Nomadik


Nomadik is a family of microprocessors for multimedia applications from STMicroelectronics. It is based on ARM9 ARM architecture and was designed specifically for mobile devices.
On December 12, 2002, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments jointly announced an initiative for Open Mobile Application Processor Interfaces intended to be used with 2.5 and 3G mobile phones, that were going to be produced during 2003. The Nomadik was STMicroelectronics' implementation of this standard.
Nomadik was first presented on October 7, 2003 in the CEATEC show in Tokyo, and later that year the Nomadik won the Microprocessor Report Analysts' Choice Award for application processors.
The family was aimed at 2.5G/3G mobile phones, personal digital assistants and other portable wireless products with multimedia capability. In addition it was suitable for automotive multimedia applications. The most known device using the Nomadik processor was the Nokia N96 which used the STn8815 version of the chip. When the N96 debuted in 2008, the absence of a GPU was noticed.

Processor family

A derivative of the Nomadik was created specifically for navigation systems, named Cartesio STA2062. This was used in products from Garmin such as the Nüvi 205 and Nüvi 500. This derivative used ARM926EJ-S, was coupled with the STA5620 GPS RF downconverter and added a 32-channel hardware GPS correlator.
The Nomadik family has been discontinued. In 2009, when development had already begun on a successor SoC called STn8500, it was superseded by the NovaThor family from ST-Ericsson and renamed U8500 as the ST-NXP Wireless division was merged into the ST-Ericsson joint venture.