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| ATI Imageon 100 |
Perhaps, before the phrase "graphic accelerator for Pocket PC" sounded preposterous. But today, when the operating frequencies of processors PDA close to those of "adult" computer, and soon to be reached 1 GHz ... Why not? Indeed, why not? ", Decided to well-known producer of graphics accelerators for desktop and notebook PCs ATI Technologies in January and brought into the light ATI Imageon 100 - the first accelerator, specifically designed for handheld electronic devices. The fate of the accelerator for a long time remained unclear until finally, at the end of June, ATI has not joined the Palm OS Ready (translated as "ready to use with Palm OS"), virtually ensuring his place in the product packages for at least some future models with this operating system. Let's see, what this represents a unique product and why it is generally needed in the PDA. Here are its main features: Improved two-dimensional graphics engine (Enhanced 2D Graphics Engine). Imageon supports all major functions of two-dimensional graphics accelerator for fast animation and fast rendering of the screen. Also included are more advanced features such as caching and font smoothing, alpha blending (application of transparent images), Magnification (simplifies the development of information content for mobile devices) and turn the image (the function is clearly oriented to a more comfortable working on the Web ). Decoding of MPEG4 and JPEG. Hardware decoding of MPEG4 (one of the most popular and successful to date, video file formats, also known as DivX) allows for more than 50% CPU offload. So you can play video with higher resolution and higher quality (more frames per second) without the appearance of so-called "artifacts" - errors in the output image on the screen. Imageon hardware speeds up the processing of such complex functions as a processor iDCT, motion compensation (Motion Compensation), scaling and color conversion. Built-in memory and memory controller. In Imageon 100 includes 384 KB of memory (static random access memory - SRAM), to operate the double-buffering when viewing images in high resolution and video playback in a standard PDA resolution of 320x240 pixels. In addition, the chip embedded controller of synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) to support higher resolutions (up to 800x600 pixels with 16-bit color) with an external memory. Intelligent power management. Special technology PowerPlay, designed to protect such a valuable energy PDAs, combines a set of software and hardware to minimize power consumption without compromising performance. Universal interface. In Imageon 100 is a standard interface SRAM, providing hassle-free connection to most embedded processors: Intel StrongARM, Intel XScale, Motorola DragonBall, NEC MIPS, Hitachi SH. The display controller. Programmable auxiliary controller LCD display (LCD Timing Controller) provides OEM-producers to use many different models of screens based on liquid crystals. It supports a variety of displays - from monochrome (1 bit) to 18-bit (250,000 colors) STN and TFT panels. Other controller functions: changing the screen refresh rate, partial screen updates (which is very important for performance as a whole, since on the same bus is "hanging" all memory CCP), as well as screen rotation by 90 °, 180 °, 270 °. ATI Imageon does not take up too much space in the CCP, as set instead of the existing controller screen (unless, of course, this controller is not built into the CPU) and should significantly reduce power consumption as much load off this same processor, of course, much more energy intensive.
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| Scheme of work Imageon |
Well, looks like another year or two and we wait for the three-dimensional accelerator and DOOM 3 for Pocket PC. PS And while you can see the demonstration of what ATI Imageon 100. The authors, translation: