Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, Video, iPhone
New hybrid ARM CPU/video chip debuts
Yummy news on the chip front today. (Not so much on the fish front, but Apple's never been big on the iCod.) Samsung recently introduced the S3C6410, a hybrid processor that merges a sweet 667MHZ ARM CPU with a cool multi-format video decoder that handles H.264, MPEG-4 and VC-1. By offloading all that video work from the main CPU, you get increased performance and you can do other fun things with your CPU while the video is recording or playing back. This baby can handle 640x480 full-speed video, possibly both sending and receiving, with little demand on your system.
The iPhone and iPod touch use an earlier sibling of this chip. Now pass me the vinegar and mayo.
[via Electronista]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ari said 4:20PM on 2-11-2008
hahahaha for some reason, i found this post really humorous.
This is really exciting news though. Maybe some video encoding so that we can finally record video on our iPhones :)
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Achal Aggarwal said 4:13PM on 2-11-2008
id love to see one of these in the future versions of the iphone...
btw, what do you think is the future of the iphone... i mean with the jailbreaking of ootb 1.1.3 just a command away using the ziphone... where do you see this community going???
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Bob said 4:33PM on 2-11-2008
On other topics...
...Any word on an Apple TV update coming tomorrow?
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Dylan ODonnell said 4:59PM on 2-11-2008
fish.. iCod.. *rolls eyes*
ohhh Erica....
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Mark Urban said 7:56PM on 2-11-2008
You are very funny and clever, as well as, bright and knowledgeable. Perhaps sometimes, I suspect, your humor is too subtle for some, but still very enjoyable.
If you have the occasion to check my website www.markUrban.com you may see other things clever. Sorry, for some reason it loads very, very slowly.
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Hawkman said 5:21PM on 2-11-2008
I'm a bit confused. The iPhone can already play 640*480 video - more than this, in fact - so what advantages does this chip offer to the mobile OS X platform specifically?
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Allister said 1:19AM on 2-12-2008
Only in America (is the Wikipedia reference needed)! Still, I shouldn't mock - at least you have an any-version of the iPhone. :-( I'm waiting for a 2nd gen 32Gb iPhone that I don't have to crack.
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David Frantz said 11:08AM on 2-12-2008
"Now pass me the vinegar and mayo."
Ok this likely means something but could you fill the rest of us in?
By the way, such processor really are the cats pajamas for generation 2 devices. We should be able to see extended battery lifetimes and board space for more features. Maybe a full report would be possible.
I'm still wondering how much interest Apple really has in Silverthorne and the like. It just seems like to me that ARM is going to be very tough to compete with due mostly to the high integration of its devices.
Dave
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especkman said 7:54PM on 2-12-2008
The baseband chip in the iPhone already provides hardware acceleration for encoding and decoding video. I always assumed that Apple was making use of it for their video playback, and that they'd use it in the future for video recording.
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