TI Korea (CEO Kent Jeon, www.ti.com/ww/kr ) March 2, 2012 – At the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2012), TI focused on its OMAP™ 5 platform and showcased the outstanding performance of the highly anticipated new addition to the OMAP processor family through a live demo. Available for use in a wide range of markets, from smartphones to automotive and smart homes, the OMAP 5 platform enables users to capture, edit, save, and share content across various finished products, enabling the realization of an outstanding digital hub that delivers high-quality content. Consequently, rich, multimedia multitasking-intensive visuals can be achieved without compromising performance.

The Differentiation of Smart Multicore
TI's OMAP platform has long provided superior application processing performance at optimal power consumption by adopting a balanced system known as the Smart Multicore Architecture. As this architecture evolves to form the core of the OMAP 5 platform, it is revolutionizing what is possible with mobile computing and, combined with TI's mobile-optimized 28nm process, enables the delivery of an outstanding user experience. Furthermore, the following benefits are achieved by basing this architecture on:

Overall CPU Performance: Mobile applications can achieve smooth processing and rapid response by distributing interdependent tasks across multiple processors. However, in reality, it is impossible to partition them across multiple CPU cores within a single platform because most of these applications are single-threaded or contain tasks or processes that are largely single-threaded. Considering the reality of this market, the OMAP5430 processor adopts two ARM® Cortex™-A15 cores as cores that provide the best single-thread performance among ARM CPUs.

Alleviating Real-Time Processing Burden: A unique feature of the OMAP 5 Smart Multicore Architecture is that it complements two ARM Cortex-A15 cores using two ARM Cortex-M4 cores. By appropriately allocating real-time control processing for multimedia tasks, such as video encoding and decoding, to these M-class cores, the workload on the main CPU cores can be relieved to handle high-level operating system tasks. This workload alleviation not only minimizes the interrupt rate of the Cortex-A15 cores but also saves valuable power. For example, up to 10% of system power can be saved when encoding and decoding high-resolution H.264 content.

Best-in-Class GPU: In a market where graphics performance is a critical factor, increasing this performance without increasing power consumption is the way to achieve a competitive edge in the performance of any application. The OMAP 5 platform features several upgrades over previous OMAP processor products, one of which is the introduction of a secondary GPU. By adopting Imagination Technologies' dual-core PowerVR SGX544 GPU, the OMAP5430 processor achieves up to four times better performance than competitors in major industry graphics benchmarks. Imagination Technologies has differentiated its SGX544 cores using a tile-based deferred rendering architecture, enabling reduced bandwidth utilization and minimized power consumption compared to competitor solutions. TI enables outstanding graphics performance by complementing these GPUs with proprietary OMAP platform features and allowing the cores to run at a maximum limit of 532MHz.

Hossein Yassaie of Imagination Technologies said, “Imagination and TI have maintained a long-standing partnership and achieved many milestones that have earned the label of ‘industry first.’ The OMAP 5 platform enables the achievement of an exceptional user experience with the best graphics performance by running dual-core applications and high-performance PowerVR GPUs at maximum performance.”

Composition Engine Advantages: In addition to the SGX544 core, it adopts a dedicated 2D hardware-accelerated composition engine as another unique OMAP architecture feature. This dedicated engine can support high-resolution compositions of up to 8 layers without the need for external memory. By assigning composition tasks to the composition engine, the smart multicore system can reduce power consumption by up to 1/10 of the power consumed when processing the same 8-layer composition tasks. Since there is no need to transfer data back to memory, this memory bandwidth can be used to perform other multitasking functions.

Thermal Budget: Mobile platforms are limited by a fixed thermal budget. Otherwise, the device could become too hot in the user's hand. If the processor exceeds this limit, the temperature must be controlled. This process can limit the actual operation of the device. The OMAP 5 platform optimizes achievable performance under such thermal constraints to skillfully address these challenges. As a result, it achieves 35% better effective MIPS than the latest generation quad-core solutions. The OMAP smart multicore architecture, combined with TI's 28nm process, achieves a level of performance that cannot be achieved by any other processor using CPUs of the same or different numbers and types, for the actual thermal budget constraints of handheld devices.

Industry-leading imaging performance: Today, users expect DSLR-level performance from their mobile devices. The OMAP 5 platform's image processor can capture 16MP incredibly quickly in just 0.5 seconds, enabling 24MP capture at 30fps with zero shutter latency and providing enhanced performance in low-light environments. Additionally, the adoption of four simultaneous camera sensors enables the implementation of new end-user applications. For example, users of OMAP 5 processor-powered devices can take 12MP still photos while simultaneously capturing 1080p 60fps video. TI's enhanced camera API also supports new features such as night photography, enhanced HDR, and digital refocusing, which allows focus adjustment even after a photo has been taken.

Remi El-Ouazzane, TI’s Vice President and General Manager of the OMAP Platform Business Unit, stated, “We are enabling superior designs with the OMAP 5 platform and are setting a new standard with the OMAP 5 platform itself. Today’s market demands unprecedented performance with power consumption of less than 2W to meet the requirements of devices and applications.” “The OMAP 5 platform is the industry’s only application processing platform capable of meeting such demands, enabling not only to achieve an outstanding end-user experience in response to the rapidly changing market but also setting new standards to lead the future,” he said.

Wireless display adopting the OMAP 5 platform
Customers visiting the TI booth at MWC 2012 were able to experience cutting-edge applications demonstrating the advanced performance of the OMAP5430 processor. These experiences are made possible through the TI WiLink™ 8.0 solution for Wi-Fi connectivity. At this exhibition, the following demos adopting the OMAP 5 platform were demonstrated.

• SPB's multi-layer fluid 3D graphic user interface utilizing graphics and composition engines
• A game with beautiful visuals boasting crisp graphics in Full HD resolution
• Web/HTML5 acceleration enabling even faster page loads, video playback, 3D conversion, and web games
• Full HD video playback via wireless display connection to a 46-inch TV screen

Related Information
• TI's MWC 2012 Participation Information: www.ti.com/mwc2012
• TI's OMAP 5 Platform: www.ti.com/omap5
• News regarding TI's participation in MWC 2012:
o TI Wireless Blog: Mobile Momentum blog
o TI Event Blog: TI Live @ blog
o Twitter: @TXInstruments
o Facebook: www.facebook.com/texasinstruments