Digital Media (DMP), a Japanese chip company, announced on Monday that Nintendo, a leading supplier of video game consoles, had chosen its Pica 200 graphics processor for the forthcoming 3DS game console.

"We have high goals to achieve: low power consumption remains an important object for high –performance graphics processing units, such as those that power autostereoscopic 3D screens. DMP has developed the technology that will be relevant for years,” said Tatsuo Yamamoto, the president and chief executive officer of DMP.

Exact specifications or expected performance of the DMP Pica 200 graphics processor are unknown, but the developer indicated that the chip includes a proprietary “graphics extension” named Maestro. Besides, DMP said that the GPU features support of complex shaders.

Founded in 2002, DMP, a graphics IP core supplier in Japan, has adopted a business strategy of focusing on the digital consumer market, according to Jon Peddie, the head of Jon Peddie Research market tracking company.

“DMP first told me about the Pica architecture in early 2005 which was their first IP core based on Ultray architecture. The president and CEO of DMP, Tatsuo Yamamoto, told me then the Ultray allows real-time photo realistic rendering with physically correct lighting and shadowing such as soft shadow casting and position dependent environmental mapping. Ultray is unique in that it uses hardware parametric engines for certain graphics features rather than shaders. With this approach, clouds, smoke, gas and other fuzzy objects can be shaded and rendered at an interactive rate,” explained Mr. Peddie.

Nintendo 3DS – the world’s first handheld console with stereoscopic 3D screen – is projected to be released later this year.

Tags: Nintendo, 3DS, DMP, Pica