Nvidia Corp., a leading supplier of graphics solutions, on Monday announced its first system-on-chip for various handheld devices. The new product will allow Nvidia to power high-end handhelds, but actually remains to be seen whether a lot of mobile products nowadays require high-end multimedia capabilities in addition to an ARM microprocessor core.

Nvidia APX 2500 system-on-a-chip (SoC) features ARM11 central processing unit core, build-in low-power DDR memory controller with NAND and NOR flash support; the integrated graphics core supports OpenGL ES 2.0, Direct3D Mobile, custom-sample antialiasing support, MPEG 4, H.264, VC-1/WMV9 decoding, H.264 and MPEG4 encoding and features some other capabilities. Besides, the new device supports two displays (with 1280x1024 and 1280x720 resolution) and various types of outputs as well as 12MPixel camera sensor.

Nvidia boasts that its APX 2500 is also very power efficient as well: it can playback high-definition 720p (1280x720 resolution with progressive scan) for 10 hours, according to the chip designer. Unfortunately, Nvidia did not mention what battery capacity is required to enable a transatlantic-flight-long video playback on a handheld.

“This is the dawn of the second personal computer revolution. Technologies are converging in amazing mobile devices that have all of the rich, visual capabilities of a modern PC – from watching movies and making video calls to surfing the web and playing 3D games. The APX 2500 combined with Microsoft Windows Mobile, will make the next generation of smartphones our most personal computer,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of Nvidia.

The Nvidia APX 2500 applications processor is sampling today “with key customers” and will enter into full production by the end of Q2 2008, Nvidia said. It is unclear when actual devices featuring Nvidia APX 2500 are due to be available.