It does. The fifth core is a very low power ARM7 core that is used for low performance tasks (think of it as a processor for the original iPod), and when nothing heavy is running the chip will completely power down the whole core Cortex-A9 complex. Quite clever idea.
Nota bene that the ARM7 core isn't using the high performance ARMv7 ISA that is the Cortex-A8/A9/A15 is using, it's using the ARMv4 ISA, that is much older and less performant. For code to run on ARM7 cores, it need to be targeted for this particular architecture (or Tegra 3 which includes it). Deploying on Tegra 3 must take this into account and hand set manufacturers using it will probably do some optimizations to the operating system but App-developers most certainly won't.
Even if it's a clever idea, In the real world can't see many Android devices ever going into a mode where the main CPUs are powered down, running only on the companion core.
I'm delighted to see people pushing the ARM forward. I think Apple is pragmatic enough that if nVidia does come up with a really terrific design that blows away Apple's next candidate processor, they could just switch to the nVidia chip. They're all just ARMs, right? From a developer standpoint, nothing would need to change. We wouldn't even need to recompile.
Can someone with knowledge on the matter answer these questions: are these things pin compatible? Do they all have identical instruction sets, or does nVidia or Apple get to add custom instructions without breaking their licenses?
ARM is the overriding SOC architecture which means that physically thay are the same or similar, but for example, Samsung used Intrinsity to redesign the logic for the Hummingbird chipset which was based on the 45nm ARM Cortex A8 architecture using the ARMv7 instruction set. That customization allowed for a 5-10% reduction in instruction set management overhead. Now that Apple owns Intrinsity, we have to wait to see how they handle existing licensing to Samsung or if Samsung now has to go out and find another customizer. It also depends on which GPU they choose to use built into the architecture.
TI's OMAP processors use the Cortex A8/45nM, but uses IVA 2 imaging accelerator that supports hardware encoding of camera sensor data, paired with an integrated signal processor that handles image and video capture, and better battery life. They also have leveraged the PowerVR SGX530 GPU (same as used in the iPhone 3GS). But they could also leverage using ARM NEON for multimedia. They should be bringing out a new series based on dual Cortex-A9 1GHz cores, but rumors also are out there that they are moving on to quad core architecture.
The "problem" is development in this space is pretty wild right now with ARM and Atom providing the architecture, but with a high degree of customizing going on by Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple and TI, as well as Intel on Atom.
nVidia will try to push as much graphics support into their ARM-based chipsets to leverage their expertise there, while the Apple acquisition of Intrinsity will cordon off that innovation space to future Apple ARM-based chipsets, leaving Qualcomm and Samsung to figure out their own approaches.
For a decent review of the architecture Wei Wang and Tanima Dey published a paper you can find here:
Maybe the new processor is great but put it in a $499 Android Honeycomb 3.2 tablet and its a fail.
I think Asus can make it work, honestly. They've been very clear that it'll get ICS ASAP. Asus has succeeded where others have failed in the tablet market, so far.
I've never understood the obsession with calling pre-announced products "Vapor". It screams of people with their head in the sand or acting like a child with its eyes shut and fingers in its ears screaming to try to ignore what is happening.
I have never understood why people hang about of forums trolling…
Anyway, will Intel be able to drive competition for this level of development with the Atom series?
No, still to much power use, to expensive, slow due to legacy issues.
If Intel wants to make Atom mobile, they needs start doing a lot more R&d (or at least make it more effective) than now, AND need to throw out everything not needed for Android and or possibly Windows mobile.
Yes, the megahertz war that eventually compelled Apple to abandon 20 years of Motorola architecture to move to Intel.
It wasn't the megahertz war per se, but the fact that the PowerPC producers (Morotola/IBM) were in the business primarily to supply game platforms - whose volumes were an order of magnitude higher than the number of Macs being sold. This meant that try as Apple might they couldn't leverage higher speeds/better performance from them. It was that which drove Apple to Intel, because Intel was willing to work with Apple to source the kind of performance that Apple was seeking.
The evidence of this was produced recently in the "ultrabook" standard Intel offered to the other PC makers to provde a competitive platform for the now popular MacBook Air. It was Apple driving the performance for Intel, not Dell or any other PC maker.
Why does every product that comes out have to be as a challenge to Apple? The headline writers on this site are automatons.
Because Apple is king. You don't compare to the also-rans.
For instance, you'll be hard pressed to find many articles describing the iPhone 4S as a Samsung Galaxy S II-killer. I found one on DroidDen.com that clearly thinks the 4S is so bad that it loses to the Galaxy S II with a score of 1 to 8, only giving the 4S a point for tying on the camera specs.
