WonderMedia release a new dual core SoC supporting the latest Android

VIA's WonderMedia were one of the very first SoC manufacturers to put together handheld tablets when the mobile market was moving from another VIA innovation, the OpenBook, to the keyboard-less tablet arena. That first SoC was found in many whitebox tablets during the first 7-inch tablet craze.

Now the company have announced a new one that upgrades the procesosor to a 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-Core. VIA's graphics solution is replaced with an ARM Mali-400 Dual-Processor GPU. The little chip supports a range of display options and the requisite 1080p resolution. The little gem is DRR3 and is intended for tablets and also info kiosk type applications.

"With its high-performance, and feature-rich design, the WM8980 is also optimized for a wide range of innovative system design applications, including tablets, Smart TV, SmartStream for wireless display and multimedia streaming, networked projectors, digital signage, and thin clients."

Google ARM cooperative platforms to assist WonderMedia

Google and ARM are looking into standardizing features so that tablets and other devices running Android can be updated. At the moment, a lot of smaller players, including VIA's WonderMedia which uses an ARM processor, are part of tablets that run Android but can't have the version updated. Digitimes is reporting that Google and ARM are now working together towards Android 3.0 having known platform features. This would make it easier for smaller players to offer a more robust solution.