Imagination Technologies, a Silicon IP provider owned by Intel and Apple, was demostrating its new PowerVR technology at GDC 2016, which have setted a bar for high-end graphics in mobile.
One of the most important demonstration at the event comes from the PowerVR Ray Tracing team.
PowerVR Wizard is a new GPU architecture capable of generating photorealistic image quality for console-level gaming and next-generation VR apps, while delivering up to 50x better energy efficiency in ray tracing performance when compared to a traditional desktop GPU.
For highlighting its photorealistic rendering ability, Imagination showed an the Apartment scene, which requires billions of rays per second (gigarays) of computational performance and is possible today only very high-end workstations with multiple desktop GPUs stacked together consuming north of 500-700 watts.
In addition, Imagination announced a collaboration with Unity Technologies to bring PowerVR Ray Tracing technology to the Unity game engine. The first result of this partnership is a lightmapping tool that will help artists quickly design and visualize advanced lighting effects in a convenient, easy to use workflow.
Imagination also noted that console-level performance and image quality are now a reality on mobile class GPUs. And the PowerVR Series7XT and Series7XT Plus families are enabling a new era of gaming and visual computing applications.
