Nvidia pushes faster GPU for mobile handsets

EETimes.com - Nvidia pushes faster GPU for mobile handsets: "BARCELONA, Spain — Eager to bring to mobile phones full 30 frames per second digital video in D1 resolution, high fidelity surround sound and console class 3D gaming, Nvidia Corp. Monday (Feb. 13), at the 3GSM World Congress, unveiled the company’s newest graphics processing unit (GPU) called GoForce 5500.

Building on the company’s success in design wins with a number of multimedia-rich phones including Motorola’s RAZR V3X, SonyEricsson’s W9001 and Samsung’s Z700, Nvidia stays focused on enabling multimedia features via hardware acceleration integrated on its GPU.

That marks a sharp contrast to competitors’ approaches, such as the use of a DSP with a special instruction set or the brute force of a higher-speed CPU for executing advanced multimedia algorithms, according to Geoff Ballew, director of product marketing at Nvidia’s handheld GPU group.

With GoForce 5500, “We offer a consistent 30 frames per second of H.264 or Windows Media Video, up to D1 resolution QVGA, with the smallest possible impact on battery power,” said Ballew. In contrast, most multimedia phones today, which use CPU, or a combination of DSP and CPU for video decoding, inevitably drop a few frames, he explained.

The GoForce 5500, manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company with its 90nm low power process, is already in the hands of Nvidia’s key customers, said Ballew. “You will see in the second half of 2006 our new GPU designed into handsets featuring mobile TV – based on either DVB-H or Japan’s ISDB-T standard.”"