Toshiba unveils new 3D graphics chip

Toshiba has a new 3D graphics chip codenamed TC35711XBG that could be used for handheld game consoles and cellphones. It is composed of three processors on the same package (general purpose processor, graphics processor and sound processor). It can be used for Portable Media Players too as its WVGA LCD controller can handle widescreen displays (854×480).

Toshiba says that the chip has programmable shaders but we don’t know how evolved it really is (DirectX chips were programmable, but were not all that smart…). They don’t say which API it can be programmed with either, but I suspect that Toshiba will go with OpenGL ES.

Toshiba also claims that this chip is capable of pushing 100M polygons a second. I don’t buy that number because the PS2 can push 66M polygon/sec and that’s already a “marketing” number – in real games, 10M or 12M polygons/sec on a PS2 is exceptional. Would you demo a sphere and a teapot if you could push 30M+ polygons? I don’t think so, and believe me, I know…