TI has announced four additions to its OMAP3 family of ARM SoCs (system-on-chips). The new OMAP36xx series switches to a 45nm production process, delivering speeds up to 1GHz, a 25 percent reduction in power consumption, and 75 percent better graphics performance, says TI.

As TI confirms, the new OMAP3610, OMAP3620, OMAP3630, and OMAP3640 are essentially die-shrinks of SoCs previously offered in the company's 65nm OMAP34xx product line — where their direct counterparts are the OMAP3410, OMAP3420, OMAP3430, and OMAP3440. As before, the SoCs run Linux, Android, Windows Mobile, or Symbian on ARM Cortex-A8 cores, and come in 12 x 12mm or 14 x 14mm BGA (ball grid array) packages, but the change to a 45nm process means the OMAP36xx parts use 25 percent less power and have 75 percent better graphics performance, claims TI.

According to TI, each OMAP36x chip is architecturally identical to its OMAP34xx predecessor, but the top model, the OMAP3640, now clocks at 1GHz, compared to the OMAP3440's 800MHz clock speed. Also, each of the new SoCs now supports cameras up to 12 megapixels, whereas the OMAP3410 and OMAP3420 only support three- and five-megapixel cameras, respectively.

Part	Clock	Graphics accel.	Video max.
OMAP3610	720MHz	Software	VGA/DVD
OMAP3620	720MHz	Hardware	VGA/DVD
OMAP3630	720MHz	Hardware	720p
OMAP3640	1GHz	Hardware	720p

TI OMAP36xx family

As the table above shows, the OMAP3610, OMAP3620, and OMAP3630 all clock at 720MHz. All of the devices feature hardware 2D/3D graphics acceleration except for the OMAP3610, and the OMAP3630/OMAP3640 are capable of 720p HD video playback, according to TI.

Ti says all of the OMAP36xx SoCs offer support for XGA displays up to 1024 x 768 pixels, or WXGA displays up to 1280 x 800, and provide composite and S-Video TV output too. The devices include three high-speed USB 2.0 interfaces and one USB 2.0 On-The-Go interface, the company adds.

Block diagrams of TI's OMAP3610, OMAP3620, OMAP3630, and OMAP3640
(clockwise from top left; click any to enlarge)
Features and specifications touted by TI for the OMAP3610, OMAP3620, OMAP3630, and OMAP3640 include:

• 45nm CMOS process
  
• ARM Cortex-A8 superscalar microprocessor core, featuring up to 300 percent performance gain over ARM11
  
• IVA2+ (image, video, audio) multimedia accelerator
  
• PowerVR SGX graphics core from Imagination Technologies, with 2D/3D graphics acceleration (except on OMAP3610)
  
• OpenGL ES 2.0 compatibility (except on OMAP3610)
  
• On-the-fly JPEG compression and support for both serial and parallel cameras
  
• M-Shield mobile security technology
  
• SmartReflex technology (dynamically controlled voltage, frequency, and power
  
• TWL4030 power management/audio codec companion device support (except for OMAP3640, which uses TWL5030 companion device)

Finally, TI confirms that the OMAP36xx SoCs are software-compatible with previous OMAP2 and OMAP3 processors, which run operating systems including Windows Mobile, Linux, Android, and Symbian.

Availability

According to TI, the OMAP3610, OMAP3620, OMAP3630, and OMAP3640 will begin sampling during the third quarter of this year. More information may be found on the company's website, here.

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