14 DAY TRIAL // Although Samsung revealed that the next-generation Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) device will be powered by a dual core 1.2 GHz processor, the Korean company did not reveal the manufacturer of the chipset.
It's unclear who exactly decided that Android 4.0 operating system should run on an OMAP platform created by Texas Instruments instead of a NVIDIA chipset, but Google was among the first to declare its love for TI.
According to TI, it's not the brute force (number of cores), but the level of sophistication that makes a huge difference when it comes to smart multicore architecture.
The company thinks it has what it takes to become the major provider of chipsets for Android devices, including smartphones and tablets, that run the latest Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and the partnership with Google somewhat confirms it.
Although NVIDIA is already testing its Kal-El (Tegra 3) application processor and hopes that the first quad-core mobile devices will be announced in early 2012, Texas Instruments has the upper hand given its current partnership with Google.
However, Google is known for carefully choosing its providers and the moment TI will not be able to provide the best chipsets in terms of performance, it will probably turn to another manufacturer.
“The long-awaited Android 4.0 release is finally being revealed with the OMAP4460 processor powering the absolutely gorgeous Samsung Galaxy Nexus device. What I may be the most excited by is not only the ability to converge to one Android release for both smartphones and tablets, but to be able to pack that level of performance across graphics or video on an HD screen and within the power envelope of a smartphone device. This is where our OMAP smart multicore architecture makes a huge difference,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, TI’s Vice President of OMAP platform business unit.
