NVIDIA today officially unveiled the first ever processor for handhelds, the GoForce 2150. The chip was originally developed by MediaQ, the company acquired by NVIDIA earlier this year. The announcement of the GoForce 2150 opens the doors to a new market for NVIDIA Corporation.

NVIDIA claims that the GoForce 2150 media processor is the industry’s first low-power media processor with 1.3MP camera support. Key features of the new controller include a 64-bit 2D graphics accelerator, embedded memory for LCD frame buffer, and flexible CPU interface.  The versatile LCD controller also allows for fast-switching dual screen interfaces, typically implemented as a large active-matrix colour screen inside the handset and a smaller LCD located outside. NVIDIA GoForce 2150 supports over 70 different display interfaces (including CSTN, TFT, OLED and LTPS technology) at up to HVGA (320x480) resolution.

The new NVIDIA GoForce 2150 is pin-to-pin compatible with the earlier MQ2100, from MediaQ and OEMs with existing MQ2100-based designs can quickly upgrade to add support for 1.3MP cameras. In addition, the GoForce 2150 delivers a high-performance visual experience through a hardware-based graphics processing engine.

Samples of the NVIDIA GoForce 2150 are available to OEMs immediately; volume production is expected to begin in Q4 2003.