New device can render 100 million polygons a second - a performance that far surpasses that of current handheld game consoles

Toshiba has come up with a dedicated 3D graphics chip it reckons will add previously unseen levels of realism and excitement to games played on mobile phones. The new chip, the TC35711XBG, can render 100 million polygons a second, a performance that far surpasses that of current handheld game consoles.

Samples of the new graphics chips will be available from October 2007.

Mobile phones now integrate larger higher-resolution displays, high-spec baseband processors and increasingly advanced system chips, shaping an environment increasingly able to support complex software and games.

However, the performance of graphics chips have lagged that of overall system development, and current chips render images at only a few millions of polygons a second.

This low level performance has held back development of complex games for mobile phones, and the porting to mobile phones of games developed for other platforms.

Toshiba's new chip integrates a newly developed 3D graphics processor that achieves 38x the performance of existing products.

Its extremely advanced capabilities open the way to further development of software applications for mobile phones.

The new chip is also compatible with programmable shader, and its advanced rendering capabilities will bring realistic shading and reflectivity to mobile phones for the first time.

Alongside the new 3D graphics processor, the new chip also integrates Toshiba's Media Embedded Processor (MeP) to handle sound, a host processor, a WVGA LCD controller for wide-screen displays, and brings all the essential components of a game console onto a single chip dedicated to enhancing mobile phone game performance.

With the launch of the high performance TC35711XBG, Toshiba will contribute to further development in games for mobile phones, while reinforcing its position as a technology and market leader in advanced semiconductors.