Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. unveiled a new system-on-chip (SOC) processor for handheld devices today, calling it “the world's fastest mobile CPU.” The chip boasts a processor clock rate of 533MHz, and is aimed at enabling new services, functions, and multimedia capabilities for mobile handheld devices such as PDAs and smartphones, the company said.

According to Samsung, the S3C2440 — which supports Linux, as well as the Windows CE, Palm OS, and Symbian embedded operating systems — is based on an ARM920T 16/32-bit RISC microprocessor core. Additionally, Samsung said the S3C2440 includes the following on-chip interface functions: a camera interface, a display controller for TFT and STN LCD displays, an SD/MMC/SDIO card controller, USB host and device controllers, a touch-screen interface, and a NAND Flash interface and boot loader for glueless use of low-cost, high-density NAND Flash memory.

Samsung noted that market analyst firm Gartner Dataquest predicts that the global market for “application/multimedia processors” will reach 25 million units in 2003 and grow to 170 million units by 2007.

The S3C2440 is available now in sample quantities and will be in mass production by Q4 2003, Samsung added.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.