TI Announces Quad-Core, 2 GHz Smartphone SoC
Texas Instruments (TI) has announced a future smartphone/tablet SoC that could dramatically elevate the processing capability of compact mobile devices.
The spec sheet reads like an all-you-can menu for the digital now. Unfortunately, the new SoC won't arrive for at least 2 years.
The new 28nm OMAP5430 SoC, the flagship of TI's new OMAP5 series, integrates two ARM Cortex-A15 MPCores that can be clocked at up to 2 GHz (each, which would be a total of 4 GHz, if we stay with the current trend that we simply add up the clock speeds of processing cores) as well as two Cortex-M4 cores that are used as accelerators and CPUs that power a device when in low-power/standby mode.
According to TI, the A15 architecture is about 50% faster than the preceding A9 cores and the entire chip is about three times faster than the previous generation (OMAP4, which isn't available yet).
The graphics engine is based on the PowerVR SGX544-MPx core as well as TI's own 2D graphics engine, which are promised to be about five times faster than their predecessors. Users can run 1080p video in 60fps and can convert 2D 1080p video to S3D in 1080p in real time, TI said, and there is enough horsepower support a 2D digital camera with up to 24 megapixels resolution or 12 megapixels in 3D. Just as a reminder, we are talking about a smartphone SoC here. The remaining specs include support for up to 8 GB DDR3 memory, USB 3.0, HDMI 1.4a (3D), and a display resolution of up to 2560x2048 pixels.
Don't get excited just yet. Samples of the SoC may not sample until the second half of this year and devices should be available by 2012 - at the earliest. To us, this seems to be a 2013 product. In the end, we were promised dual-core SoC smartphones for the second half of 2010.

Fail...
hmm, announcing the specs for the OMAP5 in pretty thorough detail before the OMAP4 has even been released. That's... um, interesting. The yet to be officially announced next gen Tegra will also incorporate Cortex A15's at 28nm. I wonder how these two SOC's will stack up against each other? It would be pretty funny if the Tegra 3 gets released first.
Also, they are planning a 3G modem for 2013? at this rhythm we'll be in 5G. What about Tegra 3 with a quad-core powering the mobile market?
Time will tell if this will succeed.
yeah, that got me too... smh....
U do know how much it costs them to build and program a device like that right? And even though they sell a lot of them they still don't sell enough to make them cheap as cpu's. This OMAP 5 will sell a huge amount in smartphones, netbooks, etc. It will be cheaper to build.
I've never heard of adding up the core speeds before? My E7400 is 2.8Ghz, not 5.6Ghz.
I'll do you one better...
Can this thing run Crysis?? ...now there's your Fail. LOL
Seriously though, I want to see this. Maybe, just maybe I'll buy one. We'll see.
Yup, it's pretty insulting. I have yet to get my Q9550 CPU to 4Ghz stable and here they are lying about their chips clock speed. I guess by their logic I can say my CPU running at 15.6Ghz.
Let's see you top that TI!
So comparing a narrow pipe RISC who can process a tiny package each cycle to one who can lift an entire container per cycle is kinda amazing. A pinto engine running at 2000rpm or a V12 at 2000rpm, what engine would you love to have?
I just laugh when i hear the phone boiz think their phones are as fast or faster than a real computer because their ghz is the same or marked with the logic above.
Hmm intel 980X@4ghz should then be counted as 24 ghz but wait it got hyper threading so why not count it at 48 ghz while at it. Sure it would fool some less educated!
Please don't stay in trend with that... it's insulting and may work for some twisted marketing department desperately trying to sell the chip to muggles...
Perhaps Douglas likes spreading misinformation and confusing the less educated PC community. I think it's unethical, but to each their own.