Multiple cores power fifth generation of TI’s OMAP
Colin Holland
2/7/2011 12:22 PM EST
Texas Instruments’ believes its OMAP 5 platform is expected to change the concept of ‘mobile’ by driving disruptive mobile computing experiences providing stereoscopic 3D, gesture recognition and computational photography based on multi-core processing, including ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processors
The 28 nanometer OMAP 5 applications processors carry on the OMAP family tradition of delivering increases in performance and functionality, while lowering power consumption compared to their predecessors. They offer up to 3x processing performance and five-fold 3D graphics improvement, provide a nearly 60 percent average power reduction compared to a sample user experience on the OMAP 4 platform.
The OMAP 5 platform’s software is designed for maximum reuse to ease migration from the OMAP 4 platform.
The OMAP 5 processor uses two ARM Cortex-A15 MPCores capable of speeds of up to 2 GHz per core in the OMAP 5 implementation. The 50 percent boost in performance over the Cortex-A9 core (at the same clock frequency), is combined with up to 8GB of dynamic memory access and hardware virtualization support.
In addition to the two Cortex-A15 cores, the OMAP 5 processor includes individual, dedicated engines for: video, imaging and vision, DSP, 3D graphics, 2D graphics, display and security.
The processor also includes two ARM Cortex-M4 processors for offloading real-time processing from the Cortex-A15 cores to improve low-level control and responsiveness of mobile devices.
The OMAP 5 processor can support up to four cameras in parallel, as well as record and play back S3D video in 1080p quality, and perform real-time conversion of 2D content to S3D at 1080p resolution. The processor can also deliver advanced short- and long-range gesturing applications, as well as full-body and multi-body interactive gestures, utilizing either 2D or S3D cameras.
The OMAP 5 processor, coupled with a TI DLP Pico projector and a camera, can also enable interactive projection where the user can actually “touch and drag” projected images on both a table top or wall.
Additionally, the OMAP 5 processor can interface with and leverage a variety of sensor technologies to enable touchless sensing, such as proximity sensing, capacitive sensing and ultrasonic sensing.
The OMAP 5 processor includes hardware and software resources that enable the development and deployment of computational algorithms to improve picture and video quality from built-in cameras. These provide camera stabilization, motion blur reduction, noise reduction, high dynamic range and face-based processing.
The latest processor goes a step further by using the same OMAP 5 hardware resources with vision algorithms to extract features and data from the picture, in order to implement applications such as face recognition, object recognition and text recognition. These vision capabilities can also be used as the foundation for augmented reality applications.
TI’s OMAP 5 platform is expected to sample in the second half of 2011, with devices on the market in the second half of 2012.
The OMAP5430 processor is offered in a 14x14mm package-on-package with LPDDR2 memory support.
The OMAP5432 processor is offered in a 17x17mm BGA package with DDR3/DDR3L memory support. These products are intended for high-volume mobile OEMs and ODMs and are not available through distributors.
TI also plans to develop compatible ARM Cortex-A15 processor-based solutions for broader market applications across TI’s product portfolio.
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