Date: 17/08/2010

DaVinci DM37x video processors with ARM Cortex processors

Texas Instruments has developed the new DaVinci DM37x video processors with their ARMCortex-A8 and C64x+ DSP core, imaging and video accelerator (IVA), 3D graphics processor (DM3730 only) and high-performance peripherals (USB 2.0, SD/MMC) integrated on a single system-on-chip (SoC), are suitable for applications requiring HD video processing or a large amount of data processing. These applications include navigation systems, media players, medical patient monitoring devices, industrial test and measurement devices, industrial vision and portable communications.

DM37x processors are software compatible with the OMAP35x generation of processors and pin-to-pin compatible with Sitara AM37x devices allowing for an easy product migration strategy to higher performing options. The differentiation between the DM3730 and DM3725 is that the DM3725 does not have a 3D graphics accelerator. TI claims customers moving to the DM3730 from the OMAP3530 can look forward to a 50 percent increase in ARM performance, a 40 percent increase in DSP performance, double the graphics performance and uses approximately 40 percent less power.

The 800MHz C64x+ DSP and hardware video accelerator handles audio and HD 720p video decoding and encoding (audio and video codecs included) independent of the ARM processor, freeing the ARM core to run other tasks such as responsive 2D or 3D graphical user interface in industrial personal digital assistant (PDA).

The DSP engine is programmable, allowing multiple general signal processing tasks such as digital filtering, math functions and image processing and analysis. For example, in a camera-enabled industrial application, the DSP can run an edge-detection algorithm on the video coming from a camera to detect the presence or absence of people or objects.

DM3730 has a PowerVR 200MHz graphics accelerator, supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and renders 20 million polygons per second, coupled with the advanced display subsystem

Price:
TMDXEVM3730 is priced at US$1,495 from TI.
Customers may also develop on the BeagleBoard-xM, a low-cost, open-source community board equipped with the DM3730 available for $179 from Digi-Key. The DM3730 starts at US$25.60 in 1,000 unit quantities.

Availability: Now