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Omap3530 or DM365 ?

actionman
Prodigy 10 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: OMAP3530

Hi I am coming from a s/w dev background and am looking for a video HD capable solution and Im not sure which is best DM365 (seems to be better) or OMAP3530 ?  I also want to run WINCE, any clues, I've read the TI docs on both but whats the main dif ?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Wayne

  • 0
    TI__Mastermind 37340 points

    Wayne,

    DM365 has a dedicated MJCP (MPEG/JPEG co-cprocessor) and an ARM9; the MJCP is capable of supporting only a predefined set of audio/video algorithms the hardware was optimized to support (e.g. h.264, mpeg4,...).  Because this hardware was optimized to support a set of video codecs, it can reach HD resolutions for that set of codecs at a low price point.  The ARM9 is very popular throughout the industry and you can run a variety of operating systems on it, but is not as powerful as the Cortex-A8 ARM found on the OMAP35x.  So you will need to consider all the software that you will be running on ARM9 (e.g. winCE, PDF viewer, browser...) as each piece of software requires certain amount of CPU and memory to run correctly.  I wish they would have ratings like in the PC world (e.g. requires winxp, 2.0 GHZ CPU, and 2 G RAM...), and maybe it will some day... but today since most vendors develop custom software, each vendor evaluates that on a case by case basis.

    OMAP35x has a more powerful Cortex-A8 and a 64x+ DSP core.  The DSP core can be used for any math intensive algorithm and as you can imagine it can do more than just a limited set of audio and video codecs; however, this flexibility comes at a slight price increase.  In addition, since the hardware is not optimized to video algorithms, it will likely not be able to reach the HD video performance DM365 can.  However, the Cortex-A8 will not only run WinCE better, but it will likely be able to run many other applications at a better performace than ARM9. I believe the rule of thumb is that the Cortex-A8 is 4x as powerful as the ARM9 (of course MHz ratings for each of these can change this).

    If you must have HD, DM365 would be the way to go, it should be able to run WinCE though it do not know how well it does, but many of our ARM9 products run winCE so I know is possible.  You may want to go for the highest MHZ rated DM365 for winCE in order to get better performance.