Comments on: TI Joins the Portable Internet Device Race

By: Computing+Connectivity+Application=TI’s Formula for MID | The Click

Computing+Connectivity+Application=TI’s Formula for MID | The Click — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:10:24 +0000

[...] for TI’s MID strategy, it’s changed a bit from when I last spoke with the company in May of 2007. Madhavapeddy says the company is beefing up the clock speed, and is adding more [...]

By: Computing+Connectivity+Application=TI’s Formula for MID

Computing+Connectivity+Application=TI’s Formula for MID — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:31:05 +0000

[...] for TI’s MID strategy, it’s changed a bit from when I last spoke with the company in May of 2007. Madhavapeddy says the company is beefing up the clock speed, and is adding more [...]

By: Texas Instruments to Offer a Champion Chipset for Mobile | The Click

Texas Instruments to Offer a Champion Chipset for Mobile | The Click — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:48:57 +0000

[...] show in Barcelona this week. Since the current generation of TI applications processors were created for smartphones about four years ago, the line really needed a refresh for this era of ubiquitous [...]

By: TI to Sell Part of Its Wireless Chip Biz - GigaOM

TI to Sell Part of Its Wireless Chip Biz - GigaOM — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:37:33 +0000

[...] the division that makes off-the-shelf wireless chips for handsets. The company plans to keeps its OMAP applications processor business (the brains inside mobile phones), and will continue to make custom radios for certain [...]

By: Chip war breaks out among firms targeting mobile Internet devices » VentureBeat

Wed, 28 May 2008 12:00:22 +0000

[...] will be interesting to see how the chip competition unfolds. Texas Instruments is also in the race. But here’s a clue from Yeh. He says that companies that offer a one-size-fits-all chip (i.e. [...]

By: McGuire’s Law » Blog Archive » Enabling Technology: May 2008 Edition

Mon, 19 May 2008 11:18:03 +0000

[...] OMAP 3 [...]

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:11:49 +0000

MID’s….hmmm, well, considering the hype the large iPhone has had, and that the N810 isn’t much bigger (with a 800×480 screen), I think some MID’s could be successful, but not at anything close to cell phone levels. A normal (which means small) cell phone just doesn’t have a big enough display. The only gadget I’m really interested in is the WiMax N810 (WiMax, GPS, slide out keyboard).

As far as x86 vs ARM goes, I don’t think x86 has much advantage — very few people work at the assembly language level, and ARM has good C compilers. The success of open source (which is typicall cross platform) really helps ARM.

I don’t want to carry around a mini-PC – it doesn’t translate to the mobile internet experience. Note that Apple agrees: the successful iPhone has a very different UI from OS-X, while MS’s ho-hum WinCE is more similar to desktop Windows.

TI has far broader aims for the OMAP 3 series – the original OMAP 3 (34xx) were for high volume OEM’s only (TI had not dedicated the resources to support smaller developers). The OMAP 35xx series is for broad embedded use; their first attempt (OMAP 15xx) didn’t do well, but the 35xx looks more promising.

Anyway, embedded has its minuses (smaller volumes for each customer, high support costs) and pluses (many more customers (so less dependent on a few major customers), long life spans). I would never select an Intel, AMD, Nvidia, or Qualcomm chip for an embedded application – Qualcomm & Nvidia have no track record, and Intel and AMD have a record of abandoning their embedded efforts (and screwing the customers).

The high end OMAP (e.g. 3530) have 3-D graphics and video acceleration (e.g. decode HD-720 at 30fps), so I’m not sure how much better the Intel Atom, Qualcom Snapdragon, or Nvidia will be.

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:19:53 +0000

@Wes, A post on the APX chipset is up now. They’ll launch something for the MID market in that line very soon. I’m still not sold on the MID idea though.

By: Mike Chapman

Mike Chapman — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:51:47 +0000

This is really interesting information. Thank you for the update.

By: Wes Felter

Wes Felter — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:25:36 +0000

Don’t forget the NVidia APX as well. A lot of chipmakers are competing for this unproven market.