14 DAY TRIAL // Toshiba Corporation announced it has developed a dedicated 3D graphics LSI (large-scale integration) chip that promises to take mobile phone graphics to a whole new level. The new LSI chip, "TC35711XBG", will offer outstanding performance that will surpass even today's handheld game consoles, being capable of rendering 100 mega-polygons per second (800 mega-pixels per second).
The recent technological advancements have equipped mobile phones with higher resolution displays, fast baseband processors and increasingly advanced system LSI chips, creating a suitable environment for advanced software and games. However, the development of complex applications has been held back by the poor performance of graphics LSI, current chips being able to render images at only a few millions of polygons a second.
Toshiba's new chip integrates a newly developed 3D graphics processor that is 38 times faster than Toshiba's existing product, TC35296XBG, which can render 2.6 mega-polygons per second. The new chip is also compatible with 3D shader technology, which will take mobile graphics to a whole new level by bringing for the first time realistic shading and reflectivity to mobile phones.
The new product integrates three processors inside a 13 x 13 x 1.2 mm package, alongside the new 3D graphics processor residing Toshiba's "Media Embedded Processor" (MeP) for sound processing and the ARM1176JZF-S high-performance processor core. The new 3D graphics LSI chip also integrates a WVGA LCD controller that supports high resolution displays. The SLI chip brings all the essential components of a game console onto a single chip dedicated to enhancing mobile phone game performance.
Toshiba Corporation plans to ship the first samples of the new graphics LSI to device manufactures beginning with October 2007. The mass production of the product is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2008. The 3D graphics LSI will have an estimated price of 8,000 yen (about $65) on the Japanese market.