New 3D Chip from Toshiba

Toshiba has announced the launch of a new MPEG-4 encoder and decoder LSI that brings video-game-grade 3D graphics to cellular phones. The latest addition to Toshiba's T series of MPEG-4 LSI, the T4G supports fast rendering of graphics, including advanced shading, texture mapping, special effects and other visualization functions, enabling mobile phones to offer high-resolution 3D graphics matching those of current game consoles.

Most of today's advanced mobile phones render 3D graphics by software, an approach that severely burdens the CPU and increases power consumption. The T4G instead integrates a dedicated circuit for high-grade 3D graphics. At a time when cellular phones are diversifying to become games platforms and personal GPS systems, the T4G delivers a timely solution that supports improved graphics and renders video sources with a drawing performance of 125-million pixels a second.

Alongside its 3D graphic processor, T4G integrates a JPEG codec for a 2-megapixel camera and an LCD control circuit for a QVGA panel. The need for external memory is eliminated by the provision of embedded-DRAM fabricated with 130-nanometer process technology. Power consumption (at 125MHz operation) is between 170 to 230mW, and the chip is packaged in a 12 x 12mm ball gird array.

Mass production is scheduled to start in the third quarter of 2004.

"Broadband data communication and larger, high quality LCD are fuelling demand for high performance mobile phones," said Yasuhiko Fujita, senior manager of the System LSI Division at Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor Company. "With our T series of MPEG-4 codec LSIs, we have led the way in bringing video to mobile phones, since as long ago as 1998. The T4, the predecessor of the T4G, is already in use in the latest phones on the Japanese market. The launch of T4G, with its 3D graphics processor and other image processing circuits, goes even further to meeting the phone makers' requirement for high level performance in compact design."

Posted to the site on 26th March 2004