Nvidia announces smartphone processor

Nvidia has announced its first cell phone and smartphone processor at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The APX 2500 is designed to power multimedia-capable handheld devices. Nvidia thus enters competition with such established competitors as TI, Samsung, Qualcomm, Marvell, ST, Renesas, NXP and AMD.

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Nvidia has yet to provide details about the APX 2500. Apparently, the chip has a core that is compatible with the ARM11 and will operate as a baseband processor with interfaces for DDR-SDRAM as main memory along with NAND and NOR Flash memory, a high definition audio/video processor (HD AVP), and an ultra-low power (ULP) GeForce as a 3-D graphics accelerator.

The system-on-chip (SoC) is reportedly fast enough to playback and encode HD video in the 720p format. The graphics accelerator also supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and D3D Mobile, and accelerates 2D graphics. An integrated imaging unit controls image sensors with up to 12 megapixels.

One function the processor appears to lack is any built-in networking, so another chip will be needed for HSDPA/HSUPA, GPRS, EDGE and other wireless methods. The manufacturer says it is already shipping samples to a select group of (unnamed) customers, with serial production expected to start in the second quarter.

In November of 2006, Nvidia took over PortalPlayer, which develops system-on-chips for portable multimedia players, such as a number of iPods.

(jbe)