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Neo1
While these numbers are nice and speak good of ARM, it's only one half of the ...
dirk.bruere
Nvidia demos quad-core Tegra in tablet
Rick Merritt
2/15/2011 7:38 PM EST
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Nvidia leapfrogged rival Qualcomm by showing a working version of its next-generation Tegra, a four-core mobile processor. The demo at the Mobile World Congress, described in an Nvidia blog, came one day after Qualcomm said it will ship a quad-core Snapdragon in early 2012.
Nvidia's Kal-El chip was demonstrated running in an Android tablet. It can support up to 2,560 x 1,600 pixel resolution and 1,440-progressive video thanks in part to a 12-core graphics unit on the chip that also supports 3-D audio.
The Kal-El chip delivers five times the performance of the current Tegra 2, Nvidia claimed. The company rated the processor at 11,352 on the Coremark benchmark, significantly above the Intel Core2Duo T7200.
Nvidia also revealed a road map of annual upgrades planned for the Tegra line out to 2014. The next generation, called Wayne, delivers nearly ten times the performance of the Tegra2 in 2012 and is followed by Logan in 2013 and Stark in 2013 hitting nearly 100x the Tegra2 performance.
Nvidia said it is sampling the part now and it will be in production in August.
Qualcomm said Monday its quad-core chip, called Krait will hit data rates up to 2.5 GHz. Nvidia did not reveal data rates or other details for its future Tegra parts.
In November, Marvell announced a quad-core ARM chip, the Armada XL aimed at servers and other data center systems.
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Nvidia
2/15/2011 9:15 PM EST
It seems that Nvidia is one company that has an excellent strategy to make inroads in the mobile computing space. Even though Their desktop segment is being battered by AMD, their concentrated efforts to claim a rightful place in the mobile domain seems to be really working...
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eewiz
2/16/2011 12:48 AM EST
"The company rated the processor at 11,352 on the Coremark benchmark, significantly above the Intel Core2Duo T7200."
Wowww! Intel is going to be smoked :)
ARM CPU speeds are increasing much faster than expected. Intel wont come up with such faster processor for mobile segment, else its own notebook segment margins will get cannibalized.
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TingLu
2/16/2011 9:36 AM EST
I am wondering how performance number is measured. 10x is likely GPU performance. Since it is still Cortex-A9 based design, twice amount of cores and reasonable amount of frequency boost will not give more than 3x ARM CPU performance increase. Intel ATOM is already in big trouble. Current generation of Cortex-A9 is already exceeding ATOM processor performance at higher frequency. Give performance number QualComm and TI gave on their next generation processor. ARM processors might soon get into desktop/notebook market. In a few years, ARM processors is likely to make in road into server market. We would like to see Intel x86 monopoly being challenged by ARM architecture. In 10 years or sooner, we might be wondering who is going to challenge ARM dominance from mobile to server world. What if ARM stops license its IP and starts to manufacture own processors like today's Intel to maximize its profit margin?
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dirk.bruere
2/16/2011 4:08 PM EST
Or... what if ARM go to a 64 bit chip, or even 128?
Intel and AMD would be in big trouble across the board. Then throw in a Chrome/Android hybrid - say, Android 4 or 5...
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Neo1
2/19/2011 1:56 AM EST
While these numbers are nice and speak good of ARM, it's only one half of the coin. The software dictates who will make or break the market. But it is pleasing to hear that X86 need not be the defacto standard on every PC.
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