TI OMAP2 announced with MBX inside

[Teasy]

The AR10 core, made available for licensing immediately, combines ultra low power consumption with stunning 3D shading technology, delivering for the first time ever fully interactive, photorealistic graphics on the handset platform.

How do they get away with this crap?

 

[Ailuros]

That's not the question for me at least; the real question is if various adopters of competing sollutions should market their offerings in an at least equally aggressive manner.

 

[Simon F]

How do they get away with this crap?

Perhaps by not looking at what else is available?

 

[Ailuros]

How do they get away with this crap?

Perhaps by not looking at what else is available?

How about by knowing what else is available instead? 8)

 

[Shogmaster]

Don't you guys think time is right for MS to snag either one of the OMAP2s or one of the next XScales with carbonado (MBX derived graphics core) to do an XBoy?

http://www.brighthand.com/article/Next-Gen_XScale_Chips_Late_this_Year

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/68/35688.html

I've been thinking alot about the concept of XBoy for few years (and before that, Something I called a "Dreamscout", a portable 3D console for Sega before they went software only), and after the PSP announcement, downright obseesing over it. Here's something I posted in several forums back in october:

PSP. It's big, it's bad and it's coming. And I think it's also gonna be expensive. They are marketing this thing as a portable do it all entertainment device with optical ROM, pair of new new 300+Mhz chips, huge 320x480 LCD, music and MPEG4 playback etc. so I see at least $200 or even $250+ for the price. I think that's it's weak spot.

So I've come up with a plan for MS to sucker punch PSP to the top of the market.
XBoy..... launching 10-23-04....... @$123.40

Alternate image url

Please don't focus on the design. It's just meant to illustrate approximate look and feel of the device and nothing more.

Specs:

SCREEN - 3.6 inch 320x240 trans-reflective backlit TFT LCD
CPU - 200Mhz PXA255 XScale
GPU CORE - 100Mhz PowerVR MBX (DX6/7 chip)
RAM - 16MB PC100 SDRAM (Unified architecture)
SOUND - 64 voice channel core integrated into System ASIC with the GPU core
ROM - 64~128MB mini cartridge with 2X lossless compression (modified MMC with copy protection)
FLASH - MMC/SD slot for game saves and MP3 storage (custom soundtrack)
BATTERY - 1200mA Li-Ion

It a lean mean 3D game portable. With it's DX compatable GPU and modified PPC OS, development should be a breeze. No Optical ROM mean longer battery life, the 320x240 LCD should be good enough for portable gaming (and really cheap by next year), the ample RAM should let it compete decently with the lesser RAMed PSP, and by unleashing the prototype with some key games at E3 next year, the sucker punch should sting quite a bit thanks in large part to the price.

What do you think? Discuss.

That post was before I learned the $299 price point rumor of PSP. Anyways, since I know alot more about the MBX's development, the specs above seem pretty funny, but generally, I think it's still good. Just replace the seperte CPU-GPU-external RAM above with a SOC like OMAP2 or the upcoming XScales, maybe clock it down a tad (something like 200Mhz for the ARM core and 100Mhz for MBX core) for battery and yield/cost sake, and voila! A cheap yet kickass 3D portable for MS to counter PSP and DS with! And with all the DX and OGL work going on for PPC and other portables, timing is just about perfect.

 

[RussSchultz]

You don't need a cartridge, just use MMC/SD cards. You can manufacture them with ROM, instead of RAM, and they already have a protection scheme built in.

 

[Shogmaster]

You don't need a cartridge, just use MMC/SD cards. You can manufacture them with ROM, instead of RAM, and they already have a protection scheme built in.

I just thought making a non standard shape of the media will further thwart piracy. More importantly though , there's not enough room on SD/MMC card for label artwork! I'd hate for the MS marketing dep artists to settle for such small area to work on. Even GBA carts are pushing it for readable label area.

 

[Roger Kohli]

Is this MBX too? Talk of embedded DRAM sounds like BitBoys to me though?

