S3 brings Chrome 400 graphics to notebooks

THE UNDERDOG OF GPU, S3 Graphics, has announced the launch of three new mobile GPUs based on its latest Chrome 400 design. Earlier this year, the company said its Chrome 400 design was to make a showing in the notebook market down the line, and now, seven months passed, here they are.

The Chrome 400 ULP (Ultra Low Power) series consists of three discrete parts with low power specs that expands the Chrome 400 feature set to include HD video hardware support (1080p with either H.264 or VC-1) as well as adding some video processing elements like iDCT, VLD and motion compensation. It also adds HDMI support, according to the documentation, which is necessary if you plan on delivering Blu-ray or other DRM-infested HD video to your really big living room screen.

The Chrome 430 ULP is the lightest of the trio, designed for the extremely light notebook market and, according to the marketing guide, err, sorry press release, has a lowly TDP of under 7W, that should allow for simpler notebook cooling designs.

Then comes the Chrome 435 ULP, which S3 claims to charge ahead of the competition by some 40 per cent and offer ‘superb performance-per-watt metrics’.

Finally, the high-end of the energy savers is the Chrome 440 ULP, which, funny enough, is targeted at the desktop replacement market where S3 is yet to score a design win. The 440 ULP allows for dual-stream HD Video, or PiP, which is interesting but ultimately beside the point.

All of the little blighters feature Direct X 10.1 support, ChromotionHD (those being the HD video features) and the power-saving Powerwise technology. The can also suck your RAM dry by accessing it as an external framebuffer, à la Turbomemory. S3 calls it AcceleRAM.

Fujitsu was announced as being the first integrator to jump on the opportunity to market these, but this is most likely a marriage of convenience, as it manufactures the 65nm process chip for S3 Graphics. The Japanese market, however, is full of subnotebook-class devices that thrive on low-power CPUs like *cough* Transmeta and VIA’s own C7, so it actually might reach retail there toot sweet.

Overall these are not high performance parts, but low power, energy efficient ones, that will deliver the right amount of graphics processing without cutting short your battery life. This sounds like a bit of common sense, doesn’t it? God forbid a GPU maker gets some… we *need* our 2560x1600 16xAA 16xAF-capable cards.

The announcement might spark a reaction from Intel, though these are usually of the kneejerk kind. Since Chipzilla has made sure your Netbook is equipped with the worst possible IGP in the universe, manufacturers might find the Chrome a valid alternative to the piece of junk they’ve been force fed… µ