DALLAS, USA: Pandaboard.org has announced the general availability of PandaBoard ES, the next-generation open mobile software development platform based on OMAP 4 technology from Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI).

Priced at USD $182, PandaBoard ES is the industry's first board to rely on TI's OMAP4460 processor, said a press release.

The release further added that the OMAP4460 processor's multicore architecture includes two ARM Cortex-A9 cores running at up to 1.2 GHz each, and excels at offloading tasks from the CPU and GPU to free them for more intensive applications.

Pandaboard.org also announced that the original PandaBoard is the first and today's only open source development tool to be supported in the Android Open Source project running Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich"), giving developers a jumpstart on related software development.

The company claims that PandaBoard ES is software compatible with PandaBoard, easing project migration from the original board to the next-generation version. Pandaboard.org will continue to support both boards via its fully-established community of Linux experts.

Current and new developers designing on mobile open source software distributions such as Android, Linaro and Ubuntu can register projects and access support information at www.pandaboard.org.