| April 21, 2011 12:00 AM PDT | |
The UMD (Ultra Mobile Device) is the latest innovation in the PC family that gives the consumer a low power mobile device with complete capabilities of a PC. A UMD is small form factor devices which allow the consumers to carry it conveniently wherever they go and provide the facility to access digital data and be connected 24x7.
Intel is an active partner in developing and delivering the technology that address the need of an UMD consumer. One of the major contributions of Intel in UMD revolution is Processor Graphics Software, through its processor graphics driver Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 915GM. This is the third generation of graphics core for mobile platform.
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (also called Intel® GMA) provides both consumers and business users high quality and stable graphics needed for various operations on Microsoft* Windows* operating systems installed on UMD devices without the need for a discrete graphics device (which might add to increased power consumption, noise and cost), thus reducing both the volume and cost of the device.
The system memory is used by Intel® GMA for both system and graphics operations. No separate memory is required for its operations, further reducing the volume and cost.
Intel® GMA 915GM supports Microsoft DirectX version 9.0c and OpenGL 1.4.
It supports Microsoft* Media Center 2004 and can be used for smooth video playback of digital media contents, including DVDs and streaming videos. User can store the digital video content in UMD and can view the movies on the native display device while traveling.
It supports integrated LVDS and Serial Digital Video Out (also known as SDVO) ports. The SDVO ports can interface to codec enabling support for DVI-I and DVI-D displays, standard and high definition TVs, and CRTs.
It supports Dual Display Configurations, including Intel® Dual-Display Clone, Intel® Dual Display Twin and Extended Desktop. These configurations are extremely useful for business need where the user can carry any presentation content in digital format, and configure a dual display clone configuration upon connecting to a projector. The presentation can thus be delivered to an audience.
Being a small form factor device, there are multiple challenges that need to be handled to support a UMD.
One of the major challenges that UMD poses is supporting applications and games that need a resolution of 1024x768 for execution/optimal operation. If the display panel (integrated LVDS) of the device is less than 1024x768, setting 1024x768 will cause panning, with only a part of the actual display being shown on the display device. The user will not be able to see the whole picture – which makes it almost impossible to play games or read e-books.
To address this, Intel® GMA provides a feature called DownScaler (this name might be different based on the OEM providing the service. Please note that all features supported by Intel® GMA might not be exposed by the OEM in the system). Intel® GMA driver, upon activation of the downscaler feature by the user, scales down the image to be displayed so as to fit the display screen. This will ensure that the whole content is visible in the display device (integrated LVDS).
The above pictures depicts how an image with display resolution 1024x768 will look on a panel of size 800x480 with and without downscaling feature enabled.
Another challenge is calibration of the stylus with the display cursor position. When the display resolution is smaller than the display device, and the display is not scaled to fit the screen (the display is said to be “centered”), then the surrounding area remains unused and blank. To maintain the display cursor synchronization with the stylus position, the position of the active display area is returned to the external applications through an interface provided by the Intel® GMA software. In the case of centering, this information is fixed.
When the display resolution is larger than the display device size (the display is said to be panning), then the active display area is dynamic. The current displayed area (also known as Viewport) can be moved by the cursor movement. The processor graphics passes the Viewport information to the external application when requested.
Integrated graphics supports the portrait orientation settings. This can be used for using UMD to read applications like e-books where the user can rotate the display in portrait orientation and read the book, simulating the experience of reading a hard covered book. The portrait orientation setting is a very popular usage model in Tablet PCs and the same support is provided to UMD.
UMD has arrived – and it is here to stay. It is still early days to predict what position it will take in the business or consumer environment A major achievement of UMD is it’s compliance and support of Microsoft* Windows* OS (Microsoft* Windows* XP and Windows* Vista*). It can support the applications that have been developed for Windows OS. It has given the business a product that works as a PC, but is portable as a personal device.
UMD provides a great opportunity for “system-on-chip” model of future developments, where a single chip will have CPU and Graphics Core (GPU) integrated. This will further reduce the volume and cost of this device.
There is no doubt it will pose a great challenge, both technically and from the marketing/pricing standpoint, to make UMD truly a “Personal Device – One per head in the Family”. Intel is committed to be an active partner along with other participating partners (like Microsoft* and OEMs such as Samsung*) to take the technology to a different level, contributing in areas like low power co nsumption, better graphics behavior (in both 3D graphics and display connectivity areas) at a more attractive cost.
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