Renesas Electronics announced a mobile processor offering dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores and what's said to be the first implementation of Imagination Technologies' Powervr SGX MP graphics. The “SH-Mobile APE5R” is clocked at 1.2GHz, can provide 30fps stereoscopic HD video, and provides for both HDMI and USB interfaces, the company says.

With its new SH-Mobile APE5R, Renesas becomes the latest vendor of ARM-based processors to tout encoding and decoding of stereoscopic HD video. (Were consumers actually clamoring for this?) Others just this week have included Qualcomm, with its MSM8930, MSM8960 and APQ8064, and Samsung, with its Exynos 4210.

Renesas did not provide block diagrams or other meaty technical detail, but it did say that — like its earlier EMMA Mobile EV and EMMA Mobile EV0 devices, as well as the Exynos 4210 — the SH-Mobile APE5R uses ARM Cortex-A9 cores. This time around, dual cores are clocked at 1.2GHz, offering performance of 6,000 Dhrystone MIPS, according to the company.

The Renesas SH-Mobile APE5R

Apart from that, the SH-Mobile APE5R (above) is claimed to be the industry's first implementation of Imagination Technologies' Powervr SGX MP graphics, delivering "more than five times the graphics performance of current-generation devices." The device can encode stereoscopic 1080p video at 30 frames per second and can support Open CL, according to Renesas.

Renesas says the SH-Mobile APE5R will also offer USB and HDMI interfaces. It will be offered in the overall MP5225 platform, which will also include the SP2531 — a single-chip modem supporting LTE/HSPA+/GSM — plus RF transceiver ICs, high power amplifiers, power management devices, and related software, the company adds.

According to Renesas, the SP2531 incorporates technologies acquired from Nokia. It supports TD-LTE and FDD-LTE cat 3 (100Mbps downlink/50Mbps uplink) along with HSPA+ features such as DC-HSPA+ cat-24 and HSUPA cat-7 (42Mbps downlink/11.5Mbps uplink), says the company.

Further information

Reneasas says the SH-Mobile APE5R and MP5225 platform will support Android, MeeGo, Symbian, Windows (versions not cited), as well as additional operating systems. The devices will begin sampling in June, and mass production should commence in late 2011, the company adds.

The SH-Mobile APE5R is being demonstrated during the Mobile World Congress at the Imagination Technologies booth (Hall 1, 1D45), says Renesas.

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