Marvell reveals 1GHz ARM chip with 1080p video
updated 07:30 pm EST, Thu February 11, 2010
Marvell intros first ARMADA 600-series chip
Mobile devices chipmaker Marvell on Thursday announced the release of the ARMADA 618 chip, a new processor meant for high-end smartphones. The new chip has an integrated encoder and decoder for both capturing and playing back 1080p videos, and also supplies relatively quick 3D graphics. The part runs at 1GHz and claims the industry's fastest LP-DDR memory, which should cut down on access times.
The 618 is based on the ARM7 architecture and occupies a 12mm square footprint. Either LP-DDR1 or LP-DDR2 RAM up to 533MHz can be used, while the display controller is capable of driving up to four displays at the same time with up to a 2K by 2K resolution. The graphics engine supports DirectX, OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.1. The chip is officially compatible with Linux, Android and Windows Mobile operating systems and is optimzied for Adobe Flash.
Marvell's future ARMADA 600-series application processors will be used for always-on products such as smartphones, e-book readers and tablets.
The chip designer will display the ARMADA 618 at its booth at the Mobile World Congress show next week.
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computers, industry, gadgets, Linux, Windows Mobile, Android, Adobe, Flash, Marvell, ARM, ARMADA
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Oct 2007
It is ARM v7 not ARM7 based
There is a little confusion in the article. The Armada 610 is based on ARMv7 architecture, the architecture found in Cortex A8 and Cortex A9. The ARM7 cores are based on ARMv4 and ARMV5T architectures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
http://www.marvell.com/products/processors/armada/armada_600/Marvell_Armada610_SoC.pdf
ARMv7 is the fastest ARM architecture available, and in Marvell chips is combined with intel wireless MMX2 instructions.
It seems a truly impresive chip for netbooks and tablets.
But it has to compete with very tough contenders:
Qualcomm Snapdragon: Cortex A9 2 cores based
nVidia Tegra2: Cortex A9 2 cores + powerful graphic coprocessor
Creative Zii ZMS-08: Cortex A8 with 64 steam cell coprocessors
TI OMAP4: Cortex A9 2 cores based
Apple A4: Cortex A9 based
all with hardware accelerated MPEG4 and H264 coprocessors, and some with 3D graphic coprocessors and a lot of integrated peripherals