Toshiba Reveals New Line of MBX Powered Portable Media Players

[Lazy8s]

Even a "disabled" MBX benefits them if a competing chip option uses a different graphics accelerator in its place which might not be as friendly to the chip design as MBX (the SH-Mobile3A uses, I think, a Takumi GShark core) or if the class of chips wouldn't be functional enough without a 3D accelerator to target a wider range of customers for the chip maker to even offer such a product in the first place.

 

[SiBoy]

Buyers of an MBX application processor like SH-Mobile3 from a company like Renesas apparently did have the option of a similar, non-MBX processor (without even considering the competition from other chip brands) of which the 3D core was the biggest difference: the SH-Mobile3A.

The 3A came later.

 

[SiBoy]

Interesting. But surely it couldn't be a disabled MBX that made the difference. It was some other price, performance, power, or supply issue. Otherwise you're making the argument that yes, a disabled MBX is precisely WHY they choose it and that hardly makes any sense. That'd be like me buying a 486SX over a DX because the former had a disabled math co-processor.

What are the differences btwn the two?

Sorry, you misunderstood me. I didn't say anyone would buy an SoC because it did NOT have an MBX. My point is that OEM's can and do select SoC's even though they don't intend to use 100% of its functionality. In the ideal world you would rather choose an SoC that had everything you want, and nothing you didn't, but SoC vendors don't offer that many different flavors.

 

[SiBoy]

Where did I comment on Pepperpad in any other thread?

Sorry I keep getting you and Lazy8s mixed up. You both seem rabidly pro-MBX

 

[roninja]

So answer my question please, does the FOMA 901i series have MBX disabled? does the FOMA 902i series made up of entirely of MBX enabled chips OMAP2 and SH-M3 have MBX disabled then why does NTT DoCoMo emphasize the 3D x 3D thats 3D gaming and 3D sound of these phones?

What about the SKT- IM8300 this is Korea's best selliing 3D gaming phone, and what about the Motorola MS-550 maybe this has it's SH-M disabled. I would just like to hear some factual evidence as this all sounds like heresay.

At present there are 10 known MBX-lite and MBX phones. Over the coming months this could rise to more than double this. IMGTEC will probably ship over 10m of these phones this year rising significantly in the coming years.

 

[Ailuros]

Sorry I keep getting you and Lazy8s mixed up. You both seem rabidly pro-MBX

I should care about "your" clash of interests then? It's neither mine or IMG's fault that the entire competition hasn't integrated this far anything that wouldn't even come close to MBX.

 

[SiBoy]

I should care about "your" clash of interests then? It's neither mine or IMG's fault that the entire competition hasn't integrated this far anything that wouldn't even come close to MBX.

I don't even know what "come close to MBX" means. No 3D vendors in this market have seen any real "success" yet, just PR and demo's. It would be nice if you could tone down the MBX hyperbole and just watch the market like the rest of us. Things will pick up, don't worry.

 

[Ailuros]

I don't even know what "come close to MBX" means. No 3D vendors in this market have seen any real "success" yet, just PR and demo's. It would be nice if you could tone down the MBX hyperbole and just watch the market like the rest of us. Things will pick up, don't worry.

It means in terms of performance, functionalities, features, power consumption etc.

I don't see just PR and demos from Imageon, AR1x or MBX, and by far no hyperboles considering the last especially compared to the other too. I'd actually call it a hyperbole to expect any decent level of 3D performance from those.

In the meantime I am watching this market as closely as I can from my standpoint, with or without your incentives.

I don't have any specific brand loyalty and as a layman 3D is more of a hobby to me than anything else. I usually pick whatever works best irrelevant of brand. In the given case if I'd decide to buy a 3D capable mobile phone, one with a MBX-Lite integrated sounds for the time being the most capable sollution.

 

[Lazy8s]

$299.99 for the 30-GB model, and $399.99 for the 60-GB model.

 

[SiBoy]

It means in terms of performance, functionalities, features, power consumption etc.

And it would be nice to see some actual comparative benchmarking of performance and power before making these claims...

I don't see just PR and demos from Imageon, AR1x or MBX, and by far no hyperboles considering the last especially compared to the other too. I'd actually call it a hyperbole to expect any decent level of 3D performance from those.

