What's Next? OMAP 4 in 2011, Mainstream 3630

While we've already seen hardware based on it today, in 2011 TI expects that its high end customers will be shipping devices based on the OMAP 4 SoC. Like NVIDIA’s Tegra 2, OMAP 4 will use ARM’s first Out of Order microprocessor - the Cortex A9. The L2 cache will jump to a beefy (for a mobile SoC) 1MB, the memory interface will be upgraded to LPDDR2 and overall performance will take a big step forward towards Intel’s Atom platform.

With that in mind, where will this leave today’s 3630? The mainstream market of course.

Today, SoCs like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and TI’s OMAP 3630 are found only in the highest end flagship phones. ARM11 based offerings are still quite popular elsewhere in the market. Eventually, TI expects this to change.

The move to 45nm will allow TI to move the 3630 and its derivatives into more mainstream devices. The OMAP 4 however will push the 3630 down and become the new flagship SoC going forward. In other words, the Cortex A8 will finally start replacing ARM11 in mainstream smartphones.

The OMAP e-Fuse & Motorola's Bootloader The Software: Android 2.1 and MOTOBLUR lite
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  • czesiu - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    great review!

    higher res version for this please:)
    http://images.anandtech.com/doci/3826/DROIDX-Anand...
  • Brian Klug - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    I'm actually going to dump all the screen comparison photos I've got (there are quite a few) into a gallery, then you can peruse at native resolution. Should be up in a little bit ;)

    -Brian
  • hatter_india - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    Fantastic review but I expect no less from AnandTech. But there are a couple of bloopers:

    1- OMAP 3630 is third mobile chip to use 45nm process. First is of course A4. But second is Samsung's Hummingbird, a chip that the korean company designed with help of Intrinsity. This chip is found in Galaxy S or its variants. Samsung is the same company that also tweaked A4, which incidentally is fabbed by Samsung. Too many coincidences ;-)

    2- A comparison to PowerVR SGX 540 found on Galaxy S would have been interesting as according to Samsung SGX 540 is almost three times more powerful than SGX535.

    3- Droid X should have also been compared with Galaxy S or any of its variants like Captivate, Vibrant etc
  • hatter_india - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    This line: Samsung is the same company that also tweaked A4, which incidentally is fabbed by Samsung

    Should read: Intrinsity is the same company that also tweaked A4, which incidentally is fabbed by Samsung
  • Goty - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    Does AT have any plans to review any of the Galaxy S phones? I just picked up a Captivate on Sunday and I'd love to see how it stacks up. I just ran the Neocore benchmark and got around 55 FPS, which speaks well of the GPU, but I'd like to see results from the other tests you guys do.
  • Brian Klug - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    Hey Goty,

    We definitely have plans to do reviews of all of the Galaxy S phones we can get our hands on. I'm working on getting them as soon as possible ;)

    I'm also pretty excited to explore that SoC and compare.

    -Brian
  • Ram21 - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    Really enjoyed this review. Keep up the great work! Being as thorough as you guys are really helps to make good decisions on purchases.
  • SonicIce - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    lol how long before we can attach an external mouse and keyboard to a phone to use it as a pc and play 3d games online with it
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link

    How about this?

    http://www.androidcentral.com/dell-streak-logitech...
  • ltfields - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    Guys, another gold standard review. I may not be able to pick up an X because I'm still under contract with another carrier, but the reviews are riveting. Keep up the excellent work!

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