14 DAY TRIAL // Showcased for the first time in September 2010, RIM's PlayBook tablet was the main attraction of the manufacturer's booth at CES 2011, in Las Vegas.
Even though the official announcement of the tablet contains plenty of information about the tablet's spec sheet, the manufacturer revealed only recently what kind of processor is powering the Blackberry PlayBook.
Texas Instruments and RIM have confirmed that the application processor inside the upcoming Blackberry PlayBook tablet is the dual-core OMAP 4430.
Brian Carlson, Texas Instrument's product line manager, also said that the company had partnerships with other smartphone and tablets manufacturers and that its CPUs were also embedded in several unannounced tablets that he could not publicly disclose at that time.
Even though TI OMAP 4430 is not the latest processor launched by Texas Instruments, it is one of the fastest on the market as it features two ARM Cortex-A9 cores.
One of the main reasons for RIM's choice is the fact that TI OMAP 4430 features an MShield mobile security technology, which enhances the security to protect content, transactions and network access.
Texas Instruments launched one month ago, in December, its latest OMAP 4440 dual-core processor with speeds of up to 1.5 GHz per CPU core.
“The increased performance given by the OMAP4440 applications processor illustrates TI's ability to push mobile computing possibilities with the right processor architecture enveloped in the right platform, “ said Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president, OMAP platform business unit, TI.
“We seized an opportunity to enhance the platform capabilities driving the OMAP4430 processor's success today. As OMAP4430 processor-based products hit the market in first half 2011, we're arming our customers with a huge performance boost via an easy migration to OMAP4440 processor for their next wave of exciting devices,” added El-Ouazzane.
Research in Motion's Blackberry PlayBook tablet is scheduled for release later this quarter.