http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/11/29/marvell_...hans_processor/Some more update:
There is much more potential in this processor - according to a presentation in August 2005 at least 1.25 GHz - but Marvell, which completed the $600 million acquisition of the Xscale processor business earlier this month, believes that there is simply no need for that kind of processing power in handheld devices today. For now and the near future, 624 MHz and perhaps 806 MHz in some high-end devices will be it.
In fact, other processor features may be much more important to help the chip to become more successful than its predecessor. Marvell claims that Monahans has made quite some progress in the areas of Multimedia capabilities, mobile Internet performance and battery consumption. Perhaps most significantly, the chip is able to run H.264 video, encoded at 3 Mb/s, at 30 frames per second and a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels (VGA). Other new features include the support of up to 5 megapixel digital cameras and, according to Marvell, and "hourglass free" web experience, which promises load webpages up to 50% faster than Hermon.
As its predecessor, Monahans is also capable of adjusting its clock speed between 104 MHz, 208 MHz, 416 MHz and 624 MHz, but apparently has received better fine-tuning in using the different clock speeds for specific applications: For example, playing MP3 files only requires 104 MHz, while loading webpages is accelerated at 624 MHz. All Monahans versions include Intel's Wireless MMX2 instruction set, but - similar to desktop and notebook processors - will differ on features such as cache. For example, only the PXA320 will integrate 256 KB L2 cache. Just like its predecessors, the third-generation Xscale processor is still based on a core that is based on 90 nm ARM technology.
