Earlier this year, Creative introduced Zii architecture for portable media player (PMP). The first SoC (System-on-Chip) based on this architecture was ZMS-05 that is presently used in Creative’s Zii EGG media player. The ZMS-05 is a very capable chip, but it’s not capable of decoding full HD video, which has started becoming a standard feature for most PMP chips.

Creative’s ZiiLabs today announced their new ZMS-08 chip that replaces the ARM11 application processor in older chip with ARM Cortex-A8 processor, which is more powerful and faster. The ZMS-08 also has improved graphics core and more efficient design. Combining the 1GHz ARM Cortex processor with improved graphics allows the new chip to process High Profile H.264 HD video, resulting in Blu-ray quality video output.

The new chip can encode or decode 1080p video at 24 frames per second and can process one billion pixels per second with OpenGL ES 2.0. For 720p video, ZMS-08 chip can both playback and encode video stream at the same time. Creative says the new processor will target the PMP, tablets, networked media hubs and other handheld devices. Creative has started sampling the ZMS-08 chip and will start mass production in first quarter of 2010.