TinyGPU v2.0 silicon passes real-world testing, renders 3D graphics at up to 15 FPS

TinyGPU v2.0 Real-World Testing

Pongsagon Vichit's TinyGPU v2.0 silicon has completed real-world testing after being produced through the Tiny Tapeout community. The GPU successfully rendered 3D graphics, including a low-polygon model manipulated by a game controller and a zooming globe.

The TinyGPU v2.0 is capable of transformation, lighting, and rasterization for up to 1,000 triangles on screen. It includes features like dynamic directional light, flat shading, backface culling, and affine texture mapping. The chip contains approximately 240,000 transistors and uses a 4-bit double buffer and an 8-bit depth buffer stored on QSPI RAM.

Performance and Frame Rates

During testing, TinyGPU v2.0 achieved frame rates between 7.5 and 15 frames per second. This performance aligns with previous expectations, as the silicon's speed is comparable to its FPGA test counterpart.

TinyGPU v3.0 Development Underway

Development for TinyGPU v3.0 is already in progress, with submission to Tiny Tapeout's next run completed before v2.0 was fully tested. The primary new feature in TinyGPU v3.0 is a programmable pixel shader, inspired by DirectX 8 PS 1.1.

The v3.0 pixel shader will feature SIMD (4 pixels in parallel), 31 instructions per shader, a 26-operation instruction set, branching via masked execution, and 4x 8-bit temporary registers. These additions, along with Z-buffer access, near/far plane culling, and guard band clipping, are expected to improve graphical fidelity.