Toshiba MPEG-4 graphics IC brings 3D to mobiles
By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb <http://www.iapplianceweb.com>
(03/03/04, 02:09:14 AM EDT)
Tokyo, Japan -- Toshiba Corp. has developed a powerful MPEG-4 encoder and decoder IC designed to bring video-game-grade 3D graphics to cellular phones.
The TC35285XBG 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.
According to Yasuhiko Fujita, Senior Manager of the System LSI Division at Toshiba, most mobile phones now 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, he said this apprach makes possible the rendering of video sources with a drawing performance of 125-million pixels a second.
Alongside its 3D graphic processor, it 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 125 MHz operation) is between 170 to 230 milliwatts, and the chip is packaged in a 12 x 12mm ball gird array.
The device is able to process 3.5-million vertices a second and 125-million pixels a second and the use of embedded DRAM allows the controller to transfer data to the graphic controller at a rate of 2 gigabytes a second, achieving game-console quality video output with low power consumption. OpenGL-ES is fully supported as the graphic API.
The JPEG codec supports still images with a maximum resolution of 2 mega-pixels (1,632 x 1,224). A camera interface allows connection of two cameras, while also supporting an integrated LCD panel controller for CIF (352 x 288) images.

 

[Jodi]

AH crap

Dammit, IMG.L shares are at 113 atm. ARGH! should have bought the shares when they were at 40!!!

Ah well. Finally Hossain speaks the truth ;-)

 

[Ailuros]

Re: AH crap

Dammit, IMG.L shares are at 113 atm. ARGH! should have bought the shares when they were at 40!!!

Ah well. Finally Hossain speaks the truth ;-)

There was a time when they were even at 17p.

 

[Simon F]

Is this MBX too? Talk of embedded DRAM sounds like BitBoys to me though?

I could be wrong but I think that must be an in-house Toshiba design. Mitsubishi did their own system for their phones as well e.g. the paper "3D Graphics LSI Core for Mobile Phone Z3D" (I couldn't find a free copy of the original paper online but the slides from their GH2003 talk are available here).

 

[rake]

Is this MBX too? Talk of embedded DRAM sounds like BitBoys to me though?

I could be wrong but I think that must be an in-house Toshiba design. Mitsubishi did their own system for their phones as well e.g. the paper "3D Graphics LSI Core for Mobile Phone Z3D" (I couldn't find a free copy of the original paper online but the slides from their GH2003 talk are available here).

True but Mitsubishi (now Renesas) are license holders of MBX Lite and on one of their slides in the Khronos presentation at 3GSM they have it as their 3D accelerator in their high-end next generation chipset. So if they did indeed have their own solution, it mustn't have been very good ;-)

Re Toshiba, Simon are you saying it's not MBX (after all I'd have thought you'd know? ;-))

 

[Simon F]

True but Mitsubishi (now Renesas) are license holders of MBX Lite and on one of their slides in the Khronos presentation at 3GSM they have it as their 3D accelerator in their high-end next generation chipset. So if they did indeed have their own solution, it mustn't have been very good ;-)

I attended their talk at GH2003 and my impression was that it was OK but not powerful enough.

Re Toshiba, Simon are you saying it's not MBX (after all I'd have thought you'd know? ;-))

In this case I don't actually know. I don't get involved (much) in that side of the business.

 

[Teasy]

Perhaps by not looking at what else is available?

I was refering to the bit I bolded. More specifically the part I italicized. Photo realistic graphics.. what a load. Unless they're refering to a photo of a PSX game in low res of course

 

[Simon F]

Perhaps by not looking at what else is available?

I was refering to the bit I bolded. More specifically the part I italicized.

Ahh I see. Obviously my auto-marketing-babble filter had cut-in and culled it before it caused any damage to my sanity. Of course, now that you have pointed it out, I'm going to have to stick some pencils up my nostrils and say "wibble"

 

[mboeller]

True but Mitsubishi (now Renesas) are license holders of MBX Lite and on one of their slides in the Khronos presentation at 3GSM they have it as their 3D accelerator in their high-end next generation chipset. So if they did indeed have their own solution, it mustn't have been very good ;-)

If you look in the presentation "3GSM_Press_Presentation_Feb04.ppt" then you can see on page 46 that the MBX-lite is around 2-3 times faster than the Z3D III. It seems they will use the Z3D III for midrange products and the MBX-lite for highend products. Well IMHO this doesn't make sense to use two different 3D-chips but maybe OpenGL-ES can cover both as good so the enduser will not see a difference except for the speed and the features.

 

[moichi]

Renesas also use PVR MBX for car navigation(GPS) chip SH7770(SH-4 core) as well as SH-Mobile3.
Near future we will see 3D car navigation view which rendered by PowerVR.
Current car navigation's 3d hardware is very poor IQ.