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NVIDIA Enters the Mobile CPU Market
Vigile writes "NVIDIA just announced the new Tegra line, a complete system architecture on one chip. Built around a licensed x86 ARM 11 CPU, this tiny chip (smaller than a US dime) includes a processor, memory controller, southbridge, and 3D and video processors. The SoC design is meant to give iPhone-type devices a more impressive visual experiences while maintaining idle power consumption under 100 mW. While not a direct competitor to Intel's Atom or VIA's Nano processors, the NVIDIA Tegra will no doubt push the envelope in handhelds and cement NVIDIA's place in the world of computing going forward."
The article summary is wrong or has a typo or something. This is not on some weird hybrid x86/ARM platform; it's just ARM.
Ars had a good article about it
Stupid lameness filter.
"going forward" is obnoxious corpie-speak.
oh yeah, kdawson. Go figure. From the article title: "Its not X86, but who cares?"
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
We had the exact same thing yesterday
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/02/1441214
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I am really hoping that they plan on expanding the lineup of supported operating systems. Obviously Windows is never going to happen, this being an ARM core; but Linux would be nice. In particular, Linux is pretty much the only way that this chip will have any shot of crawling out of the smartphone/PMP ghetto and making its way into general purpose small computers(I'd love to see a laptop built around something of this sort).
Windows CE just isn't a very pleasant OS period, and its flaws really start to show once you get outside of the smartphone market, where at least it has some experience, or the thin-client market, where abject suck doesn't matter too much. Whether or not you like Linux or Windows better, you'd be hard pressed to argue that Windows CE is better for anything resembling a real computer. Unfortunately, given that this is Nvidia, and the chip looks tuned to "support premium content" I'm not going to be holding my breath. It's a pity, really. This setup looks rather cooler than Atom, and capable of some really fun stuff, but I'm not sure how good the odds are of it ever making its way into a mininotebook or small desktop form factor.
I'm pretty sure this was posted yesterday, unless now it's actually the official "hey guys it's for sale now" announcement...
(captcha: showroom. I wonder if these products are only meant for it.)
The only valid reason to design in x86 these days is to run Windows. ARM is lower wattage and cheaper. Once you look at whole systems costs (battery etc) ARM comes out streets ahead. Most OSS can be readily redeployed on ARM. There is even an ARM Ubuntu.
WinCE is a very limited architecture and has no support for SMP etc. It is basically a toy version of Windows.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Modern ARMs are very good. Much, much better than the XScales. They can come with floating point units which are many times faster than software emulation and do not drain much power. Even under load they draw much less than the atom. Also, it looks like the modern cores come with OoO, something which is missing from the atom.
Secondly, the ASUS EEE has shown that it may not br necessary to be x86 compatible any more. It is compatible, but it has sold many copies running Linux. That means that x86 compatibility is not required, since Linux runs well on many processor types.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What is the performance like compared to Blue Steel and Magnum?
"Modern cores come with OoO"... is that some weird new smiley or have they etched a copy of openoffice into the microcode prom?
More details on Tegra can be found here, including chip arch: http://www.hothardware.com/News/NVIDIA_Launches_Two_New_Tegra_Systems_On_a_Chip/
No SMP in sight, not even in the emulator. If you know differently, I'd like to know.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
From TFA, on the second page, the UART is the same size as the NAND flash! for it to be that big, they must be fabbing a full-sized 8250 on its original process.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you were really keen you could stuff a few extra 1x2inch ARM cards in the box and have a Beowulf cluster in a sub-laptop box.
The sub-notebook is nothing new. I have an old Psion7 (http://newth.net/psion7/index.html) that must be 6 or seven years old now. It was a bit slow, but only had a 100MHz StrongARM CPU. A re-jig with a modern 600MHz+ ARM would fly!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"impressive visual experiences while maintaining idle power consumption under 100 mW"
Qualcomm's 7200 already maintains idle power consumption under about 50mW on HTC devices even with screen drawing power. Of course, the claimed "impressive visual experiences" on this chip can't be verified since Qualcomm/HTC neglected to provide any drivers and their chips run slower than 4yr old hardware. Turns out to be a licensing issue, not a technical issue.
So depending how nVIDIA prices their chip, we may once again get more devices with "impressive visual experiences" not-yet-enabled.
When was the last time a Slashdot summary didn't have something wrong with it?
The title of the referenced article is "Its not X86, but who cares?" There's no X86 in an ARM processor. It's a licensed design.
It was too much for the Slashdot editor to read even the first 3 words of the summary?
"... even the first 3 words of the summary?" should be ... even the first 3 words of the article?
Hopefully NVidia won't sink in this mine field. Just look what happened to ATI & Intel's ventures into interactive TV. Broadcom is the immobile giant in interactive TV. U better know what you're doing if you're going to go up against The Broad. Now let's port OCAP to Tega or Tegra, or whatever it is.
Now can I have one in my phone, one in a EEE type notebook, one in a regular full size notebook, one in a desktop, one in my car, and have them all communicate via wifi N and turn into a cluster if they are close by?
Thanks Nvidia!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I thought the standard unit of size was an "American Football Field." How many dimes are there to a football field?
Stupid lameness filter. Slashdot did too:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/02/1441214
Why didn't they?
No danger of ever running MS on one. And much less power consumption. Well, maybe next generation will feature something like this SOC from Nvidia.
All these ARM 11s SOCs but they're all in QFBGA packaging. I wish somebody would release something in a good ol' DIP. Yeah, sure some of the pins would have to be cut out but you can go over a hundred pins on a DIP and most of these SMT BGA packages only have two hundred pins to begin with. A lot of the I/O is for fairly esoteric stuff. Just leave the video, the audio, power, ethernet and drop off all the funky DSP cellphone stuff.
Stick like eight of these breadboarded in a stack on a KVM with an LCD monitor. Geek city.
WinCE is also targetted at other functions such as set top boxes etc. where SMP is could be very handy.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As an engine coder for Windows Mobile.. all I ask of nVidia (and all hardware manufactureres) is to PROVIDE PROPER Direct 3D mobile drivers! There are SO many devices on the market that feature 3D hardware yet it's dormant because there are no drivers for it!
I hate you all....
Seeing as how this chipset was made to run Java there is an x86 emulator in Java and they ought to be able to get at least a 4.44MHz 8088 emulation out of this chipset. Just think :-)
Many ARM cores can run JVM bytecode directly. So Intel is behind the curve still when it comes to embedded processors.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire