Nvidia Tegra

But how's the battery life if they go for Tegra II? I don't like the idea of better graphics for shorter battery life. To me, the DS has hands down the best library of games this generation, and I'm more than happy with its visuals. I mean, I have no problem with better graphics as long as I can enjoy long battery life.
 
Comparing a really old, crippled PowerPC G3 CPU with a current ARM11 or ARM Cortex A8, based purely on hardware specs, it really isn't an easy task, but i'd suggest the ARM ones are much faster by now.
armv7 is likely faster than wii's broadway, at least in some scenarios; armv6 - i sincerely doubt it.

ps: what's crippled in broadway?
 
Comparing a really old, crippled PowerPC G3 CPU with a current ARM11 or ARM Cortex A8, based purely on hardware specs, it really isn't an easy task, but i'd suggest the ARM ones are much faster by now.

How is FP performance on those ARM cores? What about SIMD instructions, do they have something like Altivec?
 
armv7 is likely faster than wii's broadway, at least in some scenarios; armv6 - i sincerely doubt it.

ps: what's crippled in broadway?

"Broadway" is the Wii CPU, "Gekko" was Gamecube's.
Essentially, the former is a shrunk, higher clocking variation of the same PPC G3-based design.

Wii's "Broadway" only has half the L2 cache of the PowerPC 750FX design (or 1/4th that of the PowerPC 750GX), and the L2 bus width was cut down.
 
How is FP performance on those ARM cores? What about SIMD instructions, do they have something like Altivec?
FP performance of Cortex-A9 is good. It has ARM SIMD instruction set extension, named NEON. It can handle 32-bit FP and various width of integers.
 
Wii's "Broadway" only has half the L2 cache of the PowerPC 750FX design (or 1/4th that of the PowerPC 750GX), and the L2 bus width was cut down.
in this line of thought you could also say that broadway was a particularly crappy 970, or any future ppc design, for that matter ; )

of course, gekko (and its reiteration, broadway) is neither FX- nor GX-based (somewhat understandable, given those two chips came out after the cube was already on the shelves). it's CX-based. and enhanced on top of that design.
 
Arun I've got question to you.
Is the tegra T20 which is mentioned in specs of of this tablet essentially tegra2? I'd think so cause it is supposed to be clocked at 1Ghz which means it is either cortex A8 or A9 but as we all know nvidia ditched A8. So it would seem reasonable to assume that it using tegra2.
Can you comment on this?
 
Yeah that's Tegra2, 1GHz A9 for the top SKU. You can expect end-products with Tegra2 as early as Q2 (only Q3/Q4 for smartphones, though) - vast majority of manufacturers basically canned Tegra1 in favour of accelerating their Tegra2 products to market. We'll see if that sacrifice pays off...

Some of the rumours still seem quite incomplete/wrong to me, but then again maybe I'm the one who has it wrong :) CES will come soon enough.
 
Yeah that's Tegra2, 1GHz A9 for the top SKU. You can expect end-products with Tegra2 as early as Q2 (only Q3/Q4 for smartphones, though) - vast majority of manufacturers basically canned Tegra1 in favour of accelerating their Tegra2 products to market. We'll see if that sacrifice pays off...

Some of the rumours still seem quite incomplete/wrong to me, but then again maybe I'm the one who has it wrong :) CES will come soon enough.

That's great!
I decided not to wait for multimedia powerhouse smartphone and instead buy 5-7" tablet(that will be a real multimedia powerhouse) and smartphone with good keyboard for texting. That tablet is exactly what I was waiting for and with 1Ghz A9 CPU it will be great for web browsing and with full flash support it will be great for everything!

Hopefully it will be as powerful as ZMS-08 when it comes to video encode/decode and that newer android versions will take full advantage of GL 2.0 cause I don't think they are doing it now. Wonder what android 3.0 will bring...
 
That tablet is exactly what I was waiting for and with 1Ghz A9 CPU it will be great for web browsing and with full flash support it will be great for everything!
Yeah, that along with all the other ARM tablets being worked on do look very nice. Personally I'd want to test that large-screen software keyboard before giving a cent for it though; my intuition is I won't be happy with it (that's coming from a guy who has absolutely no fear of his iPhone's software keyboard even for long messages) and I'd rather buy an ARM netbook. We'll see...

Hopefully it will be as powerful as ZMS-08 when it comes to video encode/decode
My understanding is that there were two chips: one that's focused more on smartphones, one that's focused on larger form-factors. The former will definitely remain H.264 Baseline and single-core, but there's a very good chance we'll get H.264 High Profile for the latter - assuming I'm not a retard and both do exist, heh ;)

and that newer android versions will take full advantage of GL 2.0 cause I don't think they are doing it now. Wonder what android 3.0 will bring...
No idea about the roadmap for multimedia features (I think they're being rather aggressive though; we'll see) but I believe 3.0 will bring some social networking goodies. I'd go into a gigantic rant about how every single Mobile OS is fundamentally broken and none of this insanity would be required if the design strategy made sense, but I'll spare you that indefinitely :p
 
