TI is adding a new layer to the mobile experience with the OMAP4470, a new mobile chipset announced at the Computex trade show which includes special hardware for putting together multi-layer UIs.
"One of the key things we've introduced here is a hardware compositing engine," said Mark Granger, head of OMAP platform marketing for TI's wireless business unit. "It allows a very efficient compositing, a blending of multiple layers of windows, video content, and all the other stuff that's necessary for the UIs of today."
Those UIs could appear on small or large screens, as the OMAP4470's display subsystem can control three HD screens at once, including a 2,048-by-1,536 or 3D screen, TI said.
The OMAP4470 is no slouch at general-purpose processing tasks, either. The same size and shape as the existing OMAP4430 chip in the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, the 4470 raises the maximum speed of its two ARM Cortex-A9 processing cores to 1.8 GHz without burning out a handheld battery or frying the hand that holds it.
"We've done extensive studies … and have really assured that even at 1.8 GHz, we can harness the benefit of this increased clock speed while still remaining in an acceptable power envelope," Granger said.
A big part of the OMAP4470's performance comes from distributing work onto various bits of dedicated hardware. Along with the two Cortex-A9 CPUs and the compositing engine, the chipset includes an Imagination PowerVR SGX544 GPU and two ARM Cortex-M3 processors handling multimedia functions. The PowerVR SGX544 is similar to, but newer than the SGX543 used in the Apple iPad 2.
"The two Cortex-M3s, along with our IVA HD hardware accelerator, allow us to maximize performance but keep it down to a low power envelope," Granger said.
The OMAP4470 supports some key software features, too. It's certified for DirectX so it can run Windows 8, and it's pre-approved for Netflix support. But TI isn't yet going the way of Qualcomm and Nvidia, both of whom are starting to reach out to consumers to spotlight apps that take advantage of their particular chipsets.
"We have a whole ecosystem of partners that we work with optimizing apps for the OMAP platform," Granger said. "But we don't have any plans to announce any type of store."
The OMAP4470 will appear in phones and tablets during the first half of 2012. That will slot it in between the 1.5 GHz, dual-core OMAP4460, which will appear in devices later this year, and TI's next-generation OMAP5, which will appear in the second half of next year.