Toshiba today announced a dedicated 3D graphics LSI that promises to add previously unseen levels of realism and excitement to games played on mobile phones.

The new LSI, "TC35711XBG", can render 100 mega-polygons a second, a performance that far surpasses that of current handheld game consoles. Samples of the new graphics LSI will be available from October.

Mobile phones now integrate larger, higher resolution displays, high spec baseband processors, and increasingly advanced system LSI, shaping an environment increasingly able to support complex software and games. However, the performance of graphics LSI has lagged that of overall system development, and current chips render images at only a few millions of polygons a second. This low level performance has held back development of complex games for mobile phones, add the porting to mobile phones of games developed for other platforms.



Toshiba's new chip integrates a new developed 3D graphics processor that achieves 38 times the performance of existing products. Its advanced capabilities open the way to further development of software applications of mobile phones. The new chip is also compatible with programmable shader, and its rendering capabilities will bring realistic shading and reflectivity to mobile phones for the first time.

Alongside the new 3D graphics processor, the new LSI also integrates Toshiba's "Media Embedded Processor" (MeP) to handle sound, a host processor, a WVGA LCD controller for wide-screen displays, and brings all the essential components of a game console onto a single chip dedicated to enhancing mobile phone game performance.

Toshiba said it would start mass production of the new LSI in the 2Q of CY2008.