Yeah, that along with all the other ARM tablets being worked on do look very nice. Personally I'd want to test that large-screen software keyboard before giving a cent for it though; my intuition is I won't be happy with it (that's coming from a guy who has absolutely no fear of his iPhone's software keyboard even for long messages) and I'd rather buy an ARM netbook. We'll see...
If I understood correctly specs of ICD Ultra it will have USB host option so for anything more than searching web I'd use foldable keyboard :D besides as it was already proven with archos 5 TI(almost good but screen is too small for tablet) connecting bluetooth keyboard and mouse was seamless and worked very well. It would be great alternative for my notebook I have to carry when I go to my lectures and I'm not fan for netbooks. OQO was my perfect device but unfortunately they went bankrupt :cry:
My understanding is that there were two chips: one that's focused on smartphones, one that's focused on larger form-factors. The former will definitely remain H.264 Baseline, but there's a very good chance we'll get H.264 High Profile for the latter - assuming I'm not a retard and it does exist, heh ;)
My main concern is smooth playback of 720p h264 HP max 5mbits. If T20 can achieve this I'm sold :)
No idea about the roadmap for multimedia features (I think they're being rather aggressive though; we'll see) but I believe 3.0 will bring some social networking goodies. I'd go into a gigantic rant about how every single Mobile OS is fundamentally broken and none of this insanity would be required if the design strategy made sense, but I'll spare you that indefinitely :p

With version 2.1 they finally improved picture gallery so there is some hope that they will improve music and video player. If not I hope they will release proper SDK/NDK so that guys from CoreCodec will be able to finish their CorePlayer for android.
Hopefully with powerful platform there will come impressive games. Cause using a platform with such graphical potential(it could easily emulate dreamcast, PSX and probably it could even emulate PS2 but surely not full speed) and releasing only crappy not nice looking games would be a true waste...
 
So today's Kin and Kin Two are suppose to have Tegras in them. Are these 2 the only Tegra phones?

Yup looks like they are the only Tegra phones the world is ever going to see. All Windows Phone 7 phones are going to be SnapDragon (well, the first batch at least). iPhone is using SGX, Samsung has its own stuff and will porlly have SnapDragon based WP7 handsets this fall, Motorola is using Qualcomm & TI OMAP, HTC is 100% Qualcomm (only the Dopod Quilin is a TI OMAP 3XXX), Palm is dead, Acer is using Qualcomm, LG is also using Qualcomm now, and Nokia is SGX/TI-Omap/Qualcomm soon in the US, Sony Ericsson is using Qualcomm for their Android and WP7 handsets, and TI/SGX for Symbian.
nVidia is dead in the water in the Smartphone biz AFAIK. Funny to see Microsoft going 100% SnapDragon for WP7 and giving nVidia the finger after working with them on the Zune HD and KIN devices for such a long time. I guess that OEMs didn't won't to have anything to do with NV.

Full KIN specs here: http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2010/04/12/microsoft-kin-one-and-kin-two-specs-unveiled/
 
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KIN could just be an inventory/quota event, after realization that ARMv7 wasn't gonna cut it for WP7?

Yes, remember that some OEMs (Motorolaand HTC) had Tegra based WM7 (Photon) handsets on their roadmaps 18months ago. One has to wonder why Project Pink wasn't scraped last year alongside WM7 (Photon). I guess that MS didn't have the balls to do it given all the money spent (Danger= 500M$ ->the majority of the original Danger crue got sacked or left after the aquisition..sad) and work done on with partners and OEMS(nvidia/Sharp/Verizon). It was initialy WM7 (Photon) and Pink (WM was business oriented and Pink consumer, both WinCE6). But now with the new WP7 (WinCE 7), Pink/KIN looks half-assed and MS is already saying that some of that KIN stuff is going to find its way in WP7. Which means that KIN is already Dead on Arrival and is going the way of the Zune => One OS/Product to rule them all = WP7.
MS sure knows how to waste time/resources & maney..meh
 
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Yup looks like they are the only Tegra phones the world is ever going to see. All Windows Phone 7 phones are going to be SnapDragon (well, the first batch at least). iPhone is using SGX, Samsung has its own stuff and will porlly have SnapDragon based WP7 handsets this fall, Motorola is using Qualcomm & TI OMAP, HTC is 100% Qualcomm (only the Dopod Quilin is a TI OMAP 3XXX), Palm is dead, Acer is using Qualcomm, LG is also using Qualcomm now, and Nokia is SGX/TI-Omap/Qualcomm soon in the US, Sony Ericsson is using Qualcomm for their Android and WP7 handsets, and TI/SGX for Symbian.
nVidia is dead in the water in the Smartphone biz AFAIK. Funny to see Microsoft going 100% SnapDragon for WP7 and giving nVidia the finger after working with them on the Zune HD and KIN devices for such a long time. I guess that OEMs didn't won't to have anything to do with NV.

Full KIN specs here: http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2010/04/12/microsoft-kin-one-and-kin-two-specs-unveiled/

Samsung doesn't obviously rely on it's own stuff only; so far they've manufactured SoCs for Apple have their SGX540/A8@1GHz already integrated in smartphones and have closed also a deal with ARM for Mali in the future. As many others they're not picking IP just from one source.
 
I wonder if there is any basis in fact for this story :-
"Samsung dumps Nvidia's Tegra"

"When the silicon is delivered in typical Nvidia style - hot, late, slow, and buggy - it is shown the door. Again and again and again. Ask Samsung"

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/04/14/samsung-dumps-nvidia-tegra/

"When an article is delivered in typical SA style - long, exaggerated, filled with half truths and bias - it is treated with mild indifference. Again and again and again. Ask a real journalist."
 
I would normally be cautious about stories like this, but there is no denying that very few products are shipping with Tegra inside. Nvida's PR does seem to greatly exceed their actual market success in this area.
 
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