super-score technologies can adapt to many more games than light chase, and their emergence has helped many PC players whose graphics cards themselves are not too good to achieve a smooth 2K or even 4K resolution game experience that was unimaginable in the past. It can be said that at the current time when the price of this graphics card is not close to the people, the "game super score" technology completely hits the player's just needs, and it can almost be called the "savior" of the game experience.
Because of this, recently sources broke the news that Vivo's new flagship X80 will be equipped with Tianji 9000 SoC, and the industry's first mediated mobile game super score new technology has also aroused our great concern.
Can you also "game super score" on the mobile phone? This is MediaTek's unique technology
In fact, as early as last October, MediaTek had previewed some of the latest game graphics technology, and it was at that time that The Mobile Game AI-SR was first made public.
However, unlike the game super score technology on the PC, which focuses on high resolution and additional frame rate improvement, MediaTek's game super score technology aims at a different target. The effect it wants to achieve is to further reduce the power consumption of soC without reducing the picture quality of the game, so as to improve frame rate stability, reduce heat generation, and extend battery life. As long as you simply compare PCs, laptops and mobile phones, you will find that the smaller the size, the greater the impact of the heat dissipation and battery life problems caused by the high power consumption of the chip or graphics card on the gaming experience.
So how exactly does MediaTek achieve this? To understand this matter, we still have to go back to the PC, to see the specific implementation method of "game super score" on the PC at present.
In principle, the "game super score" on the PC can be basically divided into two types. One is represented by NVIDIA DLSS, which first uses the GPU's graphics computing unit to render a lower-resolution picture, and then hands it over to a dedicated AI unit based on a deep learning algorithm for zooming, sharpening, and anti-aliasing calculations. The other is represented by NVIDIA's NIS, as well as AMD's FSR and RSR, which is to hand over the process of low-resolution rendering and screen enlargement and sharpening to the GPU's graphics computing unit, without additional AI units.
Obviously, in terms of the final picture effect and computing efficiency, the DLSS with the participation of AI units is significantly better than several other super-scoring schemes that rely solely on the "hard calculation" of traditional graphics units. And interestingly, MediaTek's mobile game super score also adopts a heterogeneous computing design coordinated by GPU and APU.
According to the technical documents previously disclosed by the official, the game super scoring technology of Tianji 9000 is first rendered by the GPU with a slightly lower resolution than the mobile phone screen, and then handed over to the APU to independently complete the process of zooming, sharpening and anti-aliasing based on deep learning algorithms. In the end, the player can see the picture effect of almost the screen resolution, and in the process, the rendering load of the GPU can be greatly reduced, which in turn will also bring about the effect of cooling and power saving.
Why does MediaTek dare to do game scoring? The energy efficiency advantages of APUs are key
Sharp-eyed friends may have found the key to the problem, compared with the traditional game screen rendering only using the GPU, after the "game super score" function is turned on, the GPU and APU of Tianji 9000 are actually working together, although the workload of the GPU at this time is reduced, but the load of the APU is not compared to the "game super score" is definitely up. So why is the end result, instead, a significant reduction in power consumption?
This brings us to the architectural differences between THE CPU, GPU and APU in the mobile phone SoC, as well as some unique features of the Tianji 9000 in the APU design.
First of all, in fact, the CPU, GPU and APU in today's mobile phones can run AI code in architecture, but their energy efficiency and operational efficiency are very different. For example, CPUs and GPUs are used to run AI code, and often only have hundreds of GOPs per watt of computing power, and because they tend to have other computing tasks, it is impossible to use all the performance to perform AI calculations.
In contrast, as a unit built specifically for AI computing, APU is much stronger in this regard. On the one hand, the computing efficiency of flagship APUs can usually reach TOPs per watt, which is equivalent to the same power consumption, and the speed of AI computing can easily reach ten times or more of CPUs and GPUs. On the other hand, compared with CPUs and GPUs, APU focuses on AI computing, so it can almost "undisturbed" when it is necessary to perform "game super-scoring", the vast majority of performance is invested in this single computing project, so it is easy to achieve faster super-score computing speed and higher energy efficiency ratio.
More critically, as MediaTek's new flagship SoC, the Tianji 9000 has actually taken into account the energy efficiency of CPU, GPU, APU and other units participating in heterogeneous computing at the same time from the initial architectural design stage. First, MediaTek chose the best TSMC 4nm process to manufacture this SoC, laying the foundation for its energy efficiency performance.
Secondly, the Tianji 9000 also boldly adopts a faster memory scheme than the competitors, as well as a larger cache design to reduce the overall computing latency and improve performance, so that the SoC can complete the computing task in a shorter time and reduce the probability that the core will continue to be fully loaded. Most importantly, as mediatek's latest generation of APUs, the APU590 integrated in the Tianji 9000 has an architectural design of up to six cores, and the performance and energy efficiency ratio are up to 400% higher than the previous generation.
It is precisely because the new self-developed APU in The Tianji 9000 is both fast and "provincial", so it is used instead of the GPU to achieve real-time scaling, super resolution, noise reduction and other processing of the game screen, in order to achieve higher performance advantages than simply using the GPU to render directly, or using the GPU computing power alone for super-resolution, and at the same time can play a significant power-saving effect.
Actively laying out cutting-edge game technology, MediaTek is playing a big game
Obviously, in today's mobile game players pay more and more attention to device power consumption, heat, and the continuous fluency of the game frame rate, MediaTek's timely game super-resolution technology accurately targets the user's pain points, and once again reminds us that the Tianji 9000 is ahead of its time in hardware architecture and energy efficiency design.
In fact, if you think about it carefully, you will find that mediatek's "game super score" technology is not as simple as the hardware advantages of Tianji 9000 itself.
On the one hand, both PC and mobile game players know that powerful hardware functions are important for the game industry, but the in-depth cooperation and optimization between developers and hardware manufacturers, especially the special adaptation of hardware characteristics, is actually the key to determining the competitiveness of the hardware market.
On the other hand, for today's mobile game field, with the computing power of the top flagship SoC rising, in fact, both game manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers are looking forward to the birth and promotion of game-related technologies, especially game screen technology, that can reflect the advantages of these truly flagship platforms. Because only epoch-making new technologies can bring about a significant increase in game quality and frame rate, thereby stimulating consumers' desire to change machines.
From these two points, it is not difficult to understand why MediaTek wants to take the lead in bringing mobile light-chasing technology on the Tianji 9000, and why MediaTek wants to equip the Tianji 9000 with game super-scoring functions based on independent APU. To put it bluntly, these new technologies are not only as simple as making the game performance of the Tianji 9000 itself better, they are also the proof that MediaTek has begun to lead the development direction of cutting-edge mobile games after standing at the top of the global mobile SoC shipment list for several consecutive quarters.
This transformation from a "market leader" to a "technology leader" will hopefully give MediaTek an unprecedented industry position and long-term market competitive advantage, and help MediaTek's products in the future, including Tianji 9000, to gain the active cooperation and support of more and more game manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers. Among other things, at least from the previous Tencent's choice to jointly display mobile light chasing technology with MediaTek, as well as the rumored vivo or the first to carry mediatek game super score function on the new flagship, this change can already be clearly seen.