14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices and NVIDIA are the rulers of the graphics processing unit industry, at least as far as PCs, tablets, and game consoles are concerned, but there is one area where another company has them beat: size.
Admittedly, AMD and NVIDIA have gotten quite good at integrating GPU technology inside their SoCs (system-on-chip devices) or APUs (accelerated processing units), as the case may be.
However, they have placed performance and efficiency before size, mostly since chips are already small enough for their purposes.
There are still some devices where making things small is important though, like technical accessories, assistant robots, smart devices, medical equipment, etc.
Small, handheld game consoles like the Nintendo 3DS are another area where tiny chips are very useful. It's why Digital Media Professionals Inc. is still alive and kicking.
In fact, the Japanese company is the one that made the PICA200 GPU for the Nintendo 3DS, as certain parties eagerly pointed out.
Which brings us to the matter at hand: DMP has released the smallest GPU ever made, a small square with a side of 0.5 mm.
It is called the Ant. Well, that's its shortened name. Its full name is UI Drawing Engine IP core Ant. DMP expects it to be used in wearable electronic devices, as well as all the categories mentioned before.
Considering the standards set by today's smartphone GPUs (which are just a bit larger than the Ant), we can make some assumptions about what the chip can do. Full HD, or at least HD, video playback and recording should be possible. The former if it's augmented reality headsets that the Ant is made for.
Alas, DMP did not see fit to share any of the newcomer's specifications, though it does intend to release them at the upcoming Computer Vision Seminar 2014 this end of August. So we can't really know what to expect before the end of the month.
Still, some similarities to at least the integrated GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA are expected. After all, the UI Drawing Engine IP core Ant is built on the 28nm fabrication process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC for short.
In fact, 28nm is the same manufacturing node used for AMD's current Radeon and NVIDIA's GeForce series and which will be used, again, for the next generations of both integrated and discrete / add-in cards from them (in spite of previous plans for 20nm chips).