Tegra 4 Whitepaper - Nvidia

P a g e | 2Table of Contents...................................................................................................................................................................... 1Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3The Need for Fast Mobile GPUs .................................................................................................................... 3Tegra 4 Family GPU Features and Architecture ............................................................................................ 4Tegra 4 Family GPU Logical Pipeline Flow ................................................................................................ 5GPU Pipeline Implementation Details ...................................................................................................... 7Vertex Processing Engines .................................................................................................................... 7Raster Engine and Early-Z ..................................................................................................................... 8VLIW Pixel Fragment Shader Pipelines ................................................................................................. 8Texture Filtering Units........................................................................................................................... 9Additional GPU Features ..................................................................................................................... 10Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i vs Tegra 3 Comparative Peformance Factors .................................................... 12Tegra 4i GPU Architecture Diagram .................................................................................................... 13Architectural Efficiency ............................................................................................................................... 14Comparative Benchmark Performance ....................................................................................................... 16Advanced Power Management .................................................................................................................. 16Tegra GPU / Memory Controller Interface ................................................................................................. 17Enabling Advanced Graphics Effects in Mobile Games............................................................................... 19Developer Support .................................................................................................................................. 22Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 23Appendix A: Tegra 4 GPU Benchmarks ....................................................................................................... 24Appendix B: Tegra 4 / 4i Supported Video and Audio Formats .................................................................. 24Document Revision History ......................................................................................................................... 25NVIDIA Tegra 4 GPU Architecture February 2013