Texas Instruments’ $149 Beagle Board can be purchased from DigiKey’s Web site. It contains a dual-core OMAP3 platform with a 600-MHMHz Cortex-A8 and C64+ DSP processor with video accelerator. The chip also has hardware support for Open GL ES 2.0 that can render up to 10 Mpolygons/s. The 430-MHMHz C64+ can handle HD video. Linux and Windows CE are available for the Cortex-A8, while DSP-BIOIOS and codecs run on the C64+. Open-source codecs are in the works. For now, some closed-source codecs are available for free. Programming is possible via JTAG or USB. An SD/MMC slot provides storage expansion. Some but not all of the peripheral ports are available for interfacing. The board also has 128 Mbytes of LPLPDDR memory and 256 Mbytes of NAND flash.
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