FROM EDN EUROPE: Multiprocessor chip wraps up the multimedia phone
By Graham Prophet -- EDN, April 1, 2004
Cell-phone designers can build handsets that will extend "living-room-entertainment" functions to mobile phones, promises Texas Instruments, using the company's OMAP2 processor. Compared with TI's OMAP device for smart phones, TI says that the the OMAP2 increases the processing power available to video by four times and the processing power available to 3-D graphics by 40 times; the target applications are multimedia and games. The architecture will support 6M-pixel cameras, DVD-quality video, interactive gaming, hi-fi music with 3-D sound effects, analogue- and digital-TV broadcast reception, high-speed wireless connectivity, and LCD screens of greater than VGA resolution.
Using its 90-nm silicon process and the ARM11 architecture, TI has implemented a parallel structure, essentially fabricating a dedicated processing engine for each major function. Video- and graphics-acceleration blocks back up the ARM and a DSP. The first chips, which TI will release later this year, will contain a separate applications processor and a baseband processor. The company will release the 2410 and 2420 devices in the second half of 2004. The 2410 will include the ARM1136JS-F core, which contains ARM's hardware support for Java acceleration and a camera interface. The 2420 will add a programmable imaging and video accelerator supporting 4M-pixel still-image capture. Videoprocessing a CIF or VGA resolution will include both decode and encode compression. Future chips in the range will include further integration, bringing the baseband processor onto the same die. As you might expect with routing so much data around the chip, the architecture includes a crossbar switch fabric.
Design of a "new class of all-in-one entertainment phone" will not require a "quantum leap" in the skills of the OEM designers, TI asserts, as there is support for both full design and all the commonly used mobile operating systems. Nor has the company achieved the combined function set at the expense of power; a separate device, the TML92230 energy-management companion chip, means that power demand should be comparable with today's smart-phone figures of around 90 minutes of video viewing time.
Texas Instruments, www.ti.com/omap2.