It seems we're more or less on the same page. There are many reasons why Motorola couldn't keep up with Intel's advances, but ultimately it was performance that compelled Apple to switch, as you note.
Here we have one of the few instances in which I'll join the local chorus in singing the song about how all other companies are stupid:
If those other vendors think they need a new processor to compete with the MacBook Air they're all high on crack.
Dear Dell, HP, Asus, Acer: please see Apple's web page for the MBA, and note that it uses Core i5 processors.
File this under "D" for "Duh".
Give me custom case and motherboard fabrication and I could design a strong competitor for that segment using stock components for everything else.
This isn't to say that the MBA isn't a fine machine. On the contrary, it's one of the best computers available in the world today. But it's not magic, it's a computer.
The fixation on aluminum cases is a bigger hurdle than the CPU, and those vendors would do a better service to their stockholders to stop whining about the CPU and focus on that much more real issue.
But aluminum is not the only way to make a case. For the segment that wants the MBA, they'll buy the MBA. The opportunity is in serving that segment through a different enclosure.
By not recognizing the real opportunity with enclosures, and allowing themselves to be needlessly distracted by the fantasy that they need a different CPU, the designers in these companies exhibit a level of lameness that should rightfully shame them from showing up to work in the morning. I have no idea why CEOs put up with such idiocy, failing to recognize how it makes themselves look idiotically impotent.
I see. So we're supposed to believe that you know more about computer design than HP, Dell, Intel, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Sony, and Lenovo put together?
Wow. How do you fit all that knowledge in your head?
Well both tegra 3 and psp Vita are using cortex9 quad-core CPU. If apple can leap frog them to AR 15 quad-core CPU/gnu in 28nm process they will be king for another year. With better hard wear/softwear integration and maybe being ableto clock their CPU/gnu slower than the competition mantaining eir lead on battery time.
Both mobile phones and mobile gaming platforms will lose badlly to iphone 5 and iPad 3...
It seems we're more or less on the same page. There are many reasons why Motorola couldn't keep up with Intel's advances, but ultimately it was performance that compelled Apple to switch, as you note.
Not being able to reach the promised 3.0 GHz even a year after the promised date had already slid past. Not being able to get the G5 processors cool enough to go into notebooks. Apple was stuck w/no way to move forward. When another company is stagnating you (which is ironically what is happening now w/the Mac Pro line due to teh series of delays with the Xeon processors) you have to look for other solutions. Intel had a better roadmap and since OS X had been built for Intel as well since day 1, it was a feasible switch.
That's pretty accurate... lol Android is one choppy OS. When my finger swipes across the screen, the icons lag behind my finger swiping speed, which grows as my finger swipes. My finger got to the edge of the screen, but the icons my finger was just under when I first touched the screen were only half way across in the animation. They still haven't fixed this issue after all this time? The iPad and iPhone just feel natural to work with.
Rubbish, if your phone is doing that then take it back for a replacement, I have a slow Android phone and it doesn't lag on any of the screen swipes
Rubbish, if your phone is doing that then take it back for a replacement, I have a slow Android phone and it doesn't lag on any of the screen swipes
That was every Android tablet on display at a Best Buy I stopped in. Not just one tablet. They had 7 different tablets and they all had the same problem. Android is choppy. It's like they just don't do the finishing touches that make it a polished product.
I dare you to go do the same experiment. Take any Android tablet currently on the market, and swipe your finger to move from page to page and then do it to an iPad. There is a huge difference in the level of polish. It's like Google just didn't care.
In this one specific case, I'd even go so far as to suggest you do too.
Making a slender computer isn't magic, and with good fabrication it's not even a technology issue. What we have here is simply a management issue, and the fact that all of those manufacturers are claiming they need a new CPU to compete with the MBA which uses an existing CPU rather speaks for itself.
In all fairness, it may be that they actually do understand that it's nothing more than a distraction to say that an MBA needs a CPU other than the one the MBA uses, and that they're just not willing to publicly admit that they don't have a handle on fabrication.
But whether by ignorance or merely ruse, this whingeing about CPUs is an embarrassment for them.
Fine. Put your money where your mouth is. The Ultrabook market is a multibillion dollar market. Go ahead and make one and release it to the market.
Or, why not offer your super-advanced expertise to one of the existing vendors for, say, $10,000,000?
