TI to partner ARM for Eagle concept

SAN JOSE: Texas Instruments Inc is racing to be the first licensee for ARM Holdings plc’s next-generation Cortex-A series processor core — they have announced their offering — codenamed the Eagle. The company is quite sure about being several steps ahead of rivals working in the same direction.

Sources say that there will be an announcement later this year regarding the partnership that TI will have with ARM for the conception and definition of Eagle. TI’s intentions are to use the new processor to expand future OMAP platform offerings.

TI formally linked up with ARM on this project in June 2009. ARM Holdings recently announced plans to launch three additions to its Cortex family of processor cores during 2010. The cores, which have been codenamed Eagle, Heron and Merlin, all have lead licensing customers. It is expected that the delivery of intellectual property will start either in 2010 or early in 2011, depending on the core.

Eagle sits within the high-performance Cortex A-class, Heron sits within the embedded and real-time Cortex R-class and Merlin is a novel core for ARM's Cortex-M grouping.