Are you a driver relying on some type of GPS navigator in order to get to your desired destination? Or perhaps a photographer who wants to mark the exact location of a certain photo he's taken during his/her latest trip? Or, even better, a person keeping an eye out for their spouse's whereabouts? Well, regardless of the situation, chances are that the device you're using incorporates a little something called SiRF Star III, one of the most successful GPS chipsets around. However, it would seem that things are about to change, since SiRF Technology has just announced the development of a brand new type of GPS platform dubbed SiRFprima.

According to the company's statement, the SiRFprima platform "combines a high-end GPS/Galileo location engine, powerful application processor, rich audio and video recording and playback capabilities, high-resolution 3D graphics and a host of peripheral interfaces - all tuned to operate concurrently." Furthermore, it's extremely versatile from the point of view of the supported operating systems, since it works equally well with WinCE or Linux.

The new SiRFprima platform is formed out of an ultra-high-speed, multifunction processor comprised of an advanced ARM11 core, a high-performance location engine that supports both GPS and Galileo satellite systems and an on-chip DSP. Moreover, the platform is supposed to provide quite a high level of performance, featuring 64 channels with -161 dBm sensitivity and 1,000,000 correlators. Additionally, the SiRFprima processor has been specifically designed to support SiRF's proprietary GPS technologies, providing, for example, a dedicated accelerator for the SiRFInstantFixII technology.

It also includes hardware-accelerated 3D graphics and multimedia encoding and decoding engines based on the gaming-grade PowerVR MBX 3D graphics accelerator core, vertex geometry processor and PowerVR MVED1 video encode/decode accelerator from Imagination Technologies. Thus, it supports OpenGL ES, Direct3DM and OpenVG, and can drive full-color, high-resolution displays with multiple hardware overlay layers.

"With its high-performance multifunction engines all tuned to run in harmony, the SiRFprima platform sets a new standard for performance and integration in the emerging market for exciting new location-aware convergence products," said Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing for SiRF. "We believe the SiRFprima platform delivers on our vision of the convergence of location with rich media content, and extends SiRF's leadership in providing innovative solutions that bring the power of location to the mainstream," Mr. Chadha added.

As expected, there's no new pricing info regarding SiRF's new platform, but I guess we'll find out more when the first products incorporating this advanced GPS technology will actually arrive on the market.

We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .