ARM CPUs: today and tomorrow

[diogen]

NVidia is riding high on their success with the Tegra2 in the Android tablet market.
A lot has been said about the next iteration of the Tegra chip - quad-core Kal-El.

Here is a nice article about the technology behind it
AnandTech - Kal-El Has Five Cores, Not Four: NVIDIA Reveals the Companion Core

Diogen.

 

[diogen]

Just three short years ago (two iterations of Moore's law) playing HD discs - HD DVD and Blu-ray - on the PC was a multi-$100 affair with quite a bit of luck mixed in. And that was after all the DRM was stripped and did not include lossless audio. Today even Intel onboard video on sub-$100 motherboards can easily handle Blu-ray streams with hardly noticeable increase in CPU utilization.

GPUs are to "blame" for that! For the most part...

The same scenario is playing out in the smartphone market.
Although all CPU manufacturers use the same blueprint - ARM - the GPU implementation is very different.
Here is Anand's last comparison of the latest smartphone GPUs

And although any testing methodology can be debated, it's a wild West out there!

From this chart Tegra2 performance isn't exactly stellar.
And going Kal-El might only move it closer to what Mali-400 (Galaxy S II GPU) offers today.

Bottom line: the fine balance between graphics performance and power requirements will define the smartphone/tablet market for the next few years.

Diogen.

 

[diogen]

Kal-El is shown off in a real device on China Expo
ZTE T98 tablet with next-gen NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor spotted in Beijing -- Engadget

Nice to see it's ready for prime time...

Diogen.

 

[John Kotches]

For most users a quad-core T3 would suffice for every day computing needs.

There will always be specialized needs which will require higher powered systems, but those will become fewer and far between.

IMO, Motorola and Asus are getting it. Motorola with their desktop and laptop docks and Asus with their Transformer and Slider tablets.

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

 

[diogen]

Interesting interview of John Biggs, ARM co-founder
The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs -- Engadget

Diogen.