It's a mark of how quickly the mobile processor business is operating at that while devices using Texas Instruments' OMAP 4 processors remain to hit the consumer market in any volume, the company has announced OMAP 5.

Of course, Texas Instruments is engaged in fierce battle with Qualcomm and Nvidia for market share, so demonstrating a strong product roadmap is vital.

OMAP 5 is expected to sample in the second half of 2011, with the first consumer devices expected in the second half of 2012.

Targeting smartphones and tablets, TI is trumpeting OMAP 5's 3D capabilities, with the platform offering three times the processing performance, five times the graphical performance, and almost 60 percent average reduction in power than OMAP 4.

Additionally, the OMAP 5's software is designed for reuse to ease migration.

The next generation"The next decade will bring a revolution in mobile computing, as devices continue to converge, attempting to become one single device that meets all of our computing, entertainment, and complex day-to-day needs and interests," said OMAP business unit VP Remi El-Quazzane.

"However, the bridge to true mobile computing enablement was missing until today. The OMAP 5 platform will be at the heart of driving the mobile computing revolution by delivering the highest computing, graphics and multimedia performance possible within the low power budget required by mobile form factors."

OMAP 5 leverages two ARM Cortex A15 MPCores capable of speeds of up to 2 GHz per core. In addition, on board are dedicated engines for video, imaging and vision, DSP, 3D graphics, 2D graphics, display and security.

OMAP 5 will also improve the responsiveness of devices, TI claims, thanks to two ARM Cortex-M4 processors which will offload real-time processing from the Cortex-A15 cores.

[source: TI]