Please stop making yourself look foolish. It really bugs me when the idiot trolls think that their ability to type a sentence on a forum like this instantly makes them an expert.
Comments
Why some sites says Tegra 3 has 5 cores?
It does. The fifth core is a very low power ARM7 core that is used for low performance tasks (think of it as a processor for the original iPod), and when nothing heavy is running the chip will completely power down the whole core Cortex-A9 complex. Quite clever idea.
Nota bene that the ARM7 core isn't using the high performance ARMv7 ISA that is the Cortex-A8/A9/A15 is using, it's using the ARMv4 ISA, that is much older and less performant. For code to run on ARM7 cores, it need to be targeted for this particular architecture (or Tegra 3 which includes it). Deploying on Tegra 3 must take this into account and hand set manufacturers using it will probably do some optimizations to the operating system but App-developers most certainly won't.
Even if it's a clever idea, In the real world can't see many Android devices ever going into a mode where the main CPUs are powered down, running only on the companion core.
I'm delighted to see people pushing the ARM forward. I think Apple is pragmatic enough that if nVidia does come up with a really terrific design that blows away Apple's next candidate processor, they could just switch to the nVidia chip. They're all just ARMs, right? From a developer standpoint, nothing would need to change. We wouldn't even need to recompile.
Can someone with knowledge on the matter answer these questions: are these things pin compatible? Do they all have identical instruction sets, or does nVidia or Apple get to add custom instructions without breaking their licenses?
ARM is the overriding SOC architecture which means that physically thay are the same or similar, but for example, Samsung used Intrinsity to redesign the logic for the Hummingbird chipset which was based on the 45nm ARM Cortex A8 architecture using the ARMv7 instruction set. That customization allowed for a 5-10% reduction in instruction set management overhead. Now that Apple owns Intrinsity, we have to wait to see how they handle existing licensing to Samsung or if Samsung now has to go out and find another customizer. It also depends on which GPU they choose to use built into the architecture.
TI's OMAP processors use the Cortex A8/45nM, but uses IVA 2 imaging accelerator that supports hardware encoding of camera sensor data, paired with an integrated signal processor that handles image and video capture, and better battery life. They also have leveraged the PowerVR SGX530 GPU (same as used in the iPhone 3GS). But they could also leverage using ARM NEON for multimedia. They should be bringing out a new series based on dual Cortex-A9 1GHz cores, but rumors also are out there that they are moving on to quad core architecture.
The "problem" is development in this space is pretty wild right now with ARM and Atom providing the architecture, but with a high degree of customizing going on by Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple and TI, as well as Intel on Atom.
nVidia will try to push as much graphics support into their ARM-based chipsets to leverage their expertise there, while the Apple acquisition of Intrinsity will cordon off that innovation space to future Apple ARM-based chipsets, leaving Qualcomm and Samsung to figure out their own approaches.
For a decent review of the architecture Wei Wang and Tanima Dey published a paper you can find here:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~skadron/...ARM_Cortex.pdf
Maybe the new processor is great but put it in a $499 Android Honeycomb 3.2 tablet and its a fail.
I think Asus can make it work, honestly. They've been very clear that it'll get ICS ASAP. Asus has succeeded where others have failed in the tablet market, so far.
I've never understood the obsession with calling pre-announced products "Vapor". It screams of people with their head in the sand or acting like a child with its eyes shut and fingers in its ears screaming to try to ignore what is happening.
I have never understood why people hang about of forums trolling…
Really dude, get a life.
But IF Nvidia were able to offer a clear performance advantage, there would be nothing stopping Apple from switching.
Except their investment in P.A. Semi... It just wouldn't make sense.
Anyway, will Intel be able to drive competition for this level of development with the Atom series?
No, still to much power use, to expensive, slow due to legacy issues.
If Intel wants to make Atom mobile, they needs start doing a lot more R&d (or at least make it more effective) than now, AND need to throw out everything not needed for Android and or possibly Windows mobile.
Yes, the megahertz war that eventually compelled Apple to abandon 20 years of Motorola architecture to move to Intel.
It wasn't the megahertz war per se, but the fact that the PowerPC producers (Morotola/IBM) were in the business primarily to supply game platforms - whose volumes were an order of magnitude higher than the number of Macs being sold. This meant that try as Apple might they couldn't leverage higher speeds/better performance from them. It was that which drove Apple to Intel, because Intel was willing to work with Apple to source the kind of performance that Apple was seeking.
The evidence of this was produced recently in the "ultrabook" standard Intel offered to the other PC makers to provde a competitive platform for the now popular MacBook Air. It was Apple driving the performance for Intel, not Dell or any other PC maker.
