Sega Dreamcast spawned Intel PDA graphics tech

Imagination Technologies has confirmed what Intel has - so far - not: that the 2700G mobile graphics accelerator chip the chip giant launched yesterday is based on its PowerVR MBX core.

"The Intel 2700G multimedia accelerator incorporates a PowerVR MBX graphics core and PowerVR video acceleration and display processing cores from Imagination Technologies," the UK-based technology developer said today.

The 2700G operates alongside Intel's XScale PXA27x series of chips, also formally launched yesterday. Codenamed 'Marathon', the 2700G can play back 640 x 480 video at 30fps from Windows Media, MPEG 2 and MPEG 4 sources. It also supports full-speed MPEG 2 playback at 720 x 480.

Accelerating both 2D and 3D graphics, the chip can process 150 million pixels per second in 2D mode and 944,000 polygons per second in 3D apps.

Intel licensed Imagination's PowerVR MBX technology in 2002. A year ago, Texas Instruments licensed it too, and in February this year committed itself to building the core into its ARM-based OMAP 2 processor family.

Samsung, Sharp and Hitachi have also licensed PowerVR MBX.

Intel's 2700G is sampling now, and will be available in volume later this year for $17 a chip in batches of 10,000. TI's OMAP 2 line is expected to become available in sample quantities by July. ®

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