Santa Clara, California-based NeoMagic Corp claims to have cracked ‘the bandwidth bottleneck’ with the launch of its new 256 bit multimedia chip for notebooks. The company claims that the MagicMedia256AV is not only the first 256 bit multimedia accelerator but also the first chip to offer AGP/PCI audio integrated with the usual 2D/3D graphics, video and DVD playback capabilities. The integration of audio playback onto a single chip should save space and lower power demands – a vital consideration for laptop manufacturers. The 256AV is based around an 256 bit SGRAM architecture with 3.2Gb per second of memory bandwidth, it supports MPEG2 and AC-3 decoding. The chip is being positioned as all-purpose product to allow ‘on the road’ multimedia presentations. The company says that initial deliveries of the chip are already being made.
