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LAS VEGAS -- NVidia, a leader in the desktop graphics chip market, is unveiling during Comdex this week its first GPU (graphics processing unit) for laptops.

The GeForce2 Go will first be seen in Toshiba's Satellite notebooks during the first quarter of 2001, says Steve Andler, vice president of marketing for Toshiba America Information Systems. Other vendors using the graphics chip are expected to be announced shortly after Toshiba's launch.

Strong emphasis was given by company officials to the importance of the new laptop chip during a party at the Harley Davidson Café in Las Vegas.

"It is one of the most important events in the history of the company," said Jen-Hsun Huang, NVidia president and chief executive officer. "We believe that with the GeForce2 Go we will change forever how people use and think about the laptop."

As of now, ATI Technologies, NeoMagic, and Trident Microsystems are the primary players in the laptop graphics chip market, says Peter Glaskowsky, an analyst with MicroDesign Resources. ATI holds more than 50 percent of the mobile graphics chip market.

NVidia's introduction of its GeForce2 Go will establish a beachhead in the laptop GPU market, Glaskowsky says. The new chip's power consumption is too great to attract large market share, but it should still grab 5 to 10 percent of the market, he says.

GeForce2 Go incorporates transform and lighting capabilities in hardware and offers 3D rendering. The chip is manufactured to a .18 micron process technology, and it is able to process more than 17 million triangles per second and 286 million pixels per second. The GeForce2 Go also includes NVidia's Shading Rasterizer, which provides per-pixel lighting and shading effects in a single pass, and Digital Vibrance Control for crisp, bright visuals.

NVidia did not detail plans of putting an on-chip buffer on the GeForce2 Go, which would assist in power reduction.

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