The "Costo" moniker is already being used at TI for the 1030 version, dubbed "LoCosto", which is targeted at the low cost phones sector, including those targeting the developing countries, and the company says is being used by 15 phone manufacturers.

The processor combines TI's single-chip DRP technology with the multimedia features of OMAP-Vox platform. The latest version was announced at a wireless event this week in China where Rich Templeton, TI's President and Chief Executive Officer, told an audience of handset manufacturers and mobile service operators that "all of us have an important role to play" in helping China connect more people in its rural areas and across the country.

The single-chip OMAPV1035 will be made in a 65-nm process and support GSM, GPRS and EDGE standards. It is one of the first mobile phone chip designs to use the ARM9 core. The 1030 is being made using a 90-nm process.

Texas Instruments says the "eCosto" platform represents the latest advances in its integrated DRP technology, an approach to wireless chip design which applies digital technology to simplify radio frequency (RF) processing in advanced CMOS process technology. Integrating the RF transceiver and analog codec with the digital baseband significantly reduces board space and extends battery life.

"As the emerging markets evolve beyond voice-centric, basic multimedia applications, we must support the integration of more advanced multimedia features into our single-chip cell phone solutions," said Alain Mutricy, TI's Vice President and General Manager of Cellular Systems Solutions for its Wireless Terminals Business Unit, at the Chinese summit.

The latest platform will offer advanced video capture, playback and streaming with up to QVGA screen quality at 30 frames per second; digital still camera capability up to three megapixels with sub-second shot- to-shot delay; color LCD; and interactive 2D/3D gaming with graphics comparable to that of portable video consoles.

The 1035 uses an ARM9 single-chip digital baseband with DSP and offers hardware-accelerated Java and 3D graphic processing up to 100-K polygons-per-second.