Today’s refreshed Snapdragon and Tegra 2 processors may be the latest to capture our attentions with their dual-core, 1+GHz design, but they’re mere mid-range fodder compared to Texas Instruments upcoming OMAP 5 platform. Based on a 28-nm design process, the OMAP 5430 and 5432 processors will be capable of running at up to 2GHZ while offering 3x the raw performance of the previous generation OMAP 4430. Furthermore, the 5430 and 5432 OMAP 5 chips will support...
There’s fast, and then there’s really fast. Intel’s latest “Itanium” supercomputer grade processor definitely falls into the latter. It’s an easy shoe in really, with 2 billtion — yes, 2 billion — transistors on board. The processor itself is made up of four cores. Up to 8 of these chips can be put together in a single server setting, netting the end user a full 32 cores of processing power. According to Intel, it can go...
2 cores? What is this, 2005? 4 cores? Still yesterday’s news. 6-cores? Now we’re talkin’. In the mad race to the top of the processor heap, once achieving the fastest clock speed came and went with manufacturers moving their focus from speed to cores, the processor scene was upped multiple notches. What started as dual core and then progressed to quad-core would ultimately lead to the next logical advancement — 6-core. Such is the beast that...
Shocker! 6 cores are better than 4 with the up and coming top dog Core i7 chips performing roughly 50% faster on complex, optimized programs. I can already see you drooling, thinking out loud: “The Core i7 is just becoming mainstream and we’re already talking about it’s replacement?” Such is the world we live in folks, it never stops. But apart from constantly evolving “top dogs”, I have to say that the Core i9 power advantage is...
Oh the geek inside of me is giddy. News of quad-core mac’s are starting to trickle forth thanks to two new Macbook Pro model numbers referenced in the latest Snow Leopard 10.6.2 build seeded to devs. Such an update isn’t too far from reality as the last update bestowed upon these mobile workhorses was way back in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference. An update must be close if the Macbook Pro’s are to remain near the top of the heap. All fingers...
