Mobile World Congress: The new front in the processor battle | ZDNet

Mobile world congress took place in Feb. looks like the next generation processors are coming out from a whole range of manufacturers. With smartphones demanding powerful applications, with demand for some of the productivity applications on the go, the phones are looking more like a computer. The mobile computing may finally be here. Besides there is a lot of activity in the Tablet space. More and more powerful processors will be coming out over this year and the next. Broadcom, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments all have new application processors coming out. This generation is certainly for multi-core and graphics enhancements. Graphics enhancements are, no doubt, driven by the need for handling video, HD as well as 3D, if possible. A sampling of the capabilities of these new processors bear it out.


Nvidia has the Tegra2 line. The newer Tegra will have four ARM Cortex-A9 cores and a 12 core graphics processor. Tegra 2 had eight graphics cores and the new line delivers 5x the graphics performance. The current roadmap promises delivery of 75x graphics processing by 2014. Qualcom integrated the wireless communications and the processor in its Snapdragon line. The new enhancements coming are PQ 8060, a dual core processor and Adreno 220 graphics. APQW 8064 will have four cores running at 2.5 GHz and Adreno 320 graphics. 15% better performance and 15x graphics enhancements are predicted.

Samsung's Exynos 4210 will have two Cortex-A9 cores at 1GHz.  TI’s OMAP4430 is based on two Cortex-A9 cores running at 1GHz and Imagination’s PowerVR540 graphics. OMAP4440 follows that'll work at 1.5GHz and has better graphics performance. OMAP 5 platform will be based on ARM’s Cortex-A15. With two CPU cores and multi-core graphics, OMAP 5 will have 3x the processing power and 5x better 3D graphics than OMAP 4.

These are just some of the things happening in the processor space. Read the complete article for some more examples of the upcoming processors.

Mobile World Congress: The new front in the processor battle

Texas Instruments To Launch Feature-Rich, ARM-Based Mobile OMAP 5 Processors

According to this news item, these chip samples are going to be available by the second half of this year.These ARM based processors are directed at the mobile space and possibly brings the mobile computing closer to reality. The OMAP 5 packs a lot of processing power and is a significant improvement over the OMAP4.The new chip will have dual ARM Cortex A15 cores, running at 2 GHz. These are helped along by dual Cortex M4 cores that's handle the real-time load, such as video processing.

The 28 nm fab process helps the chip, even with four cores running, manage with 60% of power consumption of the OMAP4. Performance wise the OMAP 5 will deliver 3x processing power an 5x graphics processing compared to the earlier generation.

The chip will thus be able to easily support stereoscopic (3D) applications that include video conferencing using some additional graphics power. Four HD displays or four cameras can simultaneously be supported. Devices using the OMAP 5 will be to offer record and playback 3D video, or convert 2D video to 3D, at 1080p resolution. It will let advanced gesturing applications, touch-less sensory technology, and computational photography applications such as face recognition, object recognition and text recognition, etc. be supported.



Texas Instruments To Launch Feature-Rich, ARM-Based Mobile OMAP 5 Processors