NVidia's MCP

September 21, 2000 7:34 AM

NVidia has announced it's providing a Media Communications Processor for the Xbox. This processor will handle the broadband connectivity, communications, and audio capabilities for the Microsoft console. This is the 2nd processor NVidia will be providing as they are also providing the graphics processor.

``The Xbox MCP, also called MCPX, is the first product in a new category of media and communication processors that will power the 21st century broadband digital appliances,'' said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at NVIDIA. ``Our vision is to leverage the power of the MCP to transform platforms such as PCs, game consoles, and set-top boxes into `residential gateways'. The MCP will eventually become a `network router on a chip', and distribute broadband content throughout the networked digital home.''

A few days ago there was also a report of Nvidia making an integrated chipset for AMD and Intel CPUs.

update Jack - The MCP was also the big spinning bad guy in Tron... Coincidence? I think not. Check out this picture I found of nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

On a more serious note, this isn't the first time nVidia's gone this route. Way back in 1995, nVidia made the NV1, which bombed after Diamond didn't renew their contract. Here's the report from BYTE way back then:

Nvidia wants your games. The NV1 is a highly integrated multimedia accelerator that includes a 3-D video accelerator (which can do 2-D graphics, too), a 350-MIPS audio engine (with Sound Blaster emulation), and an I/O processor (for joysticks and the like). This chip is designed to improve the game experience significantly. If early demonstrations are any indicator, it will.

The 3-D video accelerator is the most interesting part of the chip. What's intriguing is a graphics primitive called QTM (Quadratic Texture Map), a derivative of an algorithm named nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS).