Despite an increased competition with NVIDIA, ATI is planning to remain the GPU mobile leader with more than 70% of market shares. One of the key areas to remain market leader is to assure a good autonomy to laptops equipped with their GPU. The new PowerPlay v5.0 equipped with the Radeon Mobility X300, X600 and X800 helps to increase the autonomy with standard energy saving functions but also because it is able to deactivate one part of the PCI Express bus when the whole of its bandwidth isn’t used. It isn’t necessary to use a PCI Express 16X to type a Word document, only a PCI Express 1X is enough.
It is however only one detail. Reading a HD DVD for example is a much bigger issue. It requires processing up to six times more pixels, and also logically more energy. According to ATI, using a standard decoding process for these DVD could divide the laptop autonomy by three. Reading DVDs in battery mode would be impossible. Decoding DVDs via a GPU needs too much energy as well as using the GPU pixel pipelines. Also only GPU with a high enough fillrate would be able capable to process the decoding.
The solution would be to integrate a completely independent video engine to the GPU to deactivate as much equipment as possible if the user chooses to read a HD DVD. ATI indicates that they already have developed this technology under the shape of a dedicated chip, the Xilleon, used in screens compatible with HDTV. Future GPUs might integrate new functionalities… NVIDIA has also integrated a dedicated video engine to the GeForce 6. We don’t know yet if this engine is completely independent from the GPU’s other components and its efficiency. Drivers aren’t available yet and NVIDIA’s explanations on the subject are quite vague.
Finally for long term, ATI joined early 2004 the Extended Battery Life Working Group to work with the main laptop manufacturers, Microsoft and Intel, on solutions to increase laptop’s autonomy. The target is to increase the autonomy to one day of work. Of course, changes will be important and will include the type of battery used.
