Smartphones have become as central to the gaming world as PCs and gaming consoles. This is a result of advancements in smartphone hardware that deliver an immersive user experience gamers are programmed to expect from platforms. Smartphone manufacturers have made significant enhancements in processor speed, advanced graphic processing units (GPUs), and high-resolution display technologies. According to Mordor Intelligence, the mobile gaming market is expected to grow from US$100.54 billion in 2024 to US$164.81 billion by 2029. As a result, manufacturers have developed dedicated gaming smartphones to meet consumer demand. High-performance visual processors are empowering these devices to deliver rich video content with vibrant colors and no lag in gameplay.
In smartphone applications, visual processors are primarily responsible for rendering and displaying graphics, as well as supporting other tasks that require graphical processing power. Visual processors support the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate rendering rates and reduce power consumption to ensure smooth gameplay and improved battery efficiency. High-performance visual processors are expected to be involved with the following:
Graphics Rendering: The GPU handles graphics rendering (user interfaces, images, videos, and 3D graphics) commands generated by the CPU and sends the processed graphics data to the display for presentation. The visual processor provides specialized hardware and software optimizations to support the GPU for more efficient rendering, smoother motion, and responsive graphic performance.
Power Efficiency: Visual processors implement power management techniques and hardware optimizations to minimize energy consumption during graphics-intensive tasks. By optimizing power efficiency in graphics processing, visual processors preserve battery life in smartphones.
API Support: Smartphone GPUs support graphic application programming interfaces (APIs) such as OpenGL ES, Vulkan, and DirectX. These APIs provide a standardized interface for developers to interact with the GPU and perform graphics rendering. Superior visual processors simplify the development and optimization of APIs, while ensuring proper performance and feature compatibility on mobile devices.
Shader Processing: GPUs in smartphones utilize programmable shader cores to execute complex graphics shaders for rendering effects, lighting, and post-processing. Visual processors assist in shader compilation, optimization, and execution.
Memory Management: Visual processors collaborate with a GPU to effectively manage graphics memory resources. This includes memory allocation, data transfer, and caching to optimize bandwidth and minimize latency during graphics rendering. This collaboration also ensures smooth multitasking and seamless transitions between graphics-intensive applications on smartphones.
Display Technologies: Visual processors contribute to the implementation of advanced display technologies in smartphones, such as high refresh rates, high dynamic range (HDR) and adaptive refresh rate technologies like variable refresh rate (VRR). They work with the GPU to drive these display features, enhancing the visual quality and user experience on smartphone screens. The hardware IP in visual processors upscales the quality of SDR to high dynamic range (HDR). In other words, visual processors perform real-time SDR-to-HDR conversion to expose more detail and shades of color in non-HDR video and gaming content.
Hardware Acceleration: Advanced visual processors in smartphones incorporate dedicated hardware accelerators for specific graphics tasks, such as video decoding, image processing, or AI inference. Accelerators offload processing tasks from the GPU, improving performance, power efficiency, and overall system responsiveness.
Overall, visual processors enhance the display capabilities of smartphones by providing HDR processing, color accuracy, motion processing, adaptive display optimization, video enhancement, power efficiency, and more. By offering advanced image processing capabilities, visual processors contribute to a superior viewing experience on smartphone displays, making it an ideal solution for multimedia enthusiasts and gaming enthusiasts alike.
Case Study: How Enhanced Rendering and Display Capabilities Bring Immersive and Authentic Gaming Experiences to Smartphones.
The recently globally launched OnePlus 12 smartphone incorporates the Pixelworks X7 visual processor to deliver an unparalleled IRX gaming experience to its end users. In 2023, the two companies have already cooperated on four OnePlus smartphone models including the OnePlus Number series and Ace series in China. The collaboration not only focuses on the hardware level to improve the rendering performance of smartphones, but also on the experience level to provide end-users with a more smooth, stable, and immersive gaming experience.
Distributed Rendering Architecture Delivers Unprecedented Smoothness of 120fps and Excellent Clarity of 2K Super-resolution.
With the adoption of Pixelworks’ distributed rendering architecture, the incorporated ultra-low latency MotionEngine® technology and low-power super-resolution technology of the X7 visual processor offloads intensive image rendering from the GPU. This allows the GPU to render as low as 1/3 of the frame rate and 1/4 of the resolution of a game, with Pixelworks’ processor completing the remaining image rendering to achieve content displayed at 120fps and 2K resolution. As a result, end users enjoy uniquely immersive, high frame rate gaming with intricate display details, while also maintaining lower power consumption and device temperature, as well as longer play time. This power efficient distributed rendering architecture has been adapted to various popular mobile games, including King of Glory, Game for Peace, League of Legends, Genshin Impact, QQ Speed and Crossfire.
To ensure the authentic representation of colors in different viewing scenarios, the OnePlus 12 also adopts Pixelworks’ multi-brightness color calibration solution, which compensates for the color saturation in different color modes and lighting conditions. Leveraging the 3D LUT method, this technology incorporates advanced color calibration to comprehensibly and precisely manage numerous display attributes, including hue, saturation, and brightness, making the color displayed on the screen look as vivid as what the human eye detects in the real world.
IRX Gaming Experience Embodies the Art of Balancing Between Performance, Power Consumption, and Picture Quality Tuning for Mobile Gaming.
Games are regarded as a combination of innovative technologies and visual arts. Achieving the optimal balance between performance, power consumption and picture quality across different visual scenarios requires a multidimensional approach and dedicated tuning efforts. Unlike traditional mobile solutions that solely depend on the rendering capability of the application processor, Pixelworks has established an innovative and easy-to-integrate IRX Rendering Acceleration solution. In addition to offloading rendering pressure from the application processor, it utilizes advanced rendering capability and picture quality optimization expertise incorporated in Pixelworks’ X7 visual processor, empowering the OnePlus 12 to deliver an immersive IRX gaming experience with ultra-high frame rate, crystal-clear picture quality and relatively low system power consumption. Users are able to enjoy this artistic balance of performance, power consumption and picture quality tuning enabled by Pixelworks’ IRX gaming experience on a growing number of top-ranking mobile games.
The OnePlus 12 global version is powered by the Snapdragon® 8 Gen 3 mobile platform from Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. It comes with a 2K 120Hz ProXDR display with LTPO and it can reach a peak brightness of 4,500 nits. In terms of the gaming experience, the inclusion of Pixelworks’ X7 visual processor and IRX Rendering Acceleration solution is going to yield unprecedented rendering capability and stunning visual quality that make the gaming experience on the OnePlus 12 more realistic, engaging, and smooth beyond belief.
