An acute increase in the demand for smartphones and tablets the world over is somewhat proportional to the various platform performance points that need to be addressed. ST-Ericsson recently announced its multimedia NovaThor family of smartphone platforms which combines the Nova A9600, A9540, A9500 application processors with the Thor M7400 and M7300 modems for improved performance.
The NovaThor platforms combine modems, connectivity chipsets and application engines which offer device makers the ability to easily produce compact and cost-effective devices like tablets or smartphones. ST-Ericsson’s new Nova A9600 features a dual ARM Cortex- A15 MPCore having each core operating at around 2.5GHz and includes a Powervr Series6 GPU, codenamed ‘Rogue’. It is expected to bring a significant amount of enhancement in graphics performance and should be able to play HD videos at 12fps.
“By offering the most advanced application processors combined with our latest generation of thin HSPA+ and LTE modems, ST-Ericsson is setting new performance standards for our industry,” commented Gilles Delfassy, president and CEO of ST-Ericsson. “Our approach will accelerate innovation in the smartphone and tablet markets enabling consumers to experience human-machine interfaces based on gesture, voice and image recognition, 3D cameras and life-like augmented reality.”
The Nova A9540 uses a dual-core Cortex-A9 running at up to 1.8GHz and the Nova A9500 has the same processing engine though it operates at approximately 1.2GHz. The two modems dubbed Thor M7400 and Thor M7300 support the HSPA+ dual carrier technologies and the latest LTE. These modems permit the development of tablets and smartphones. The Nova application processors and the Thor modems will be presented as combined NovaThor solutions.
There is no official word on when ST-Ericsson will mass produce these units, but it will start sampling them to customers this year.