Frequently Asked Questions
- What OMAP35x devices are available?
- What are the benefits of the OMAP35x devices?
- What are the target applications for OMAP35x devices?
- What applications/markets are best suited for each processor?
- What are the key market drivers for these devices?
- What products will be available and when?
- How much will this device cost? When will the other OMAP35x devices be available?
- What is included in the EVM? How much does this cost?
- What software support will be available?
- What tools are available for design on the ARM?
- How can a customer get started on OMAP3530 based designs today?
- How is TI the first company with the Cortex-A8?
- How do the OMAP35x devices achieve lower power consumption?
- How does the open-source community play into this announcement?
- How will consumers benefit from OMAP technology?
- What is the difference between these OMAP and DaVinci Technology? Is one of them being phased out?
- Isn’t there crossover between DaVinci and OMAP products? How are the target markets different?
- What is Smart Reflex technology?
- Who are the current TI Developer Network members that support OMAP35x devices?
- How did TI select the developer network members that are working on OMAP?
- Is TI limiting the developers that can work on OMAP?
- How much is the OMAP35x Digital Video Software Development Kit?
1. What OMAP35x devices are available?
Answer: TI is announcing a scalable OMAP35x™ portfolio of devices available for the broad market that is ideal for manufacturers wanting to redefine the standard for advanced user interfaces, web browsing, productivity and multimedia experience making it easier than ever to access information and media.
The OMAP3503, OMAP3515, OMAP3525 and the OMAP3530 devices are sampling today. Based on the market’s first broad offering of the ARM® Cortex™-A8 core, this platform offers more than four times the processing power of today’s ARM9 devices. Combined with graphics capability and DSP technology, the OMAP35x devices create the industry’s best combination of integrated processing capabilities in any single-chip combination. Target applications include: portable navigation devices, portable media players, point of sale, point of services and personal medical equipment.
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2. What are the benefits of the OMAP35x devices?
Answer: TI’s OMAP35x devices will be the first broadly available processor based on the ARM Cortex-A8 and is a scalable processing platform that provides the best general purpose, multimedia and graphics processing – in any combination. The ARM Cortex-A8 provides a 4X performance improvement over ARM9 devices to achieve lap-top like performance. Additionally, these new devices provide reduced power consumption for smaller, battery-operated, energy-efficient products. Additionally, customers can begin development today with the OMAP35x evaluation module.
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3. What are the target applications for OMAP35x devices?
Answer: The OMAP devices will be an attractive solution for many customers both big and small. Target markets include:
- Portable Media Players (PMP)
- Portable Navigation Devices (PND)
- Point of Sale (POS)
- Point of Service
- Patient Monitoring and other medical applications
- Software Defined Radio (SDR)
- IP Based Communications
- Smart Home Media Controllers
- Portable TV (broadcast and streaming TV content within the home)
- Edutainment (i.e. eDictionaries)
- Portable consumer entertainment devices
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4. What applications/markets are best suited for each processor?
Answer: OMAP35x processors are best suited for high performance ARM processing, multimedia and graphics needs. The four devices ensure that customers can scale to create a complete, differentiated product portfolio reusing their application software across the platform. The OMAP3503 is targeted for products requiring intensive applications processing, while the OMAP3530 is ideal for full scale multimedia applications including portable navigation, web tablets, portable media players and home automation systems that need HD video and graphics capabilities (in addition to the intensive applications processing).
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5. What are the key market drivers for these devices?
Answer: Consumers are also looking for easy access to information and media through advanced user interfaces, enhanced productivity, full web browsing and multimedia capabilities. This means faster accessibility to databases, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mail, audio and video attachments, web browsing, and videoconferencing applications with faster boot times, web browsing and compelling Java applications all of which make products smarter and more efficient to use on a daily basis.
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6. What products will be available and when?
Answer: The OMAP3503, OMAP3515, OMAP3525 and the OMAP3530 devices along with an OMAP35x evaluation module (EVM) and OMAP35x digital video software development kit (DVSDK) are available through www.ti.com.
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7. How much are the OMAP35x devices?
Answer:
- OMAP3503 device: $25.95 (100 u)
- OMAP3515 device: $39.23 (100 u)
- OMAP3525 device: $43.49 (100 u)
- OMAP3530 device: $48.34 (100 u)
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8. What is included in the EVM? How much does this cost?
Answer: The EVM is priced at $1495 and includes:
- Hardware: OMAP3503 Processor, 128 MB LPDDR, 128 MB oneNAND Flash and Dual mode (640x480/320x240) LCD Display with Touch screen interface
- Software: OMAP3503 Linux BSP - Kernel 2.6.22, Peripheral drivers, U-boot for boot loading, Busybox based root file system
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9. What software support will be available?
Answer: Linux kernel 2.6.22 support will be the initial offering with Windows® CE 6.0R2 support available in 3Q08.
