With more and more handsets featuring GPS (or at least Assisted-GPS) functionality, manufacturers are having to take extra steps to stand out from the crowd.  SiRF, one of the key players in the GPS silicon field, have today announced a chip that could provide just that edge: the SiRFprima module features not only the satellite receiver hardware but a GPS/Galileo location engine, application processor, support for audio/video recording and playback capabilities, high-resolution 3D graphics and a number of peripheral interfaces, all of which are capable of running concurrently. 

Based around an ARM11 core and on-chip DSP, the SiRFprima also has Imagination Technologies’ gaming-grade PowerVR MBX 3D graphics accelerator core, vertex geometry processor and PowerVR MVED1 video encode/decode accelerator for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics.  The satellite receiver is the first capable of simultaneously tracking both GPS and Galileo signals, and is compatible with SiRF’s proprietary add-ons such as SiRFInstantFixII, while the chipset has connections for touchscreens, mass storage devices, video cameras, DVD players, satellite radios and other devices.

The SiRFprima system will be on show at the Mobile World Congress next week, and available to OEM manufacturers in Q2 2008.