Texas Instruments are set to present a new, custom chip design intended for a cellphone expected later this year, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco later this week, which analysts are predicting will “outflank” attempts by rival Intel to woo mobile device manufacturers with their own new CPUs.  The TI design is capable of decoding MPEG-4 video streams, includes an 840MHz ARM11 to run applications, a 480MHz TI C55x DSP core to handle 2G and 3G baseband communications and a 240MHz image processor, while only drawing 500mW peak and, when running certain low-intensity applications, as little as 100-250mW. 

Intel’s competing Silverthorne CPU demands far greater power – active work drawing a minimum of 600W, with 2GHz clock-rates requiring 2W – and is expected to grace devices no smaller than a paperback book – i.e. somewhere in the UMPC range – rather than smartphones.  However, a follow-on design in 2009 might slim down its requirements and thus be suitable for cellphones.

Nonetheless, the industry is relatively dismissive of the Silverthorne unit:

“The competition considers 2 watts laughable … Six hundred milliwatts is the power budget for an entire cell phone processor and baseband” Will Strauss, principal, Forward Concepts