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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.

3 of 98 comments (clear)

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

    we call him "comrade core"

    --
    This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
  2. 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.

  3. 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.