31 July 2008

TI's ARM Cortex-A8 Based OMAP35x Family Expands

Texas Instruments (TI) has added to its ARM based OMAP35x family with three new devices that provide scalable performance and enhanced multimedia capabilities.

TI’s scalable OMAP35x application processors, are based on the ARM Cortex-A8 processor - ARM’s first superscalar processor. With the ability to scale in speed from 600 MHz to more than 1 GHz, the Cortex-A8 processor can meet the requirements both for power-optimized mobile devices operating with less than 300 MW and for performance-optimized consumer applications requiring 2,000 Drhystone MIPS.

The OMAP35x devices, the OMAP3515, OMAP3525 and OMAP3530 offer laptop-like performance and low power consumption levels provided by the superscalar processors aim to motivate developers to increase the productivity and multimedia experience through advanced intuitive user interfaces, 3D graphics, no compromise browsing capabilities and vast connectivity options, TI said.

The three newly available OMAP35x devices feature combinations of OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics engine, video accelerators and TMS320C64x+ DSP core. The OMAP3515 device features Imagination's PowerVR SGX graphics engine enabling developers to integrate enhanced smart user interfaces with photo-realistic graphics on embedded gaming or simple portable navigation devices, TI explained.

 The OMAP3525 device featuring DaVinci technology has a C64x+ DSP and video-centric peripherals for HD video in multimedia driven products. For sleeker and light devices, the OMAP3530 device combines the ARM, DSP, graphics engine and peripherals to enable performance-hungry, power-efficient designs with gaming-quality graphics.