Google may annoint Texas Instruments as official silicon partner for Android Ice Cream Sandwich
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The only downside is that this and last year mostly Qualcomm and NVIDIA were placing their silicon inside Android handsets. Qualcomm because it has tightly integrated chipsets that include the baseband radios, and Nvidia because it was first to get its foot in the door with Honeycomb tablets and dual-core phones.
It seems that Google has been watching closely the roadmaps of major chipset manufacturers, though, and is preparing to enter a love affair with Texas Instruments for its upcoming Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) version that will merge the smartphone and tablet experience.
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Now we don't know which exactly of the OMAP chipsets will be the main man in future Android phones and tablets with ICS, but there are several plausible candidates. It won't be the 2GHz dual-core OMAP5 family, since it's not supposed to ship for another year. We'd bet on the 2011 crop, of course - OMAP4430 is already found in the BlackBerry PlayBook and LG Thrill 4G, so it's old news, but Q3 should see the launch of the dual-core 1.5GHz OMAP4440, which might go into ICS handsets and tablets.
Even better, early next year, when the majority of manufacturers should have flagship handsets with ICS, Texas Instruments is supposed to ship OMAP4470, which goes up to 1.8GHz, and, more importantly, features the PowerVR SGX544 GPU, which is insanely fast.
Now, we've heard a few rumors about an upcoming Samsung phone with 1.8GHz dual-core chipset, which will, however, be outside of the Galaxy family. We also know that one of the reference designs for the Nexus Prime given to Google for review is by Samsung, and, rumor has it, it has won the hearts and minds at Mountain Dew, so that might be it.
Couple this with the fact that these speculations are pointing to late fall release for a monster Samsung/Google handset, plus the Koreans announcement that the next, 2GHz version of its own Exynos silicon, won't be entering phones until next fall, and we might as well see a Nexus with TI chip inside announced by the end of this year, as an ICS poster child.
Either way, if TI has scored a partnership with Google over ICS devices, this will bode very well for its bottomline and stock price, and the company's OMAP family surely deserves it.
via SlashGear
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12 Comments
1. isitWORTHit (unregistered) posted on 03 Aug 2011, 03:05 0 0
can the next nexus hardware beat the GS2? so far rumors point at it using a powervr sgx540 @384 MHZ... even the apple A5 chips are using sgx 543 so is this even worth the wait?
3. cheetah2k posted on 03 Aug 2011, 03:11 0 0
I hate to make assumptions, but the Nexus S had same internals (pretty much aside from NFC) as the original Galaxy S which was released 8 months before it.
So, one would assume that the Nexus Prime will have similar internals to the Galaxy S II...
I'm still not sure if this one will be worth the wait, or hang out for the Galaxy S III (if Apple doesn't bury it in litigation....)
2. cheetah2k posted on 03 Aug 2011, 03:08 0 0
I wonder how fast the Exynos 1.8Ghz setup will be compared to TI's 1.5Ghz??
5. Laurynas (unregistered) posted on 03 Aug 2011, 04:13 1 0
Talking about CPU frequency (Clock Speed), ARM Cortex-A9 CPU already can run at 2Ghz. But I don't think that such SoCs like a Samsung's Exynos 4210 (a.k.a. Orion) or Nvidia's Tegra 2 can handle it.
10. PeterIfromsweden posted on 03 Aug 2011, 06:09 0 0
I want exynos proccessor (or maybe even better) on the Wave 3 : D
8. snowgator posted on 03 Aug 2011, 05:23 2 0
Okay, anyone else besides me creeped out by the image on this story?
9. PeterIfromsweden posted on 03 Aug 2011, 05:59 1 2
Ahh, Android is going to use Texas insturments, finally catching up to the Nokia N9 processor ? ; )
11. Laurynas (unregistered) posted on 03 Aug 2011, 06:20 1 0
I don't think so, because Nokia N9 use ARM Cortex-A8 CPU while most other latest smartphones use ARM Cortex-A9 CPU.
12. Mobile-X-Pert posted on 03 Aug 2011, 07:37 0 0
This should've been done a long time ago. Just look at WP7, it runs fast and smooth because it's only optimised for Qualcomm proccessors.
13. protozeloz posted on 03 Aug 2011, 13:02 0 0
i don't think its related with that, it may be more related with hardware acceleration
