NVIDIA APX 2500 Mobile Platform SDK Shipping in Weeks

[GDC 2008] NVIDIA shocked a lot of people (especially the competition) when the company showed the APX 2500 for the first time at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The tiny chip contains a GPU, a video processor (VP) and a CPU.

There is a reason why the APX 2500 contains all these components: it allows NVIDIA to control the entire flow of data between the GPU, Video Processor and CPU. Earlier handheld GPUs were sometimes paired with a slow CPU, a slow bus or worse: both.

The device shown by NVIDIA is a reference device that has all the functions that the chip supports, including connectors like HDMI. If you were wondering, the prototype uses Windows Mobile, but the user interface developed by NVIDIA’s engineers is only a concept, not a commercial piece of software that could be licensed.

If you are going to the Game Developers Conference, you can head to the North Hall to take a look at the unbelievable H.264 video decompression in 720p. There is also a demo of Quake 3 running at 30fps (or so). Software development kits should ship in as soon as four to six weeks, so get in line– they are not mass-produced, so not everyone will get one. [product page]