Marvell: a dedicated processor for Chromecast Google

Marvell processor specialist, is the company that the team Chromecast Google. Marvell already fitted to some models of Google TV with its Armada chip, and it is still a model in this range is the game.
 

Very good for video

Armada 1500 is a mini-ARM SoC that uses the core house Marvell, the PJ4B. This CPU is already used in the Armada 1500 classic offers - according Marvell - about the same performance as the ARM Cortex A9 (2.61 DMIPS / MHz against 2.5). It integrates with Vivante GPU (GC1000), rare but which is also found at Freescale. Marvell does not indicate the differences between the classic Armada 1500 (88DE3100) and Armada 1500-mini (88DE3005) but we can assume that it is slower and has only one core.

The interesting point of this SoC, and a priori reason for his choice by Google, this is obviously the video decoding. It incorporates a decompression engine that decodes vMeta (bulk) H.264 (High Profile Level 5, MVC), VC1, MPEG2, MPEG4 and Divx-HD, VP8 (WebM) Google and RV10 . It also supports H.264 in a mode that reduces latency, an important point when you have to show something other than video. Finally, it also decodes materially codecs used for images (JPEG, PNG, GIF etc..).

Be careful, as this is the mini-version of the SoC that is used and the classic model is already quite far from the high-end SoC in performance, do not expect to have a smooth version of Android on Chromecast, although hack are already available: HDMI key Google is scheduled for its dedicated system and is not really suitable for other uses ...