New GPS navigation processor, released

SiRF Technology has made available the new version of its GPS navigation processor called SiRFatlasIV. This ARM11 based GPS application specific processor is made for designing mass-volume GPS integrated mobile systems with location awareness features at low cost.

SiRFatlasIV can provide 64 channels, 34 more channels compared to AtlasIII. SiRFatlasIV multifunction location system processor employing multi-satellite system location engine, with more than 1,000,000 correlators is strong enough to receive signals in locations with poor signal reach such as urban concrete jungles, dense foliage, and steep ravines. SiRFatlasIV provides -161-dBm simultaneous tracking of both GPS and Galileo satellites SiRFatlasIV has 500-MHz ARM11 processor core with vector floating point unit connected by a 64-bit system bus and a high-speed memory controller with DDR 400/Mobile-DDR 333-memory module support. The built-in hardware video post-processing accelerator handles video rendering and display, allowing popular mobile digital TV applications such as TDMB, DVB-H and CMMB to run with minimal impact on CPU performance.

SiRFatlasIV complements SiRF's SiRFprima multifunction location system processor introduced last year in building media rich GPS navigation systems.
The built-in NAND and SD controller interfaces to both single and multi-layer cell (SLC/MLC) flash memory. The on-chip functions include GPS/Galileo baseband, LCD touch-screen controller, 10-bit ADC, video input and high-speed USB 2.0 PHY.

Due to its high sensitivity nature, a simple low cost patch antenna is enough for receiving signals and also to save further on the external components, this device require low cost 2.5 ppm crystal oscillator. SiRF has attempted to save the BOM cost in designing low cost GPS enabled consumer products by using this GPS processor.