On the heels of Nokia's recently announced plans to develop a handheld gaming platform dubbed N-Gage, Mitsubishi has revealed a 3D processor targeted at mobile devices. Until recently, the performance, weight, power consumption and cost of such processors has made it extremely difficult to incorporate them into retail products. Mitsubishi, however, has seemingly found a solution with the 'ZED-II' processor. According to company representatives, the processor will run at 50mhz and will be capable of pushing 61,000 pixels or 230,000 polygons per second. Even more impressive, 3D animation can be drawn at up to 20 frames per second. Graphical functions such as texture mapping, anti-aliasing, dynamic lighting, and reflections will also be incorporated. Fans of classic games can also rejoice in knowing that Mitsubishi plans to include a robust 2D graphics engine in the finished version.
Mitsubishi is reportedly developing the ZED-II with mass market intentions. Thereby, the processor will use a command system similar to OpenGL, allowing developers to easily port PC games to mobile devices. A demonstration of the technology was held today in Tokyo and featured a demo of Taito's 3D racing series Battle Gear running on a mobile phone. Graphically the game looked gorgeous, leaving many attendees to draw comparisons with Sony's PlayStation 2. By comparison, Sony's PSone runs at 33.8mhz and is capable of 360 000 polygans a second, although lacks many of the advanced graphical capabilities of Mitsubishi's ZED-II. Albeit scheduled for production in May, it's currently unknown which mobile phone providers plan to incorporate the ZED-II technology.