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10. What tools are available for design on the ARM?
Answer: Members of the TI Developer Network, such as Green Hills, MontaVista, Lauterbach, Microsoft, and Code Sourcery will be offering development tools for the ARM Cortex-A8. The initial tool offering will be from Code Sourcery.
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11. How can a customer get started on OMAP3530 based designs today?
Answer: TI has a support structure of third parties and tools. OMAP35x EVM is currently open for entry so developers can start prototyping their designs on the ARM Cortex-A8 core immediately with the support of TI’s broad developer network. Since the OMAP35x processors are pin for pin compatible, they can easily scale their designs to the later processors.
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12. How is TI the first company with the Cortex-A8?
Answer: TI had long been a leading provider of ARM cores and we work in tandem with ARM to bring the latest products to the market as quickly as possible. We also have the ecosystem in place to help our customers take Cortex-A8 based products to production.
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13. How do the OMAP35x devices achieve lower power consumption?
Answer: To achieve these power levels, the OMAP35x devices leverage TI's SmartReflexTM technologies to dynamically control voltage, frequency and power based on device activity, modes of operation, process technology and temperature variation, saving power.
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14. How does the open-source community play into this announcement?
Answer: TI anticipates that OMAP35x will be supported by a broad portfolio of open source software.
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15. How will consumers benefit from OMAP technology?
Answer: Consumers want all of the devices they carry to have the latest in graphic capabilities, allow them to connect to the Internet at all times and want these type of applications to be portable so that they can take them with them wherever they go. They are also looking for applications with multiple features on one device and battery power that lasts longer than ever. OEMs that integrate OMAP into their products will be able to offer consumers all of these things.
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16. What is the difference between these OMAP and DaVinci Technology? Is one of them being phased out?
Answer: From the highest level, OMAP35x is ideal for low power applications where customers require higher performance on the applications processor in addition to multimedia functionality. TI’s DaVinci technology will continue to be synonymous with video enablement. DaVinci offers software, support, peripherals and accelerators specifically targeted to digital video applications.
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17. Isn’t there crossover between DaVinci and OMAP products? How are the target markets different?
Answer: Yes, there is overlap. TI’s large portfolio of specific solutions is one of the values our customers see because it enables them to select the exact processor for their needs. DaVinci technology is a video enabling technology where as OMAP is largely focused on high performance ARM’s processing and lowest power.
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18. What is Smart Reflex technology?
Answer: TI’s SmartReflex™ Power and Performance Management Technologies reduce power consumption and optimize performance. SmartReflex technologies are a broad range of intelligent and adaptive hardware and software techniques that dynamically control voltage, frequency and power based on device activity, modes of operation and temperature. Key features include:
- The SmartReflex technologies approach is a holistic, aggressive way of reducing power while optimizing performance.
- SmartReflex technologies cross traditional boundary lines in systems, coordinating multiple processing cores.
- SmartReflex technologies alleviate chip-level leakage power dissipation at deep sub-micron process geometries.
- SmartReflex technologies go well beyond traditional device power management techniques and feature plans for next-generation solutions.
- TI has shipped hundreds of millions of devices with SmartReflex technologies.
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19. Who are the current TI Developer Network members that support OMAP35x devices?
Answer: The Developers include, but are not limited to:
- Aricent
- BSQUARE
- Ingenient
- Ittiam
- Logic
- Mistral
- Lauterbach
- PacketVideo
- GreenHills
- Code Sourcery
- Microsoft
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20. How did TI select the developer network members that are working on OMAP?
Answer: There will be many developers that will be able to provide expert system integration support depending on the end equipment. This is just the initial list.
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21. Is TI limiting the developers that can work on OMAP?
Answer: No, TI has a broad developer network and we are working with key industry leaders during the initial development. There is a welcome amount of resources and capabilities provided through our TI OMAP developer network support. They all have different capabilities to meet your needs - from GUI, to operating system to networking capacities. So out of the gate there are numerous players with a market leadership in their area that are also already working on the OMAP3 platform.
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22. How much is the OMAP35x Digital Video Software Development Kit?
Answer: The OMAP35x DVSDK is available for no cost with accepted legal terms. The DVSDK is to be used with the OMAP35x EVM for a complete development environment. The DVSDK includes basic audio and video codecs to simplify and accelerate the integration and subsequent optimization into a finely-tuned system. TI’s DaVinci™ technology makes multimedia possible via ARM-based application programming interfaces (API) libraries.
Additionally, the DVSDK integrates TI’s codec engine multimedia framework that works on the Linux 2.6.22 kernel and will also support Windows® Embedded CE 6.0 in the near future. Since the processors are completely scalable, current OMAP35x EVM users can download the OMAP35x DVSDK to begin evaluating on the OMAP3530 device without losing any design time
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