Chinese company Innosilicon introduced a graphics card called Fenhua N1, which does not appear to use technologies from NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel to move graphics. Are we facing a Chinese company that can stand up to the Big Three or instead, is this material hiding a secret and not what it appears to be?
With the GPU market for PC games being one of the most profitable, it is only fitting that a superpower like China wants to participate, since so far the big three are from the United States. To all of this must be added the continued boycotts and sanctions against China, so it’s no surprise that all-Chinese graphics cards are starting to appear and therefore do not use AMD, Intel or NVIDIA chips.
Although at present, China’s interest in graphics processors is focused on their capabilities not for computing, but for running high-speed parallel algorithms for the scientific and military world. Which are strategic for any nation in the world. Thus, the country that Xi Jinping leads does not seem very interested in creating GPUs for games.
What is Innosilicon Fenhua N1?
Through a statement without too much detail, the Innosilicon company presented a graphics card that is not based on any Intel, AMD or NVIDIA GPU but on a chip called Fenhua N1, which is designed to offer “high graphics performance in data centers ”and so we are talking about server hardware.
What’s so special about him? Starting with the fact that it has video outputs HDMI 2.1 and eDP 1.4 And that doesn’t make sense on a compute card only, as they can’t display charts, which means the Fenhua N1 can. Another thing that differs from HPC GPUs is the Using GDDR6X memory instead of the HBM2E and as you can see in the picture it is a conventional graphics card which can also be connected to a fourth generation PCI Express x16 slot.
While what confirms that we are dealing with a chart capable of generating charts is the fact that according to its press release it supports multiple APIs such as OpenGL, DirectX, OpenGL EX, Vulkan and OpenCL
Its GPU, on the other hand, is of European origin.
That’s the big million dollar question, however, if we do a little research we will find a joint press release between Innosilicon and Imagination Technologies from October 2020 where you can read the following:
Imagination Technologies announced its cooperation with Innosilicon, a leading provider of mixed-signal intellectual properties and custom ASICs. Using the highly innovative Chiplet and GDDR6 technologies in Innosilicon, they integrated the new BXT multi-core GPU
in high performance for desktop and data center applications. Both companies are exploring a long-term strategy to bring even more powerful GPUs to market.
Thus, the first GPU for games made in China does not use the technology of this country, let us not forget that Imagination is the owner and developer of the PowerVR architectures, Tile Renderer type graphics processors which have a long history in the world. graphics material. . The company was formerly known as Videologic and has a pretty big track record under its belt:
- The graphics processor from SEGA Dreamcast.
- The Kyro family of graphics cards that competed with early GeForce and Radeon in the early 2000s.
- Apple’s graphics hardware is based on Imagination technology, but gradually the pieces changed until the British were left behind.
- The graphics hardware of the PlayStation Vita.
Well, it looks like Imagination’s PowerVR technology has found a home, will the PowerVR return to graphics cards for PC gaming?
