Texas Instruments' OMAP 5 platform is expected to be the first to use ARM's new Cortex-A15 core architecture and due to start sampling to system makers by the end of the year. This new core is based on the ARMv7 instruction set used in early cores, but adds a 40-bit extension and a variety of new features.

At ARM TechCon last week, Bhasi Kaithamana of TI's High Performance ARM Processor Design Center in Austin described its basic architecture: It has dual Cortex-A15 cores running at 2 GHz or faster with 2MB of L2 cache, two Cortex-M4 cores for low-power applications, enhanced video and graphics engines, and TI’s proprietary power management technology, SmartReflex 3. The chip also uses multi-core PowerVR SGX544-MP graphics.

Kaithamana said OMAP 5 will increase processing performance by two to three times and yield a fivefold improvement in 3D graphics performance. The shift to the Cortex-A15 architecture, which has several differences compared with the current Cortex-A9, accounts for part of the performance improvement. A15 cores provide 1.5 times better single-threaded performance, 1.6 times better floating point performance and improved multi-processing bandwidth over A9 cores at the same clock speed. The A15 has a longer pipeline and that should also let it run at higher frequencies (up to 2.5 GHz) so the actual speed-up may be even greater.

ARM lately has mentioned its big.LITTLE strategy of using multiple kinds of cores and Nvidia has discussed its hidden "fifth core" in its upcoming Kal-El quad-core Tegra chip. 

Last week, however, Brian Carlson, product manager for OMAP 5, discussed TI's heterogeneous multiprocessing approach. What it calls "the best core for the chore," will be applied to generations of OMAP processors using ARM9, ARM11 and Cortex-A series main processing cores mixed with Cortex-M series cores, DSPs and other specialized processing engines.

The OMAP 5 processor will be manufactured on TI’s own 28nm low-power process and initially will be manufactured by chip foundry UMC.