The power of Imagination
US semiconductor giant Texas Instruments launched its new top-end series 4 OMAP SoC yesterday at the end of Computex, although you wouldn't think so given the complete lack of fanfare.
The focus is on graphics with the 45nm OMAP4470, which is the main SoC battleground these days. NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple are all making lofty graphics claims, and TI is under pressure to counter them.
TI's secret weapon is the Imagination Technologies POWERVR SGX544 graphics core design, which launched last summer and is scalable to 16 cores. This is the first SoC we're aware of to incorporate this technology. TI hasn't revealed how many graphics cores there are, but has boasted the 4470 can support 2048x1536 resolution and offers a 2.5x improvement in graphics processing over the best OMAP currently in devices - the 4430.
The other main improvement over the 4430 is that the two ARM Cortex A9 cores have been clocked up to 1.8 GHz, leading to a claimed 80 percent improvement in web-browsing performance.
"Superior mobile computing relies on a user experience that dwarfs all others. Fast and crisp web-browsing, HD and liquid UIs, support for the latest applications-these are the elements consumers judge and buy their devices on. The OMAP4470 processor delivers the maximum experience possible with an unmatched, power-efficient architecture," said Remi El-Ouazzane, VP of OMAP at TI.
"Graphics processing is now at the very heart of the mobile computing experience, providing the gateway to an enriched experience of user interface, gaming, location services, web and media," said Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination Technologies. "Combining the OMAP 4 platform's low-power, high-performance architecture with the extensive acceleration capabilities and API support of Imagination's POWERVR SGX544 will enable experiences that will really make people sit up and take notice."
Here's TI's features and benefits table, all comparative data is relative to the 4430. The OMAP4470 will begin sampling in the second half of this year and start to appear in devices early next year.
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Two ARM Cortex-A9 MPCores running up to 1.8GHz per core |
80% increase in Web browsing performance |
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Two ARM Cortex-M3 cores |
Smart multicore processing optimized for low-power and real-time responsiveness |
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SGX544 graphics core |
2.5x overall graphics performance increase; support for DirectX, OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenVG 1.1, and OpenCL 1.1 |
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Hardware composition engine with dedicated 2D graphics core |
Frees GPU to manage intensive tasks; maximizes power-efficiency |
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Display subsystem |
Supports as many as three HD displays and up to QXGA (2048x1536) resolution; HDMI supporting stereoscopic 3D |
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Dual-channel, 466 MHz LPDDR2 memory |
Higher memory bandwidth enables rendering and compositing of multilayer content at high resolutions |
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Complete pin-to-pin hardware and software compatibility |
Rapid transition and maximum re-use of investment from OMAP4430 and OMAP4460 processors |
