Posts in Handhelds

Xscale processor going places

Darius Chang | Dec 01, 2006

Since acquiring Intel's communications and application chip business for about US$600 million in June this year, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell Technology Group's latest PXA 3xx processor series may go beyond it's traditional place in handhelds and PDA phones.

The next generation of mobile chips, codenamed Monahans, is said to be significantly more power-friendly than their predecessor, the PXA27x series. Starting with the high-end PXA3xx Monahans processor, which is the first in the family to ship to manufacturers, Marvell also offers the value PXA 300 for budget handhelds, while the PXA310 chip provides superior multimedia performance with extended battery life. According to the chipmaker, the PXA310 is the first to offer 30fps H.264 playback performance at VGA resolution.

The new series of processors utilize Intel SpeedStep technology and the latest MMX2 instruction set for increased multimedia performance. Marvell's benchmarks claim that audio playback time is doubled to 14.61 hours, while the 7.17 hours of video rendering is 30 percent longer compared with the previous generation of handheld processors.

Though Intel has sold the technology, the new chips will still be called Intel Xscale chips. In a conference call with Marvell Technology, the semiconductor manufacturer told CNET Asia it envisions these chips to leap beyond just handheld PDA and smart phone devices. With their low power consumption and multimedia performance, Marvell sees them going into Ultra Mobile PCs (which are currently based on Intel mobile processors), gaming devices, multimedia playback devices and even handheld gaming consoles. For now, we can look forward to devices based on the new processors appearing in the first quarter of 2007.