Following up on our rumor from yesterday with some more Zune game player speculation today we have an article from Arstechnica on the announcement at GDC by AMD of their development of a suite of tools which allow developers to produce gaming content for their next generation mobile graphics products.

AMD has a new line of processors developed for mobile applications named Imageon which has support for 3D and 2D graphics, audio processing, digital still and video cameras, TV out, video recording with image stabilization, video transcoding, and various other multimedia features. The Arstechnica article speculates on a use for the new processor. They feel the Imageon chip would be the great match for a Microsoft portable game player and would be just what you need for a Zune gaming device. Of course this does not mean it will end up in any gaming device from Microsoft but just the fact people are mentioning it as a use may means there is interest in the player. Let’s hope Microsoft is paying attention and the rumored development of the Zune game player is on track. A holiday release date for a Zune 2.0 player and crossover with the existing Xbox fan base is just what Zune needs to kick start the social.

AMD brings Xbox 360 tech to handhelds

At GDC today, AMD announced a suite of tools for developing handheld gaming content for the company’s next-generation mobile graphics parts. The suite includes Rendermonkey 1.7, a shader tool that will let game developers write graphics code for a range of devices that support the OpenVG 1.0, OpenGL 2.0, and Unified Shader Architecture technologies. ATI’s Unified Shader Architecture in particular is one of the main selling points of the Xbox 360, and AMD will offer support for unified shaders on its next generation of mobile parts.

Rendermonkey is already widely used by PC and console developers, so the fact that the latest version makes it easier to author mobile gaming content should help foster porting and the development of original titles for handheld devices containing the AMD’s forthcoming Imageon processors.

The Imageon processor line, announced by AMD last month, is essentially a “GPU” for mobile devices. Imageon is more flexible than a desktop GPU, of course, since with a mobile device you want to save on cost and battery life by cramming as much of the phone onto one piece of silicon as you possibly can. So Imageon has support for 3D and 2D graphics, audio processing, digital still and video cameras, TV out, video recording with image stabilization, video transcoding, and various other multimedia features. All of this stuff is on a single chip that’s separate from the phone’s radio chip, so that the handset maker can upgrade to a new version of Imageon without having to go through the process of FCC qualification each time they add features.
A portable Microsoft gaming device?

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AMD brings Xbox 360 tech to handhelds

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