MIPS and Actions Semiconductor to bring Android 'Honeycomb' to new 1.3GHz chipset for tablets

SUNNYVALE, USA & ZHUHAI, CHINA: MIPS Technologies Inc. and Actions Semiconductor Co. Ltd, one of China's leading fabless semiconductor companies that provides solutions for portable consumer electronics, are collaborating to bring Android 3.0, also known as "Honeycomb," to a new 1.3GHz MIPS-Based chipset from Actions.

Honeycomb is the newest version of the Android operating system designed specifically for tablets and other large format products. After recently announcing that it is porting Honeycomb to the MIPS architecture, MIPS is now porting Honeycomb to MIPS-Based tablets, with support from Actions.

The new high-performance system-on-chip (SoC) from Actions leverages a superscalar MIPS32 74Kf core (with floating point unit) running at 1.3GHz. In addition to Android, the new chip incorporates an OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics processing unit, USB 2.0 OTG, HDMI 1.3, support for multi-format high definition 1080p video encoding and decoding, and other advanced functionality. Actions and MIPS will also work together to enable the platform with Adobe Flash Player 10.2 optimized for the MIPS architecture.

"With its new 1.3GHz chip specifically designed for tablets, Actions is a flag bearer for the MIPS architecture in the mobile market," said Art Swift, vice president of marketing and business development, MIPS Technologies. "This is one of the first times a MIPS licensee has achieved such high frequency with a MIPS-Based SoC targeted for mobile applications. As MIPS continues to make inroads into the mobile market, we are working closely with innovative licensees such as Actions to enable them to deliver fully optimized MIPS-Based solutions for their specific target applications."

"With the MIPS architecture, we are able to achieve extremely high performance with power efficiency that differentiates our solutions in the market. For more than 10 years, Actions has experienced success in the market with SoCs for portable consumer electronics. Our MIPS-Based chips are already shipping in portable media player products including our Series 23, 25, 27, game family G1000, tablet family ATM70, and a feature phone. Now we are pleased to collaborate with MIPS to deliver a chip specifically designed for tablets. Into this SoC we have integrated the most advanced technologies that will provide an ideal user experience," said Robert Wang, vice president of marketing, Actions Semiconductor.