Texas Instruments Broadening OMAP 5 Processor’s Reach

The Arm Cortex R15-based OMAP5430 and OMAP5432, produced using a 28-nanometer process, have been sampling with potential customers for “many months”, Goren said. The OMAP 5 platform increases clockspeed to about 2 GHz from 1.8 GHz found in the top-end OMAP4470 that’s expected to appear in mobile products this summer, Goren said. The OMAP 5 also shifts to a PowerVR SGX544MP2 532 MHZ dual-core graphics processor with a 2D graphics accelerator from the 384 MHZ graphics IC in the OMAP4470. The OMAP5430 and OMAP5432 also contains 32-bit dual-core 532 MHZ DDR2 and DDR3 memory, respectively. OMAP 5 is compatible with Android, Linux, QNX and Windows operating systems.

The new processors are part of TI’s effort to broaden the reach of the OMAP platform beyond smartphones and tablets and into automotive infotainment and advanced detection systems (ADS). TI landed earlier this year an agreement to supply OMAP chips for Harman International’s automotive infotainment system. In infotainment, TI’s OMAP processors run the operating system, but in ADS the chips work with cameras to analyze an image feed and take corrective action if necessary. TI also has a pact with iRobot to develop OMAP-based robotics products.

The OMAP IC can support up to four cameras, including 24- and 20-megapixel rear- and front-facing models. The OMAP chips are marketed with power management ICs and a high-speed image signal processing block that handles camera autofocus, autoexposure and noise reduction,Goren said. While the OMAP line will initially consist of two ICs, there also plans for derivatives aimed at specific applications, Goren said.

The push into automotive and other markets also offers TI a chance at securing longer-term supply agreements than those governing smartphones that typically run six to 18 months, Goren said. While TI’s OMAP 4 chip was at the heart of Samsung’s Galaxy S II smartphone that shipped in 2011, it was displaced by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 in this year’s Galaxy S III model in the U.S.

While design wins in smartphones and tablets can have “a very short tail” that may run six to 18 months, an automotive or industrial product agreements “could last multiple years,” Goren said. “Sometimes it takes a while to get it up and running, but once are you are in, you can be with the manufacturer for multiple years,” Goren said. “It’s not that we want to do everything, but we want to focus on a few of those key markets with the largest growth opportunity."

CE Week Notebook

There will be a “really fast decline” in sales of standard compact cameras as consumers migrate to smartphones for photography, NPD analyst Liz Cutting said. But at the same time, sales of better-featured standalone digital cameras will rise with models with a 10x zoom or better posting dollar sales gains of 10 percent during the past year, Cutting said. Detachable lens cameras logged a nine percent sales increase during the same period, she said. The 18- to 34-year-old age group accounted for 32 percent of U.S. detachable lens camera sales during past year, Cutting said. Overall, global sales of standalone digital cameras are expected to decline four percent this year to 135 million units from 140 million in 2011, due largely to inroads made by smartphones, Gfk analyst Marion Knoche said. The Americas will represent 36 percent of digital camera sales, while Japan will account for 34 percent, she said.