iOS 4.3 Supports New More Powerful Graphics Processor

New driver has been found in the first beta SDK for iOS 4.3, which allows system to support Imagination Technologies' POWERVR SGX543 GPU. All the iOS devices starting from iPhone 3GS sport POWERVR SGX535 graphics processor that appears to be a predecessor of SGX543.

POWERVR SGX543 was introduced in January 2009 and only now has reached mobile devices. The benefits of the SGX543 were described by MacRumors:

"The SGX543 is said to deliver performance of 35 million polygons per second and a filtrate of 1 billion pixels per second when running at 200 MHz, compared to 28 million polygons per second and a filtrate of 500 million pixels for the SGX535 running at the same clock speed. In addition, the SGX543 offers support for the Apple-backed OpenCL specification that allows applications to harness untapped potential of both CPUs and GPUs for processing purposes. Finally, the SGX543 support multi-core configurations allowing for even greater performance."

It is possible, that this new graphics processor will work in conjunction with the upcoming SoC A5.