Recently, MediaTek held the high-profile Dimensity Developer Conference 2024 (MDDC 2024) in Shenzhen, with the theme of "AI for Everything". As an important pioneer in the field of mobile game technology, MediaTek has joined hands with game manufacturers, developers, device manufacturers and other ecosystem partners around the world to discuss the new opportunities and challenges of the mobile game industry. In the face of various challenges faced by mobile gaming, MediaTek showed the attendees its solutions to the Star Engine Adaptive Software Development Kit and hardware ray tracing technology. This not only provides strong support for game developers, but also accelerates the rapid expansion of the Dimensity game ecosystem, demonstrating MediaTek's firm confidence and expectations for the future game ecosystem.
Starspeed Engine - Adaptive Technology Software Development Kit, which brings computing platforms and gaming applications to the fore
When loading a game, switching scenes, or transitioning to a teleportation point, users experience a choppy experience such as stuttering during gameplay due to the platform's unsatisfactory response speed.
The adaptive technology software development kit in the Starspeed Engine establishes a channel for the exchange of information between chips and games, so that the platform load information and the game computing power scheduling strategy can be interconnected at the bottom level, so that developers can obtain chip-level computing power scheduling capabilities, and set key processes and corresponding priorities at any time according to their needs. Flexibly initiate computing power requirements to the platform, and the platform responds to the control policy at a speed of less than 1 ms. Make sure players don't have to endure long loading waits, and can quickly enter the game world and start playing in no time. According to actual test data, with the help of the Star Speed Engine, the loading time of Need for Speed Assemble and Honor of Kings has been shortened by up to 11%, greatly reducing the waiting time of players and improving the user experience.
Once the heat accumulation reaches the threshold, the platform forcibly reduces the load, resulting in a cliff decline in the game frame rate and image quality, which significantly affects the player's experience.
In order to solve this problem, the adaptive technology development kit accurately divides the chip platform load into five segments of power consumption level warning, and transmits CPU/GPU load information in real time, from normal section warning to frequency limit section warning, developers can import the corresponding load strategy according to each section, dynamically adjust and adjust the running parameters of the game, and ensure that the game can run stably at full frame for a long time.
Excellent performance release also requires a smooth network environment to get a smooth gaming experience and high-level competitive performance. However, in order to ensure the player's gaming experience, the industry usually chooses to continuously maintain the concurrency of Wi-Fi and cellular networks in the environment of weak Wi-Fi networks. Although it maintains a stable network experience, it also causes wasted power consumption, heat generation, and wasted traffic costs.
MediaTek's network quality monitoring system provides developers with the ability to predict network quality 100ms in advance with an accuracy rate of more than 90%, so that game network modules can quickly and accurately configure dual-network concurrency policies. On the premise of ensuring the smoothness of the game, the concurrent cost of dual networks is greatly optimized, so that the data usage is reduced by 25%, and the power consumption of the whole machine is greatly reduced by 10%.
Star Speed Engine - Hardware Ray Tracing Technology, Ushering in the "Console Era" of Mobile Game Picture Quality
As early as many years ago, MediaTek pioneered the introduction of hardware ray tracing technology on mobile platforms. After several years of development, many genres of games have been integrated into the Dimensity ray tracing ecosystem, creating an immersive user experience with the help of advanced hardware ray tracing technology.
Now, Dimensity hardware ray tracing technology has been upgraded again, taking the lead in real-time optimization of dynamic objects and ambient light and shadow. The "American Professional Basketball Showdown" displayed at the scene presents a real-time multi-light reflection effect, which can accurately capture the joint movements and bionic details of people and animals, making the picture more realistic and smooth.
In addition, through the cooperation of SmartGI and Nanomesh, the Dimensity platform can achieve geometric support of up to 100 million faces, and implement the host-level ray tracing effect on the mobile terminal, achieving a huge leap in image quality, while greatly increasing the game frame rate, enabling the game to greatly improve the immersion, allowing mobile gamers to feel unprecedented visual shock and game experience. With the continuous and in-depth cooperation with partners, hardware ray tracing technology is expected to be applied in more games, bringing an immersive gaming experience to a wider range of gamers and promoting the rapid development of the entire mobile gaming industry.
At present, the Star Engine continues to make efforts based on the three directions of "speed, smoothness, and immersion", actively implements advanced technologies, and builds a "talent tree" for Dimensity games. In particular, in terms of AI+ games, MediaTek has introduced AI technology into the field of game interaction and content generation on the basis of improving development efficiency through AI, assisting developers in the application of large language models in mobile games, allowing NPC interactions to generate real emotional feedback in real time, and exploring AI ray tracing technologies, such as AI super-resolution, frame insertion, neural rendering, Stable Diffusion and other generative AI applications, to promote the rapid development of GPU rendering.
Choose Dimensity to play games, and excellent game technology drives the rapid development of Dimensity game ecology
Over the years, the Dimensity gaming ecosystem has continuously introduced leading technologies, and has won unanimous praise from the media, users, and the industry for its advanced performance and excellent energy efficiency.
Therefore, popular domestic games such as Honor of Kings, Peace Elite, Genshin Impact, Against the Cold, and Dark Zone Breakthrough have chosen to cooperate with MediaTek in depth to join the Dimensity game ecosystem, and create an excellent game experience for tens of millions of players by fully unleashing the extreme performance of the chip.
In the in-depth cooperation with ecological partners, MediaTek has gained insight that on the road of pursuing a high-quality and high-frame-rate gaming experience, the "three mountains" in front of mobile gamers and developers are that the heat during computing cannot be released in time due to inadequate performance scheduling, resulting in hot hands and frame jamming.
In order to optimize the game experience, developers urgently need to solve the problem of information exchange between game applications and chips. For example, game applications cannot know the real-time chip capacity and load conditions, which can lead to a disconnect between their scheduling strategies and the user's real-world experience. However, due to the insufficient computing power authority of the scheduling chip, the performance of the chip cannot be truly "used on the cutting edge" of the game application.
The launch of the Star Speed Engine is to bridge the gap between computing platforms and gaming applications. It includes adaptive technology software development kit and hardware ray tracing technology, which unleash the potential of on-device games through the seamless combination of software and hardware, and become the "ultimate answer" to improve the experience of developers and players.
Hand in hand with the industry's technology source, the Dimensity game ecosystem has set a vane for the industry
In addition to the Starspeed Engine, MediaTek is also actively working with industry partners including Arm, Google, Khronos, and Unreal Engine teams to explore cutting-edge technologies, continue to empower the fast-expanding Dimensity game ecosystem, accelerate the implementation of cutting-edge technologies, and support developers to continue to innovate.
Cooperate with Google to integrate MAGT, the adaptive technology development kit in the Star Engine, with the Android adaptive performance framework APDF; Jointly innovated the mobile GPU architecture with ARM to accelerate the implementation of ray tracing technology; The in-depth cooperation with UE5 not only optimizes ray tracing Lumen, but also further unleashes the advantages of the Dimensity platform. and actively participate in the definition of Khronos industry standards to promote the popularization of next-generation graphics interfaces.
Overall, MediaTek has always been committed to promoting the innovation of mobile gaming technology to bring players a richer and more enjoyable gaming experience. As an important player and leader in the field of mobile game technology, MediaTek has always been full of vitality and actively engaged in the R&D and commercial application of mobile game technology. Through close cooperation with industry partners, MediaTek continues to explore cutting-edge technologies and strive to integrate innovative technologies into game applications, so as to continue to bring gamers a gaming experience that surpasses generations after generations.