04-08-2004, 01:00 AM
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Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
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Intel's Marathon � Serious Graphical Performance for Handhelds
Intel have just launched a handheld graphics chip called Marathon and the EE Times have the full details: "Marathon will render just short of 1 million triangles/second and support MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and Windows Media Video codecs for video at resolutions of 640 x 480 or higher. The chip has a peak power consumption of 100 mW and comes in a 14 x 14 mm package. Intel expects the first generation chip will mainly be used in high-end PDAs but expects future versions could be integrated with its Xscale-based baseband chip to appear in cell phones, probably in 2005. "All PDAs are moving to VGA in 2004 from QVGA," said Rob McNair, marketing manager for handheld graphics at Intel. "" All PDA's VGA eh? What an intriguing prediction. :Fade-color
There's an interesting speech that Paul Otellini, Intel's Chief Operating Office gave at the 3GSM World Congress about this: " I'd like to show you now a demo here of a product that we code-named Carbonado, and what this is is it brings VGA-quality video to handheld devices. So, you can probably see on the screen up here in a second, one side is showing you a game, and the other side is a video clip from a movie. Full VGA resolution coming into handhelds. This is essentially a graphics accelerator chip today. It brings us PC-like 3-D gaming and video into the handheld environmental. It's 640 by 480 VGA resolution". The speech includes a lot of other interesting information about WiMAX and Inte'ls thoughts about wireless broadband etc. It's well worth a read!
Paul continues: "We will bring this to production first half of this year, 2004. It goes into the first PDAs in the second half of this year. We have a number of major OEM design wins that we're not prepared to announce today, but believe me, they've happened. And we'll be integrating this same video capability, video and graphics capability, into discrete silicon in 2005, into phones, and into the apps processor itself in 2006." So, get ready for some really decent screens in the coming months. We previously mentioned Marathon in reference to Dell's potential new VGA PDA, so it looks like these chips may well soon gain widespread usage.
The Register's take on this story includes this snippit: " In the future, the core may be integrated into mobile phone-oriented XScales. The chip giant's roadmap calls for a second-generation Marathon that provides H.264 video support and an interface to 1in hard drives. Along the way, the chip family will pick up 802.11 and GPS support. Intel is already working with more some 20 games developers to create Marathon-compatible titles using the OpenGL ES API." Now you're talking! A hard drive, Wifi and GPS, the functions no modern phone should be without! I have indeed got to get me one of those! :sunny: I have a feeling we'll be hearing a lot more about this chip in the future.....
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04-08-2004, 02:29 AM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 541
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Why must they call it Marathon? I keep thinking of the Bungie game of the same name!
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04-08-2004, 02:58 AM
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Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by sponge
Why must they call it Marathon? I keep thinking of the Bungie game of the same name!
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Funnily enough, that's what the Register thought.
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Marathon - the only graphics chip we know to be named after a Mac-based first-person shoot-'em-up game.
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Personally, I think of a chocolate & peanut bar. (Before they renamed it Snickers). :grumble:
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04-08-2004, 03:09 AM
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Theorist
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 268
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Maybe they picked marathon in reference to it's running ability with limited power over long periods? Inteleon 9,999,000XT or something could have worked as well.
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04-08-2004, 08:31 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 1,055
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I think the rest of this year is going to be very exciting for the handheld market.... I'm excited to see these VGA screen "possibly" become mainstream in the Pocket PC market..
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04-08-2004, 03:38 PM
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Oracle
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 974
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Yes that is all great - but what about battery life? Anyone got news on increasing battery life?
Whatever happened to OLED screens too?
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04-09-2004, 05:21 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 1,055
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by possmann
Whatever happened to OLED screens too?
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They're coming.. slowly. They're beginning to make a larger presence in digital camera and cell phone screens. It should only be a year or so (my prediction) before PDAs start using them. The biggest problem the manufacturers are facing is the fact that the OLED pixels die much faster than an LCD's.
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