Texas Instruments' latest crop of OMAP processors is based
on ARM's 600-MHz superscalar Cortex-A8 core. The 65-nm
OMAP35x line includes four chips, starting with a long A8
core and moving up to a C64x DSP/A8 dual-core solution at
the high end. The latter comes complete with 2D/3D OpenGL
ES 2.0 support. Running at 300 MHz, the A8 core is comparable
to a 600-MHz ARM 9 processor while only consuming
220 mW. Multiple power domains, adaptive voltage scaling,
and dynamic power switching are just a few of the features
designed to reduce battery requirements. The impressive video
support is designed for todayâ??s demanding mobile platforms.
It can handle 720p HD streams at 30 frames/s. The OpenGL
support can render 10 million polygons/s. Other video features
include PIP support and color space conversion. There is a
USB 2.0 HS-compliant OTG controller plus two additional
host controllers. SDIO, I2C, and flash-memory support round
out the peripherals. The chips come in a 16- by 16-mm package.
Pricing starts under $20. The OMAP35x EVM development
kit costs $1499 with Linux and Windows CE BSPs. www.ti.com
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