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Nvidia's Kal-El Tegra Will Have Fifth "Companion Core"

Posted by Unknown on from the phone-still-dies-before-five dept.

Blacklaw writes with an article in Thinq about the upcoming quad-core Tegra chipset. Quoting the article: "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." The fifth core will be clocked lower and is intended to let the system use little power without having to fully suspend. A few years ago Openmoko had a vaguely similar idea to include a microcontroller for low-resource idle tasks (e.g. GPS logging), but this design is superior since it should be more or less transparent to user space programs.

16 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Damn it! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    I'm a "sidekick" core, not a "companion" core...

    1. Re:Damn it! by MachDelta · · Score: 5, Funny

      Pfft.
      The correct cyberpunkish term would be "auxiliary" core, since it sounds so badass and semi-mechanical.
      Plus, most people can't spell auxilli- auxiler-, auxxi... the word, which makes it more exclusive.
      And there's an X in it. Only the cool, eyeliner wearing words have x's... other than "extreme" anyways. That guy's a dick. He stuffed me in a locker once.

      Anyways; Auxiliary core.
      Yeah.

    2. Re:Damn it! by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

      The correct cyberpunkish term would be "auxiliary" core, since it sounds so badass and semi-mechanical.
      Plus, most people can't spell auxilli- auxiler-, auxxi... the word, which makes it more exclusive.
      And there's an X in it.

      And you can then shorten it down to "xore", for even more sheer coolness. ~

  2. multipass? by demonbug · · Score: 2

    Or something about elephants...

  3. Do you have to incinerate it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Companion Core cannot speak. In the event that the Companion Core does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice.

  4. In Soviet Russia by Roachie · · Score: 4, Funny

    we call him "comrade core"

    --
    This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
  5. Re:4 Cores? by BZ · · Score: 2

    > what am I going to do with 4 cores on a phone?

    Use less power any time you have four parallel threads of execution than you would with a single core tying to run them all via timeslicing...

    Also, this may be targeted at tablets, not phones.

  6. These have five by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nigel: ...the chips have five cores. Look...right across the board.
    Marty: Ahh...oh, I see....
    Nigel: five...five...five...
    Marty: ...and most of these chips go up to four....
    Nigel: Exactly.
    Marty: Does that mean it's...faster? Is it any faster?
    Nigel: Well, it's one faster, isn't it? It's not four. You see, most...most blokes, you know, will be running on four. You're on four here...all the way up...all the way up....
    Marty: Yeah....
    Nigel: ...all the way up. You're on four on your processes...where can you go from there? Where?
    Marty: I don't know....
    Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is if we need that extra...push over the cliff...you know what we do?
    Marty: Put it up to five.
    Nigel: Five. Exactly. One faster.
    Marty: Why don't you just make four faster and make faster be the top number...and make that a little faster?
    Nigel: ...these have five.

  7. F*ck it, doing 5 cores by rsborg · · Score: 2

    Obligatory:
    http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

    Seriously, a low-performance core doing administrivia type work sounds great, but won't this require OS support? I can't imagine this detail is completely abstracted from the kernel.

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    1. Re:F*ck it, doing 5 cores by adisakp · · Score: 2

      Seriously, a low-performance core doing administrivia type work sounds great, but won't this require OS support? I can't imagine this detail is completely abstracted from the kernel.

      Modern OS's can already use multiple cores (including non-power of 2 such as AMD 3-core CPUs) and already have the ability to suspend cores that are not in use. In fact the ACPI standard on all modern PC CPU's has supported this since 1996:

      From Wikipedia

      C0 is the operating state.
      C1 (often known as Halt) is a state where the processor is not executing instructions, but can return to an executing state essentially instantaneously. All ACPI-conformant processors must support this power state. Some processors, such as the Pentium 4, also support an Enhanced C1 state (C1E or Enhanced Halt State) for lower power consumption.
      C2 (often known as Stop-Clock) is a state where the processor maintains all software-visible state, but may take longer to wake up. This processor state is optional.
      C3 (often known as Sleep) is a state where the processor does not need to keep its cache coherent, but maintains other state. Some processors have variations on the C3 state (Deep Sleep, Deeper Sleep, etc.) that differ in how long it takes to wake the processor. This processor state is optional.

  8. not news by markhahn · · Score: 2

    even the "dual-core" tegra2 had a companion core. it's hard to say that this extra management core is a real core, since it's not a peer of the others in, for instance, cache-coherency.

    still, sure, asymmetric cores are a nice way to take further advantage of extreme variance in load. even after you've downclocked a normal core as far as it can go, a "designed for slow" core is going to dissipate less power. I'm not sure why supporting this kind of asymmetry would be all that hard for the linux kernel, though.

  9. Re:4 Cores? by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    four ARM cores still uses less power than one intel Atom...

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  10. Re:4 Cores? by purpledinoz · · Score: 2

    From what I read from the article, it looks like they turn on one core at a time, as needed. Also, their chart indicates significant power reductions too. I'm curious to see how it does when reviewers get their hands on it. I currently have a Tegra 2 phone (LG Optimus 2X), and with Cyanogenmod 7, I love it. This is my first smartphone, so the one thing I'm not happy about is having to charge my phone every day.

  11. Re:Separate core so much better than slow main cor by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    frequency switching is fast, especially when you're switching by integer multiples of the memory clock speed. but dropping frequency gives little benefit compared to lowering voltage. but switching voltage is slow. and there is a limited range of voltages that a module may support.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  12. Userspace? by Sasayaki · · Score: 2

    Userspace. Userspace. Want to go to Userspace. Can we go to Userspace? Userspace. Look at me. I'm in Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. Userspaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace. You know what's slow? You know what's low power? Userspace. ... Userspace. Want to go to Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. Userspace. ... Userspace.

    --
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  13. Re:4 Cores? by msauve · · Score: 2

    "The companion core is an interesting idea to increase battery life."

    More likely, an idea to increase yields.

    1 Make 5 core chips
    2 When testing, take the core that fails at the lowest clock rate and make it the poor step-child.
    3 ???
    4 Profit by saying that under-performing core is a feature!

    Seriously, if this were about energy savings, why not just put a clock divisor on an existing core to produce savings?

    --
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