TI Unveils New OMAP Processor

Texas Instruments has unveiled its newest processor for handhelds and smart phones. This was developed using TI's advanced 90 nanometer process technology and offers up to a 40% improvement in performance for a variety of mobile applications, while consuming as little as half the power of TI's current processors.

Current OMAP processors are used in a variety of models, like the palmOne Treo 600 and Tungsten E, plus the Motorola MPx200 smart phone.

The OMAP1710 processor engines include an ARM TM processor, a TI DSP engine, as well as a range of software and hardware accelerators for video encode and decode, still picture compression, Java and security.

An improved version of the OMAP1610 processor, the OMAP1710 processor provides improved multimedia and graphics performance, integrated hardware and software security features, a high-performance camera interface, enhanced peripherals and ultra-low standby power consumption. It has been designed to be paired with TI's wireless chipsets for GSM/GPRS/EDGE, CDMA2000 1X and UMTS, though this isn't required and this processor can be used in non-wireless handhelds.

The OMAP1710 offers improved performance due to higher frequency, larger data and instruction caches and an instruction set-enhanced TI DSP engine that supports multimedia applications such as still images, graphics, full-motion video and audio.

This processor can run Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian OS, and Linux.