Posted on 01/13/2011 9:12:57 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Tegra 2 is the only Cortex A9 based dual-core chip that is actually shipping and you can even buy some products based on it. Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 Cortex A9 based dual-core chip clocked at 1GHz is also supposed to ship in Q1 2011 in USA, inside the RIM Playbook Blackberry tablet.
It gets more interesting as Texas instrument already announced a faster iteration of the Cortex A9 based dual-core chip, this time clocked at 1.5GHz. The company calls it the OMAP 4440 and it is again a 45nm chip. Just as TI 4430 it plays 1080P in HD in 2D video but in can also play 1080P in Stereoscopic 3D video. The 1GHz clocked TI4430 can only support 720P Stereoscopic 3D video.
The 1.5GHz clock also brings support for 12Mpixel stereo camera, and of course you will need two cameras for that. In comparison, TI4430 clocked at 500MHz slower speed can only cope with 5MegaPixel 3D camera.
We can expect that graphics based on PowerVR 540 core at 1.5 GHz also gets tremendously faster. PowerVR 540 core should be three to four times faster than PowerVR 530 core, but we will try to get some real numbers.
We reckon that TI 4440 can show its face later this year, and it is kind of natural to expect that Nvidia and other ARM players can do the same 1.5GHz clock if not even higher.
Last modified on Thursday, 13 January 2011 10:06
Buy one now before the FCC says you aren’t allowed to use one for Internet connections!
I’m actually working on an OMAP 3730 based system running at 1Ghz. Most of the OMAP series have a Cortex A8/DSP processor combination that makes them attractive to Cellphone applications. The block diagram implies that they’ve dropped the DSP hardware from this system.
Do most cell phone apps require DSP? I don’t know anything about it, don’t even own a cell phone.
Was just looking at a review of a mobile device ...and it is not clear whether it is a smartphone with an excellent camera or vice versa....:
Nokia N8 Review: Nokia's New Flagship ( Camera with phone attached??)
Yep - they sure do. The DSP will typically implement the “radio” modulation portion of the cell phone. This is why the OMAPs are so popular for this application. The ARM processor runs the GUI OS that the user sees, along with perhaps some audio processing, and the call-stack for phone call setup/tear-down. The DSP takes this and creates the modulation wave-form for the cell call - which is heterodyned up to appropriate frequency.
I take it the DSP is all hardware? I think I once saw a radio built on a software DSP.
I assume the output from the DSP is put through a digital to analog converter before it is fed to the antenna? I don’t really see that mentioned on the chip, but maybe it is done in software.
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