14 DAY TRIAL // With an impressive number of manufacturers at work in order to develop the fastest processor possible, the ARM based CPU race is going really strong, Texas Instruments just announcing the industry's highest performing single-core Cortex A8 microprocessors, the 1.5GHz Sitara AM389x MPUs, specifically designed for single-board computers, gateways, routers, servers, industrial automation, human machine interfaces and point-of-service data terminals.
Compatible with a wide range of operating systems, including Linux, Microsoft Windows Embedded Compact 7 and Android, the new Sitara AM3892 and AM3894 chips are based on ARM's Cortex A8 core, Texas Instruments also packing these MPUs with PCIExpress Gen2, SATA 2.0, dual Gigabit Ethernet and dual DDR2/DDR3 interfaces allowing manufacturers that build products around its Sitara solutions to save PCB space and reduce building costs.
The PCIe and SATA interfaces included on chip also mean this MPUs will be compatible with a wide range of third party storage devices and add-in cards, such as TV tuners, RAID controllers, sound cards, 3G or WiMAX modems, hard disks or solid state drives.
Apart from the additional connectivity interfaces, these Sitara chips can also support two 1920x1280 resolution displays simultaneously, the AM3894 coming with a SGX530 graphics accelerator (that can be clocked up to 333MHz) in order to deliver 3D graphics for more complex GUIs or games.
Thanks to the PowerVR SGX530 graphics processing unit, HD video decoding should also be among the feature list of the AM3894 processor, but Texas Instruments does not state if the Sitara AM3892 is capable of decoding HD content, although both chips come with HDMI outputs.
Finally, Texas Instruments says these new chips will be available for sampling as evaluation modules, the DDR2 version being available for $1,895 while a DDR3 module with video capture capabilities is expected to begin shipping in 1Q2011, although its pricing is not yet known.