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Word out there is that Nokia already has the next device in their Internet Tablet Platform.
Lets take a guess at its next CPU.
For all the talk about what the 770 can do, given better software, and or RAM, the CPU was designed for a mobile phone, not a Internet Tablet. The CPU inside the 770 is the TI OMAP1710. It’s an impressive CPU, I suppose. But TI just released a whole new family in the OMAP line- the OMAP3 Family. The first CPU in that family is the OMAP3430, and if you look at it’s specs, it kicks ass.
Here is the 1710:
And here is the 3430:
Check out those features. Please Nokia, I pray that you’ll have the OMAP3430 in the 880. I’ll even shell out another $349 to buy it if it does.
Why OMAP3430 is not yet suitable for N880?
o OMAP3430 is just recently launched
o Whenever TI or any semiconductor launches their new generation of chip, it requires for them to enable or support to create software environment to demonstrate every feature or the chip they promise to deliver using it in your product.
o TI alone can’t do all the stuff. So it involves other Multimedia companies, Baseporting companies. Ultimately it take time to stabilize the software and get the profiling nos.
o Don’t forget that initialy version of Silicon has high possibility of bugs, so TI producing next version of their chip, which those bugs fixed.
o Silicon like this needs to be tested in the different environment with different memory speeds and other hardware combination with avaiilbility of their softwares.
o OMAP3430 is having new ARM core compared to OMAP2420,
o OMAP3430 is having new DSP core compared to OMAP2420 and OMAP1710.
Because of above thigs it takes time to develop software for
o Symbian/Linux baseporting – Driver development and stabilization. Remember that it is ARM Cortex core compared to ARM11 in OMAP2420, for which baseport is available already.
o C64x compraed to C55x available in OMAP1710. For speedy delivery of product in the market, you make sure that we can easily port the available DSP software of OMAP1710 to next gen processor, which is not the case here. But OMAP2420 fits the bill, as it has DSP with C55x and IVA with ARM7 and bunch of co-processors.
o Remember that for GPL compliant and community involvement you need to bring up DSPBridge and IVABridge for this Asynchronous processor, and also that should be easily scalable for multiple processors in future.
So, in my view, OMAP2420 fits the bill for next gen tablet not OMAP3430. It will take time, roughly 1.5 to 2 yrs for the product on this chip.