XPG Demos “Nia” Handheld Gaming PC With Foveated Rendering, Swappable DRAM

With the rise of the hand-held gaming PC market, we have seen PC distributors and their companions toy with quite a few methods and tweaks to enhance enhance framerates in video games, with a few of their newest efforts on show at this yr’s Computex commerce present. Maybe essentially the most attention-grabbing discover so far comes from ADATA sub-brand XPG, who’s demoing their prototype “Nia” handheld PC, which makes use of eye monitoring and dynamic foveated rendering to additional enhance their rendering efficiency.

For these unfamiliar, dynamic foveated rendering is a graphics method that’s generally used to spice up efficiency in digital actuality (VR) and augmented actuality (AR) purposes by benefiting from how human imaginative and prescient works. Usually, people can solely understand detailed imagery within the comparatively small central space of our imaginative and prescient referred to as the fovea, whereas our peripheral imaginative and prescient is far much less detailed. Dynamic foveated rendering, in flip, exploits this through the use of real-time eye monitoring to find out the place the person is wanting, after which rendering simply that space in excessive/full decision, whereas rendering the peripheral areas in decrease decision. The web result’s that solely a fraction of the display screen is rendered at full element, which cuts down on the whole quantity of rendering work required and boosting framerates on performance-limited gadgets.

As acknowledged earlier than, this know-how is usually utilized in high-end AR/VR headsets, the place excessive decision shows are positioned mere inches from one’s face. This finally ends up being a perfect use case for the method, since at these distances, solely a small fraction of the display screen is throughout the fovea.

Utilizing dynamic foveated rendering for a handheld, alternatively, is a extra novel utility. All the identical visible ideas apply, however the resolutions at play are decrease, and the display screen is farther from the customers’ eyes. This makes a handheld machine a much less excellent use case, at the very least on paper, as a bigger portion of the display screen goes to be within the fovea, and thus will should be rendered at full decision. None the much less, it is going to be attention-grabbing to see how XPG’s efforts pan out, and if dynamic foveated rendering is helpful sufficient for handheld PCs. As we generally see with commerce present demos, not all the things makes it out of the prototype stage.

In line with a press launch put out by ADATA forward of the commerce present, the attention monitoring know-how is being supplied by AMD collaborator Eyeware. Notably, their software-based strategy runs on high of normal webcams, relatively than requiring IR cameras. So the digital camera {hardware} itself must be fairly straight-forward.

Foveated rendering apart, XPG is ensuring that the Nia will not be a one-trick pony. The hand held’s different main declare to fame is its {hardware} swappability. The prototype handheld not solely encompasses a detachable M.2-2230 SSD, however the firm can be benefiting from the recently-introduced LPCAMM2 reminiscence module commonplace to introduce detachable DRAM. By way of a hatch behind the hand-held, machine homeowners would be capable to swap out LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules for greater capability variations. This might give the hand-held an extra diploma of future-proofness over present handhelds, which use non-replaceable soldered-down reminiscence.

Rounding out the package deal, the present prototype is predicated on an AMD’s Zen 4 Phoenix APU, which is used throughout each of the corporate’s present cellular traces (Ryzen Cell 7000/8000 and Ryzen Z1). In the meantime, the unit’s show is adjustable, permitting it to be angled away from the physique of the hand-held.