Sometimes less means more: Texas Instruments OMAP 5 system-on-chip with two general-purpose ARM Cortex-A15 core manages to beat a "commercially available" SoC with four general-purpose Cortex-A9 cores in an Internet browsing benchmark. TI claims that special-purpose accelerators and other improvements can do wonders for mobile devices.

Texas Instruments has tested two tablet-like devices in an Internet browsing benchmark. According to TI, OMAP 5 with 800MHz clock-speed "and specialized cores and accelerators", compared to a "commercial device powered by a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor at 1.3GHz" beats the latter by almost two times, according to a TI video. 

The only commercially available quad-core system-on-chip featuring ARM Cortex-A9 architecture is Nvidia Tegra 3, which is inside Asus Transformer Prime media tablet. Since at present there are no commercially available TI OMAP 5-based devices, it is unclear how well they will perform against Asus Transformer Prime.

"The OMAP 5 processor-based device handily beats the quad-core based device, in rendering the web pages while downloading videos and playing an MP3 file," a statement by TI reads.

TI OMAP 5 system-on-chips are based on two ARM Cortex-A15 cores, two Cortex-M4 processors for low-power offload and real-time control, Power VR SGX544 graphics technology, dual-channel LPDDR2/DDR3 memory controller. The OMAP 5 platform supports all the necessary technologies to power smartphones and tablets, e.g., hardware-accelerated video playback, support for various cameras, USB,  MMC, SD and other. The chip is made using 28nm process technology at TSMC.

TI advices to visit booth at Mobile World Congress in Hall 8, stand 8A84 to see the OMAP 5 platform in action.

Tags: Texas Instruments, TI, OMAP, ARM, Cortex, Nvidia, Tegra