Known primarily for its video co-processing in the PC space, Nvidia this week has rolled out the next generation in its line of wireless media processors with an eye to bringing the most sophisticated gaming to the cell phone market.

The company this week rolled out its GoForce 3D 4800 which offers highly realistic 3D graphics, multi-megapixel still imaging, and high quality video capture and playback that ¡°rivals home console gaming systems, digital cameras and video camcorders,¡± the company said.

Design win announcements for this new generation are due shortly, said Manish Singh, a senior director of marketing at Nvidia, and are expected to follow along the same lines as previous generation wins.  Nvidia¡¯s 4500 device is now shipping in Tiger Telematic¡¯s Gizmondo portable game machine, and the 4000 device is in ¡°several phones from Motorola.¡±

Nvidia¡¯s goal is to bring top of the line gaming to portable devices such as cell phones without sacrificing battery life or other features consumers have grown accustomed too.

So far many companies have joined the bandwagon, said Singh.

¡°When we launched the first generation of GoForce we had 12 [game] titles,¡± he said. ¡°Now we have 50.¡± 

And in the last six months, carriers have begun to show an interest too as they continue to search for ways to bring in more revenue per user.  Voice is the biggest market for carriers, but it¡¯s not growing, so they have looked to expand revenues through sales of data services. ¡°The thing that is driving data is multimedia,¡± said Diane Vanasse, a spokeswoman for the company¡¯s mobile products. And gaming is a component of multimedia.

¡°Phone gaming is kind of exploding right now,¡± said Vanasse. ¡°We are seeing tons of people wanting to be part of this industry.¡± That explosion will be demonstrated at the upcoming Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next month.  Three years ago the conference didn¡¯t devote any time or space to mobile gaming but now two days of the four-day event are dedicated to mobile game development.

As for the new Nvidia device itself, the GoForce 3D 4800 processor includes a JPEG hardware encoder capable of capturing images with up to 3 megapixel resolution. In addition, it relies on Nvidia¡¯s Fotopack technology that optimizes JPEG compression to allow users to store up to three times more photos in the mobile phone memory space. In addition, the processor maximizes battery life with dynamic clock gating and other power management features including the company¡¯s nPower technology.

¡°While the latest generation of mobile phones has dramatically expanded the market by adding a wide range of exciting new capabilities, current wireless platforms cannot deliver the multimedia performance users have come to expect from single purpose systems,¡± said Glenn Schuster, general manager for Nvidia¡¯s wireless media processor business, in a statement. ¡°By combining stunning 3D gaming performance, 3 Megapixel digital photos, and TV-quality video capture, the GoForce 3D 4800 offers in a single device all the exciting new multimedia capabilities consumers have come to expect in traditional consumer entertainment devices.¡±

The GoForce 3D 4800 media processor boosts 3D performance by 40 percent over the previous generation of media processors.  In addition, the device¡¯s pixel-shader architecture offers support for up to six simultaneous textures.

An embedded hardware-based MPEG-4 codec enables OEMs using the media processor to add high-quality camcorder-like video capabilities, capturing VGA resolution MPEG-4 video at up to 30 frames per second. In addition in allows users to playback VGA resolution video, such as television programs or movies stored on a memory card at 30 frames per second too.  In addition, the device can also support real-time, full-duplex, two-way video conferencing at 30 frames per second.

By: DocMemory
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