LONDON -- Texas Instruments Inc (Dallas, Texas) hasannounced a partnership with iRobot Corp to develop robotics technology basedon the TI OMAP application processors.
Founded in 1990, iRobot is best known for the development ofthe Roomba autonomous home vacuum cleaner. To date, iRobot has sold more than7.5 million home robots worldwide. The company has also delivered more than4,500 government and industrial robots for military and civil defenseapplications. These robots have performed thousands of search, reconnaissance,and bomb-disposal missions.
The OMAP range of multicore processors, originally developedas application processors for mobile phones, are generally based on an ARMarchitecture processor core plus one or more specialized processors to supportmultimedia and wireless communications.
The latest generation of OMAP, the fifth, uses a dual-coreCortex-A15 processor licensed from ARM Holdings plc and PowerVR SGX544dual-core graphics licensed from Imagination Technologies Group plc. Two ICshave been defined so far. The OMAP5430 is targeted for products that demand thesmallest size supporting dual-channel, LPDDR2 Package-on-Package (PoP) memory.The OMAP5432 is targeted for mobile computing and consumer products that aremore cost-sensitive, without the extreme size constraint and supportingdual-channel DDR3/DDR3L memory. Both of these devices use a TI-defined,low-power 28-nanometer fabrication process.
TI did not indicate whether partnership with iRobot would bebased on OMAP 5 or earlier ICs or would involve the development of future OMAPchips, nor did TI state how soon robots based on OMAP would be deployed.
This story was originally posted by EETimes.
