LONDON—Fabless chip company Amlogic Inc (Santa Clara, CA) has developed a family of dual-core SOCs based on the Cortex-A9 processor architecture licensed from ARM Holdings plc.
The AML8726-MX family combines a 1.5-GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core with a Mali-400 graphics processing unit and is intended for use with tablet computers, set-top boxes, and mobile devices, the company said. The SOCs include Amlogic's own high-definition video processor, ARM TrustZone security, and support for "over-the-top" video playback.
The 1.5-GHz clock frequency is achieved using a 40-nm low-power process, the company said.
Amlogic, is one of a number of Chinese-US fabless chip companies with offices on both sides of the Pacific ocean. Amlogic is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with offices in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing and Hong Kong.
"We are pleased to introduce our third generation Cortex-A9 processor-based devices and deliver a solution to the dual-core segment that would require many of our competitors to use a tri-core design," said John Zhong, CEO of Amlogic, in a statement.
In the same statement Mike Inglis, chief commercial officer at ARM said: "The combination of the energy-efficient ARM Cortex-A9 processors and Mali-400 GPUs alongside Amlogic's own IP and system design expertise has resulted in a SOC that enables a rich media experience. This is particularly suitable for OTT (Over The Top) delivery, 3-D Gaming and other Internet applications, all of which are key to the future growth of the tablet, set-top-box, and smart-TV markets."
AML8726-MX chips are sampling and Android 4.0.3 ice-cream sandwich-based reference development platforms will be available in late April 2012. The chips also have the ability to Linux 3.X, OpenGL ES 2.0.
This story was originally posted by EE Times.
