Texas Instruments talks OMAP 4

Robert Hallock 15 Feb, 2010 at 11:43pm ET Article published in Tech

Texas Instruments today provided new details regarding OMAP 4, the company’s upcoming fourth generation SoC designed to power mobile internet devices (MIDs), such as tablets.

“TI envisions a near-term mobile future that will be vastly different than today’s mobile environment,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, VP and GM of TI’s OMAP Platform Business Unit. “Similar to how the touchscreen changed the way we interact with our devices, touchless gesturing and 3D-HD mobile capabilities will take experiences to the next level and radically change how we connect to our devices and the things around us. TI is excited to play a key role with our customers in this revolution.”

While details remain moderately sparse, what Texas Instruments has revealed is an outstandingly impressive suite of features:

Multiple display support;
Stereoscopic 720p/30 FPS recording and playback;
1920×1200 display support;
4G cellular radio support;
HDMI connectivity;
720MHz dual core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore (OMAP4430),
or 1GHz+ dual core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore (OMAP4440);
PowerVR SGX540 GPU (comparable to iPhone 3GS, slower than Nexus One, faster than Droid);
and OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1 and EGL 1.3.

It is not known if a pared down version is being designed for the smartphone market, but we can only assume that something along these lines is well under way. Nevertheless, the OMAP 4 platform is currently sampling to downstream suppliers; products bearing the new silicon should begin appearing in devices within a year’s time.

Comments

17 Feb 2010 ~ 7:30am Rys SGX540 at OMAP4 clocks is faster than the 3D hardware in the Nexus One.
17 Feb 2010 ~ 9:08am kryyst Sounds great but until it's powering a device with a real OS then it's just numbers, albeit impressive numbers.
18 Feb 2010 ~ 11:42am AlexDeGruven That looks like it could power some really interesting stuff for the next generation of mobile devices.

Now if they could just get a ~300dpi screen that will give me 1080p on a cell phone, that would be truly awesome.
18 Feb 2010 ~ 1:43pm Snarkasm My God, why? 1080p is hardly worthwhile below 37" if we're talking about home theaters... why in the world would it be worth it on a 4.3" screen?

1080p out, sure. 1080p on the device - I see no point. Your eyes couldn't even resolve it.
18 Feb 2010 ~ 1:54pm Thrax Because they <i>can</i>.
18 Feb 2010 ~ 1:56pm AlexDeGruven

Thrax wrote:

Because they <i>can</i>.

Precisely.

Even 720p would be awesome on a phone screen. I'm rather extremely far-sighted, so super-high-resolution displays are something I really rather enjoy.
18 Feb 2010 ~ 1:57pm Snarkasm But if it's higher-resolution than you can see, is it worth the price premium?
18 Feb 2010 ~ 2:08pm AlexDeGruven Depends on the premium. Also:
18 Feb 2010 ~ 2:24pm Snarkasm Was that supposed to prove to me the usefulness of 1080p on a tiny screen?
18 Feb 2010 ~ 2:52pm AlexDeGruven

Snarkasm wrote:

Was that supposed to prove to me the usefulness of 1080p on a tiny screen?

Hey, it worked for Wall-E.