In the meantime I am watching this market as closely as I can from my standpoint, with or without your incentives.

I don't have any specific brand loyalty and as a layman 3D is more of a hobby to me than anything else. I usually pick whatever works best irrelevant of brand. In the given case if I'd decide to buy a 3D capable mobile phone, one with a MBX-Lite integrated sounds for the time being the most capable sollution.

Now that's a more reasonable comment

 

[Ailuros]

And it would be nice to see some actual comparative benchmarking of performance and power before making these claims...

When I hear from a reliable source that one chip (addmitted by a representative of the IHV itself) yields less than 1/8th of real sustained triangle rate compared to the MBX-Lite (no VGP), both chips running at same clockspeeds; then I don't need to hear all that much more.

Power consumption seems to be a tad higher than the initially claimed rates by ARM on Freescale's MBX-Lite f.e., but nowhere within the margin of exaggeration.

Last comes the featureset at the above power consumption and performance.

Since you're active in the business it wouldn't be too hard to sit down and test them out yourself. If you then end up with the same power consumption similar triangle-/fill-rates in synthetic applications or higher real time performance in the so far available games on either an Imageon or AR1x, I'll apologize in public.

 

[Shogmaster]

Sorry I didn't read through the whole thread, but I did get to talk to the Freescale rep at CES about the Toshiba unit and the i.MX31.

There are two flavors of proc: i.MX31 and i.MX31L. L has the MBX core disabled. He wasn't 100% sure but thinks that the Toshiba is using the i.MX31L.

And since the Toshiba is running Windows CE based OS, even if the Toshiba PMP was using i.MX31 instead of i.MX31L, you won't easily be able to create a homebrew app that was able to access the MBX core on the thing. Too bad the Tosh is not running Linux, eh?

 

[SiBoy]

Since you're active in the business it wouldn't be too hard to sit down and test them out yourself. If you then end up with the same power consumption similar triangle-/fill-rates in synthetic applications or higher real time performance in the so far available games on either an Imageon or AR1x, I'll apologize in public.

If you take a look at the Jbenchmark website you'll see the Sony-Ericsson W900i (using an Nvidia chip) that is benchmarked. Are any of the other phones on that website using MBX? I don't believe so, but I'm not sure.

 

[Lazy8s]

The only hint of a cross-platform benchmark result that I've seen for MBX is in Futuremark's latest presentation in the Khronos Developer University Library. One of the pages shows a very approximated performance graph of how handheld 3D has advanced through time, charting framerate at 15,000 triangle complexity. This standard appears to relate to their 3DMarkMobile06 OpenGL ES benchmark demos, Proxycon and Cyber Samurai.

The ~50MHz, no-FPU, no-VGP Lite, MBX Lite Dell Axim is seemingly referenced on the graph at about 22 frames per second.

http://www.khronos.org/devu/library/seoul_nov_2005/Futuremark_3Dmark_SeoulNov05_english.ppt

 

[roninja]

Freescale are using the i.MX31 not the i.MX31L the L does not have MBX disabled as such it just does not contain the MBX as part of the SoC.

http://www.imgtec.com/News/index.asp

oh well got that wrong it was the i.MX31L after all.

 

[Shogmaster]

Freescale are using the i.MX31 not the i.MX31L the L does not have MBX disabled as such it just does not contain the MBX as part of the SoC.

http://www.imgtec.com/News/index.asp

Well shit, that rep at the show totally made that crap up then.

 

[roninja]

may well be that its the i.MX31L after all as IMG no longer have a link to the Freescale announcement on their website. Tad disappointing but then again wasn't sure why MBX would be included on a PMP which doesn't appear to have any gaming capabilities. Maybe MBX is switched off then? Still don't know if that is the case or if the SoC itself just doesn't have the MBX circuitary init. Serious questions need to be asked of IMG with this disablement lark. Kristof where are you?

 

[Lazy8s]

Toshiba is apparently using the Freescale chip under the "L" condition, which disables the i.MX31's MBX -- reducing the price for Toshiba since the license/royalty doesn't have to be covered -- and makes it an i.MX31L. So, the suspicion in this case that one chip which physically contains an MBX core can be sold as two different products with separate names, depending on whether that core is enabled, was apparently correct.