Archive for: multi-core
- February 7, 2011 12:55 pm
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 Kinect-style gesture recognition and boast a solid 5x improvement in graphics performance all while driving up to four displays simultaneously. If you want to bump up to QSXGA (2560 x 2048) resolution, you’ll still be able to push three monitors at once.
Other note worthy features of the OMAP 5 platform include support for up to four simultaneous camera streams in parallel, recording, and 1080p S3D playback, real-time 2D –> S3D 1080p conversion, and when combined with a TI DSP pico-projector and camera allows the ability to “touch and drag” projected images. Finally, USB 3.0, SATA 2.0, SDXC, support for 8GB of memory, and facial recognition round out the loaded package.
In short: The OMAP 5 platform is awesome!
Look for devices using the TI OMAP 5 5430 or 5432 to start shipping in the second half of 2012. Video after the break…
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 even higher. Third parties who purchase the Itanium chips have the potential to push the maximum count of integrated processors and chips to 64 cores and beyond. Pretty interesting stuff.
For those wondering, the Itanium is clocked at 1.73 GHz. With up to 32 cores available from the factory, I’d say that is more than enough speed GHz wise. Remember, it isn’t the speed that counts anymore — it’s the cores.
On the other side of the fence, IBM is hard at work touting their own supercomputer grade processor with their “Power 7″ processor. Announced today, the Power 7′s biggest difference up front is that it uses an 8-core per chip design where as Intel utilizes 4-cores per chip. This higher core density obviously means more processing power overall crammed into smaller packages.
Who will win it out in this supercomputing sphere? It’s too early to call I’d say, but I’m more than willing to ride along.
VentureBeat
- December 15, 2009 1:02 pm
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 lives within the upcoming Gulftown processors.
One puzzling move to make light of is that the Gulftown 6-core processors were originally slated to drop with core i9 nomenclature. That naming scheme however appears to have been dropped in favor of core i7 Extreme. Meh, in the end it doesn’t really matter. All we enthusiasts care about is the performance that will ooze from every silicon wafer and circuit on the 32nm chip.
To leave off, just fill your head with the wonderful thoughts that a 12 core (physical) and 24 core (logical — hypertrheading) processor will be capable of. Isn’t technology grand?
Macrumors > HardMac > PC Online
- November 24, 2009 5:22 am
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 compelling to shell out extra for it. It won’t come cheap, though prices haven’t been officially loosed just yet. Another strike against the newcomer is it’s insatiable thirst for those cute little electrons — 130W continuous to be exact. It may not sound like much, but compared to the Core i7′s 95W power draw, 130 seems veracious. Even still, 6 cores of fury all packed into one small sliver of silicon is uber cool…
Electronista
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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 point towards Intel Clarksfield chips being integrated (read: Core i5/i7 chips) with better power management, increased performance, and the ability to kick any processor up a few notches when extra peeds are needed. Processors aren’t the only talk of the town though as out goes Nvidia in favor of ATI’s latest 4500 mobile GPU cards which should bring a rather nice increase to mobile graphics performance. It’ll be interesting to see how the use of ATI GPU’s affects the current power/battery saving scheme Apple has crafted by using both an integrated Nvidia 9400 GPU along with a dedicated Nvidia 9600GPU.
None of this has been confirmed yet, but again, such upgrades are highly suspected and are likely to happen relatively soon. Glad you held of on getting those new unibody MBP’s? I know I am. Core i7 equipped 17″ MBP here I come!
AppleInsider
- October 21, 2009 12:23 pm
Current smartphones may suffer from laggy interfaces and stuttering multimedia performance because of weak internal hardware. Fret no more, put away those tissues and slap a smile on that pretty little mouth of yours as such experiences will soon be a thing of the past. The savior? ARM’s new Cortex A5 multi-core processor should certainly take care of all current slowness and then some. Labeled by ARM as “the smallest, lowest power ARM multicore processor capable of delivering the Internet to the widest possible range of devices” means this new processor will have some big shoes to fill and reputations to keep up. Of interest to mobile device junkies, the new A5 processor will be twice as energy efficient as older A9 and A11 chips giving future phones longer run times between outlet tetherings as well as leading to overall smaller devices thanks to a smaller physical footprint. The real kicker is the delivery date which ARM simply states as “this quarter”. Hell yeah! We can’t forget the 1GHz beast also known as Snapdragon. The current hotness for sure. Though I can assure you that once the ARM Cortex A5 multi-core struts it’s stuff, we’re all going to ask: “Snapdragon what?”
In case you were wondering, the chip pictured is not the A5.
Unwired
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- February 16, 2009 7:50 pm
You’re next gen iPhone, or any phone for that matter coud be rockin’ a dual, or even quad-core processor sooner than you think. This week at MWC, ARM was showing off their new multi-core mobile processors to a small select group of individuals. The new chip is based on their Cortex A9 architecture and is set to replace the current ARM11 chips that are found throughout the mobile market place. The benefits of the mobile multi-core processor will be the same as on desktop computers in that programs can split their load across multiple processors. With multiple cores you can either use multiple cores at slower clock speeds to perform tasks as fast as a single core clocked higher as well as saving a ton of battery life. Or, you could clock the multi-cores higher and get blazing fast performance, albeit at the cost of go go juice. Another benefit of the Cortex A9 chips is that they have twice the floating point performance as previous chip designs. For a deeper and geekier run down, head on over to Apple Insider and read away.
Source: Apple Insider
Macrumors is reporting that they are hearing from reliable sources that the next version of the iPhone, iPhone 3.0 will have support for multi-core processors.
On a side note, Imagination Technologies is announcing a multi-core GPU and that Apple could use for the next version of the iPhone.
However, according to Macrumors, the chip that is more likely to show up in the next iPhone is “a derivative of the ARM Cortex A9 multi-core processor”. The ARM chips has a high level of efficiency that is leaps ahead of Intel’s Atom processor.
This will only make me want to sell my iPhone on eBay if this turns out to be true.
*Update*…According to 9t05 daily, a multi-core iPhone is not coming in ’09. The Palm Pre’s processor is currently the fastest processor available for a mobile phone. The Cortex A9 chip is two generations ahead of that. So it looks like we still have a bit of waiting to do.
Source: Macrumors, 9 to 5 Mac
