Texas Instruments today announced its new Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors aimed at product designs with 3D interactive touch screens, higher resolution displays, fast performance and flexible integrated connectivity options - all while keeping design costs and power levels low.
"The new Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors from TI allow designers to explore infinite possibilities for upgrading their systems without increasing cost or power consumption," said Dipti Vachani, general manager, Sitara ARM microprocessors, TI. "Moreover, TI gives you all the tools, free software and 24/7 support to design. That's true design ease ? paramount to every TI embedded processor offering."
Starting at $5 and consuming as low as 7 mW of power, the AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors provide low power consumption, prolonging battery life and reducing heat emissions, to enable portable, pocket-sized, fan-less applications. Offering developers high performance with advanced 3D graphics capabilities, touch screen controller and sophisticated peripherals all on a single chip reduces printed circuit board (PCB) space, complexity and bill of materials (BOM) costs by as much as $40 for smaller sized applications such as portable navigation, handheld gaming and educational devices, home and building automation and more.
The AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors offer multiple development tools. Designers can quickly begin development with the $89 BeagleBone, the newest, open source hardware platform from the BeagleBoard.org community. Designers can also use the AM335x evaluation module (EVM) with a seven-inch LCD touch screen and access to all peripherals for $995. The EVM includes TI's WL1271 single-chip 802.11b/g/n + Bluetooth technology in a broadly available module and is the first widely available platform to enable Wi-Fi Direct. The combination of the AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors and proven WL1271 solution provides a low-cost wireless connectivity platform.
Accompanying both the BeagleBone and full-featured EVM are a host of software solutions:
- TI EZ software development kit, allowing demo in minutes and development in less than an hour
- Support for Linux, Android and Windows Embedded Compact 7 operating systems
- Compatible security solutions and real-time operating systems (RTOSes) available from third parties, enabling further product customization and simplifying development
- StarterWare software stack allowing developers to program these microprocessors like a microcontroller, without requiring an operating system
Together these software offerings permit developers to scale the ARM platform, from MCUs to ARM9 devices, ARM Cortex-A8 devices, ARM + DSP devices, as well as video processors and DSPs, saving time and cost.
Developers can begin evaluation of the AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors with the $89 BeagleBone from BeagleBoard.org. They can also develop on TI's full-featured EVM (TMDXEVM3558) for $995, available December 2011. TI's Linux EZ SDK and support for Android 2.2 are available for FREE download from ti.com with Windows Embedded Compact 7 support coming in 1Q2012. TI will also support QNX, Mentor and Wind River third-party, RTOSes later this quarter.
These devices (XAM3358ZCE and XAM3359ZCZ) are sampling today. Prices for the AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors begin at $4.99 (in 100,000 unit quantities). Application-specific reference designs based on the AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors will be available later this year and into 2012.