Computer Graphics World

May 2009 28 screen support, video, and better Web browsing. A number of innovative phones use this OS as the basis of some very capa- ble and very diverse smartphones. Some of these are entirely touch-screen driven, like the iPhone; some have keyboards, like the Blackberry; and some sport both. e new player on the block is Google, with its Android phones poised to be the next big entrant in this space. Android is an open-standard operating system that can run Java-based applications for mo- bile devices. is makes it much easier for third-party developers to create innovative graphics applications—which cannot be done for the iPhone or the Blackberry. e open standard, supported by the Open Handset Alliance, also makes it easier for phone manufacturers and mobile carriers to innovate with new and interest- ing types of devices. T-Mobile is the first out of the gate with the G1, which has been well received. e phone supports GPS and many of Google's graphics-inten- sive applications, such as Google Maps and YouTube. T-Mobile will not be the last; Sprint has announced an Android phone, and many manufacturers, such as Motoro- la, are also developing handsets. Like Apple, Google is openly courting developers for its Android system. Google has already set up an application store for the flurry of applications it expects from developers. One thing that makes Android especially developer friendly is that it is based on open- source software, so licensing re- quirements are less strict than with other platforms. As a result, we can expect to see a lot of innovative graph- ics for these devices. Chips and More While the new devices and operating sys- tems are the most visible part of this revo- lution, the real magic behind these devices are the chips and technology that make them work. Graphics, for the most part, eat up power, and chips for mobile devices require low power consumption. Video is certainly another graphics-intensive task for mobile devices. Addressing these competing demands re- quires some clever engineering and design. And the growing demand for a solution has brought a number of familiar players into the market. One of the more familiar makers of chips for these devices is Nvidia, which is well known for its graphics cards used in high-end workstations and gam- ing machines. Nvidia's Tegra series of chips are designed to address the needs of mobile graphics. e newest chips, such as the Tegra 600, are true computers-on-a-chip in a very small and highly mobile package. With advanced multimedia functionality and a low-power design, the Tegra 600 Se- ries will power the next generation of visual computing on Microsoft Windows Mobile and CE-based mobile Internet devices. Of course, wherever you find Nvidia, you will also find AMD, and its Imageon pro- cessor line is designed as a GPU for mobile devices. e current generation of chips ac- tually borrows technology from Microsoft's Xbox, giving it a high degree of graphics power, particularly for gaming. Imageon supports both 3D and 2D graphics, audio processing, still and video cameras, TV out, video recording with image stabilization, video transcoding, and various other multi- media features. All this is done in hardware, making it a much more dedicated and flex- ible computing platform than the generic processors used on desktop workstations. By keeping everything on a single chip, power consumption is reduced for the mobile de- vice, which extends battery life. Imagination may be lesser known than AMD or Nvidia, but its chips live in the best known of these devices—Apple's iPhone. e second-generation iPhone 3G has a lot of graphics power, thanks to its Imagi- nation Technologies' PowerVR MBX 3D graphics video core. A new, extended license with Imagination would give Apple broad, exclusive access the company's next-genera- tion PowerVR SGX/VXD cores. e SGX core provides OpenGL ES 2.0 functionality and the Universal Scalable Shader Engine for hardware-accelerated, shader-based 3D graphics. e VXD core plays HD video with power consumption comparable to the existing audio playback chips. Decoding video, particularly HD con- tent, requires a lot of processing power, and while many of the current smart- phones don't support HD, the capability is already being built into the chips slated for future devices. Having such powerful graphics in the palm of your hand is revolutionizing the way people work, play, and communicate. As the technology matures, these devices will demand better and even more inno- vative graphics applications. e future shows a lot of promise for these tiny power- houses. n George Maestri is a contributing editor for Computer Graphics World and president/CEO of RubberBug animation studio. He can be reached at maestri@rubberbug.com. Nvidia's Tegra chips address the needs of mobile graphics. AMD's Imageon is touted as a GPU for mobile devices. n n n n Mobile Graphics

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