TI Details Dual-Core 1.5Ghz Smartphone Chip

It looks like 2011 will be the year for dual-core mobile devices. Texas Instruments today released further details of its dual-core, 1.5-Ghz OMAP4440 chipset, which follows a white paper from Nvidia that explained how dual-core chips will let future smartphones and tablets offer much more speed without requiring giant batteries.

TI originally announced the OMAP4440 back in 2009, but the company gave further details today. The OMAP4440 will offer 50 percent better overall performance and 30 percent faster Web page loads than the previous 1-Ghz OMAP4430 chipset, along with other high-end features like 1080p 3D performance, 1080p video playback at 60 frames per second, support for two 12-megapixel cameras for 3D recording, 1,920-by-1,200 display support and high-def video conferencing.

The OMAP4430, in turn, offers 150 percent better performance than existing OMAP3 chipsets like the one in the Motorola Droid X, according to TI.

Of course, we haven't even seen any OMAP4430 products on store shelves yet. Mobile chipset companies typically announce products years in advance of retail availability. We expect to see a bunch of dual-core, ARM Cortex-A9 based tablets at the CES trade show in January. TI estimates that we'll see OMAP4440 products on shelves later in 2011.

Next year several major mobile chip vendors are moving to dual-core. Qualcomm announced a dual-core, 1.2-Ghz Snapdragon chip in mid-November, and Nvidia has recently been touting its dual-core Tegra 2 chipset. Samsung showed a dual-core chipset called Orion earlier this year.

According to a recent Nvidia white paper, dual-core chipsets will let smartphones and tablets offer more speed at lower power consumption, as the systems can distribute work to run each core at a lower speed than its maximum, or even turn their cores on and off as needed.

Nvidia's white paper shows that dual-core chipsets can achieve double the frame rates in high-powered Android games compared to single-core chipsets, and that isn't even taking clock speeds into account.

All of these dual-core, high-speed chipsets use the ARM architecture, which is popular in smartphones and runs operating systems such as Android, iOS, and Microsoft Windows Phone 7, but not the desktop version of Microsoft Windows.

The Motorola Droid and Palm Pre smartphone lines both use TI OMAP3 processors, the previous generation before OMAP4.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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