Texas Instruments Made Good on 3G Plans for its OMAP Line

US : Texas Instruments Inc. this week made good on 3G plans for its OMAP line, bringing it closer to its DaVinci and Hollywood chip line promises.

The company announced Tuesday it is sampling a new high-performance OMAP 2-based processor that offers a consumer electronics experience for 3G mobile phones, boosting video performance by up to 4X and imaging performance by up to 1.5X.

The OMAP2430 offers higher performance than first-generation OMAP 2 processors at a lower cost to target the highly demanding multimedia mobile phone environment, specifically video. TI has already staked its claim in handheld video, this year announcing its video processing DaVinci chip line http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA6255326. OMAP2430 will include TIÂ’s latest generation imaging, video and audio accelerator, the IVA 2, a power-optimized version of the signal processing technology used in TIÂ’s DaVinci that brings the claimed performance and imaging boosts.

“With the new OMAP2430 processor, TI delivers customers the ultimate performance and power efficiency at an even lower cost,” said Alain Mutricy, TI’s VP and general manager of cellular systems, wireless terminals business unit. “This increase in performance allows handset manufacturers to bring the entertainment center to the handset creating more compelling products.”

TI also believes the 90nm CMOS produced OMAP2430 will be a solid companion to its mobile digital TV Hollywood line http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA474010, as it supports all known mobile DTV decode standards worldwide. According to the company, OMAP2430 manages complex multimedia scenarios for 3G phones – including secure downloadable media streaming and playback, digital video recording, still image capture, video teleconferencing and 3D gaming. The processor also supports DVD resolution decode up to 30 frames per second (fps) for MPEG4 and Windows Media Video 9 formats, and up to 30-fps VGA resolution decode for H.264 and RealVideo 10.

TIÂ’s OMAP2430 application processor is available in sample quantities now, with production scheduled for Q3 2006.

In separate 3G news, TI fulfilled a commitment it made last year with NTT DoCoMo http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA483208, this week sampling a multi-mode UMTS chipset developed with the Japanese company to serve the worldwide 3G handset market.

Part of TIÂ’s OMAP-Vox architecture, the new OMAPV2230 solution is an integrated UMTS dual-mode digital baseband processor and advanced applications processor based on TIÂ’s high-performance OMAP 2 architecture, TIÂ’s GSM/GPRS technology, and NTT DoCoMoÂ’s established WCDMA technology.

This 3G collaboration builds upon this long-standing relationship between TI and NTT DoCoMo, which has more than 15 million 3G subscribers. To date, the majority of NTT DoCoMoÂ’s 3G FOMA handsets have used TIÂ’s OMAP processor technology.

“The new OMAPV2230 solution will help NTT DoCoMo expand its 3G FOMA subscriber base by offering more affordable 3G handsets with the most advanced multimedia applications allowing a richer user experience with mobile digital TV, music and gaming,” said Koji Chiba, managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s customer equipment development department, in a statement. “NTT DoCoMo is pleased to achieve this next step in our 3G collaboration with TI. With our combined best-in-class systems expertise, NTT DoCoMo and TI have developed the cost-efficient OMAPV2230 to drive widespread adoption of 3G phones delivering high-performance multimedia applications.”

The OMAPV2230 solution is the first UMTS solution in TIÂ’s OMAP-Vox wireless platform, which merges both modem and advanced application processing functionality onto the existing OMAP architecture.

Manufacturers are currently designing handsets based on the OMAPV2230 solution, and products are expected on the market in 2006, TI said.

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