Texas Instruments announced the OMAP 5 chipset with gesture-based support

(PhysOrg.com) -- Texas Instruments is bringing a new chipset to the market, with the potential to support gesture-based interfaces and possibly Microsoft's ARM-based version of Windows. The new chipset is called the OMAP 5 mobile platform. The system's chip will work with what is expected to have a gesture-based system similar to Microsoft's current video game hardware, Kinect.

The OMAP 5 chipset is based on the brand-new ARM Cortex-A15 processor, which allows for more than 4GB of memory and support for multiple operating systems when virtualized in the hardware. This type of setup could allow for a mobile device that is Android-based in your hand, and Windows-based when you plug it into a dock and use it as your computer.

A similar setup was shown in the product demo video. This scenario is in-line with the list of operating systems that Texas Instruments executives expect to target for future devices. This list includes: Android, Chrome OS, and Microsoft Windows. While running multiple operating systems is possible now, Texas Instruments expects that this combination will allow for the running of multiple operating systems much more easily.

The chipset will be paired with a multi-core Imagination PowerVR SGX544 GPU processor. The company expects that this combination will have five times the graphics performance of the current SGX540 model. The Imagination PowerVR SGX544 GPU also has support for Microsoft's DirectX 9.

The chip is expected to be released later this year, though consumer devices featuring the chip will most likely not be on sale until 2012. No details about devices that the chips may end up in has been released at this time.