“Nvidia has released a few technical details of its upcoming ‘Kal-El’ Tegra processor, including a secret it’s done well to keep under its hat thus far: it’s a five-core, not four-core, chip.” This fifth core is low-power, and can be used for remedial tasks. Clever, although, as the article notes, not new.
How quint…
I wonder how many “hidden” cores they have =)
Tegra2 contains 3 ARM cores(2xA9 + ARM7).
Dual core OMAP5 has 4 cores (2xA15 and 2xM4)
It is probably a bit hilarious with “smartphone Atom” from Intel. When the first version was announced, I saw a block diagram of it – showing:
a) some fairly standard radio module from a manufacturer specialising in this, most likely with the radio stack running on an ARM core.
b) a part mysteriously labelled ~”32bit RISC” in the “southbridge” of sorts, most likely coordinating the whole thing. ~”32 bit RISC” could mean just a fairly standard ARM core (why Intel would bother with anything else?)
So it’s possible that this whole “push x86 everywhere” Intel contraption actually has more ARM cores than x86 ones
(which is possibly also the case even with an average PC – drive controllers, DSL “modem”, monitor menu, …)
Not central processing units per se… but still, would be a bit hilarious.
Edited 2011-09-21 00:30 UTC
That extrapolation is hilarious indeed… given you had no data whatsoever on the details of that atom design.
Edited 2011-09-21 22:09 UTC
(some emphasis added)
Hm, my apologies, that was way too few hints – luckily, you were here, able to figure out on your own how it’s not exactly a certain info…
(but also not far-fetched, not quite “no data whatsoever”; with stacks of radio modules typically running on some ARM – Intel outright buying out Infineon team providing also their radio chipsets wouldn’t change that – strongly hinting to at least equal number of x86 and ARM cores …also, ~”32bit RISC” label was curiously vague, on an Intel presentation slide)
Screw tablets, I want this in my next laptop.
I doubt that. It seems nvidia isn’t doing very well in competing with other arm based manufacturers.
http://liliputing.com/2011/09/asus-eee-pad-transformer-2-with-nvidi…
Their 3d is worse than what’s currently available. Not sure about their raw cpu. At least this one has neon (I think).
there is so much wrong with what you said. you need to study this.
No, but AMD could put a Nano-core their next desktop CPU, or Intel could put an Atom-core in their next desktop CPU. The hard part is OS support, but hardware-wise it is pretty simple.
Current desktop CPUs idle at 10-20W, the netbook CPUs uses 1-2W at full speed.