Why does every product that comes out have to be as a challenge to Apple? The headline writers on this site are automatons.
Because Apple is king. You don't compare to the also-rans.
For instance, you'll be hard pressed to find many articles describing the iPhone 4S as a Samsung Galaxy S II-killer.
It seems we're more or less on the same page. There are many reasons why Motorola couldn't keep up with Intel's advances, but ultimately it was performance that compelled Apple to switch, as you note.
Here we have one of the few instances in which I'll join the local chorus in singing the song about how all other companies are stupid:
If those other vendors think they need a new processor to compete with the MacBook Air they're all high on crack.
Dear Dell, HP, Asus, Acer: please see Apple's web page for the MBA, and note that it uses Core i5 processors.
File this under "D" for "Duh".
Give me custom case and motherboard fabrication and I could design a strong competitor for that segment using stock components for everything else.
This isn't to say that the MBA isn't a fine machine. On the contrary, it's one of the best computers available in the world today. But it's not magic, it's a computer.
The fixation on aluminum cases is a bigger hurdle than the CPU, and those vendors would do a better service to their stockholders to stop whining about the CPU and focus on that much more real issue.
But aluminum is not the only way to make a case. For the segment that wants the MBA, they'll buy the MBA. The opportunity is in serving that segment through a different enclosure.
By not recognizing the real opportunity with enclosures, and allowing themselves to be needlessly distracted by the fantasy that they need a different CPU, the designers in these companies exhibit a level of lameness that should rightfully shame them from showing up to work in the morning. I have no idea why CEOs put up with such idiocy, failing to recognize how it makes themselves look idiotically impotent.
I see. So we're supposed to believe that you know more about computer design than HP, Dell, Intel, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Sony, and Lenovo put together?
Wow. How do you fit all that knowledge in your head?
Both mobile phones and mobile gaming platforms will lose badlly to iphone 5 and iPad 3...
It seems we're more or less on the same page. There are many reasons why Motorola couldn't keep up with Intel's advances, but ultimately it was performance that compelled Apple to switch, as you note.
Not being able to reach the promised 3.0 GHz even a year after the promised date had already slid past. Not being able to get the G5 processors cool enough to go into notebooks. Apple was stuck w/no way to move forward. When another company is stagnating you (which is ironically what is happening now w/the Mac Pro line due to teh series of delays with the Xeon processors) you have to look for other solutions. Intel had a better roadmap and since OS X had been built for Intel as well since day 1, it was a feasible switch.
That's pretty accurate... lol Android is one choppy OS. When my finger swipes across the screen, the icons lag behind my finger swiping speed, which grows as my finger swipes. My finger got to the edge of the screen, but the icons my finger was just under when I first touched the screen were only half way across in the animation. They still haven't fixed this issue after all this time? The iPad and iPhone just feel natural to work with.
Rubbish, if your phone is doing that then take it back for a replacement, I have a slow Android phone and it doesn't lag on any of the screen swipes
Rubbish, if your phone is doing that then take it back for a replacement, I have a slow Android phone and it doesn't lag on any of the screen swipes
That was every Android tablet on display at a Best Buy I stopped in. Not just one tablet. They had 7 different tablets and they all had the same problem. Android is choppy. It's like they just don't do the finishing touches that make it a polished product.
I dare you to go do the same experiment. Take any Android tablet currently on the market, and swipe your finger to move from page to page and then do it to an iPad. There is a huge difference in the level of polish. It's like Google just didn't care.
In this one specific case, I'd even go so far as to suggest you do too.
Making a slender computer isn't magic, and with good fabrication it's not even a technology issue. What we have here is simply a management issue, and the fact that all of those manufacturers are claiming they need a new CPU to compete with the MBA which uses an existing CPU rather speaks for itself.
In all fairness, it may be that they actually do understand that it's nothing more than a distraction to say that an MBA needs a CPU other than the one the MBA uses, and that they're just not willing to publicly admit that they don't have a handle on fabrication.
But whether by ignorance or merely ruse, this whingeing about CPUs is an embarrassment for them.
Fine. Put your money where your mouth is. The Ultrabook market is a multibillion dollar market. Go ahead and make one and release it to the market.
Or, why not offer your super-advanced expertise to one of the existing vendors for, say, $10,000,000?
Please stop making yourself look foolish. It really bugs me when the idiot trolls think that their ability to type a sentence on a forum like this instantly makes them an expert.