NVIDIA Tegra Architecture

[silent_guy]

That makes a lot of sense for anything that might have to control any critical system in the car, or affect driving in any way, but are the standards equally high for information and entertainment systems?

According to this press release, the whole center console of a Tegra S is driven by a Tegra processor. It must be one of the most user visible pieces of electronics.

Even if it's not the lowest level CPU that controls the engine, it's impossible to argue that this is not an important system. Somebody who buys a $70K car is not going to be happy if the central console doesn't work when starting his car after parking his car overnight in -30C Norwegian winter or after baking a couple or hours in California sun.

That should be true for the stuff that controls your car but I doubt the same requirements are in place for media and even navigation. I've seen systems in cars where the performance was pretty erratic, didn't strike me as rock solid at all.

And you can bet that car manufacturers are not happy about that one bit and that, when faced with that kind of flakiness that hurts their brand, they'll tighten their requirements. In fact, this kind of feedback loop is part of the industry standard quality procedures, which are much more stringent than the quality procedures that are used in the consumer industry.

These car media stuff sounds like a real embedded system that runs a few predefined programs. Or do people install apps on their cars?

Universities (and research departments of automotive companies) are just as busy coming up with new stuff for cars as for any other industry. It's not there yet, but eventually someone will come out with environmental information projected onto the windshield, image detection of speed signs etc. This stuff has been around for ages but nobody feels like putting a workstation class CPU in a car (they have pretty stringent power requirements too). The workstation CPU of 10 years ago now comes in an SOC form factor and integrating them starts to become realistic.

If we were really talking "automotive grade" hardware I doubt Tegra would even qualify, there's a reason for stuff like ARMv7-R for instance.

ARMv7-R is just a CPU with real-time extensions? That's interesting if you need to do real-time stuff, but it doesn't magically make the silicon more robust in an aggressive environment. If you're not going to be running hard real-time software on your SOC, then it doesn't make any difference in terms of qualification.

I don't buy that it takes years to get these SoCs into cars either, nVidia was talking about specific vehicles with Tegra 2 not long after the chip came out.

I'm going to take your word for it. But talking about and delivering are different things: when could you buy the first car with a Tegra in it?

Surely somebody would be out-competing that if it's really just selling the same chip for much more.

Why?

There are only a handful of companies in the world that are able to design mobile phone SOCs. The amount of companies that are willing to go through the trouble of getting similar chips into cars can only be smaller.

'just' made me laugh.

 

[Mariner]

According to this press release, the whole center console of a Tegra S is driven by a Tegra processor. It must be one of the most user visible pieces of electronics.

The Tegra is so good, they renamed the car after it!

 

[ams]

And the issue is not confined to Need for Speed

You have never even used any T4-powered device (let alone measured one), so that doesn't mean much to me coming from you. From the anecdotal evidence I have seen, the vast majority of Android games are smooth and very playable even on this Toshiba device with it's ultra high res power hungry screen. Anyway, it would be prudent to wait for a larger sample size of T4-powered devices and a larger sample size of games played and tested on these devices before vilifying the design.

 

[Ailuros]

The Tegra is so good, they renamed the car after it!

The final one will replace the "g" with a "ph"

 

[swaaye]

How come nobody compared and contrasted Tegra 4 and NV40/G70 for me. The unit counts are similar. I wonder how it compares overall. Feature set and efficiency. Dynamic branching better or worse? NV40/G7x architecture was awful at that. Etc.

 

[xpea]

First T4 phone, ZTE U988S. high-end specs for only $320 unsubscribed

ZTE’s phone is expected to have a 5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, 2GB of RAM, Dolby Digital Audio, and a 13MP camera.
...
The rear panel is removable, allowing you to swap out the 2300mAh, 8.8Whr battery, SIM card, and microSD card.

source: ZTE U988S news on liliputing

 

[french toast]

First T4 phone, ZTE U988S. high-end specs for only $320 unsubscribed

source: ZTE U988S news on liliputing

Yea I saw that straight after commenting on here..I thought damn better not post that news lol

On a serious note sounds like a lot of phone for your shilling, interesting to see the performance of it, full tegra 4 tablets arnt setting the world alight so with a lower tdp this is going to be interesting.

 

[A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y]

New evidence points to 7-inch Nvidia tablet

http://techreport.com/news/25308/new-evidence-points-to-7-inch-nvidia-tablet

It will be interesting to see the final specs and price.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

This doesn't sound too bad.

"ASUS Officially Announces Transformer Pad TF701T with 2560x1600 Display."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7262/...transformer-pad-tf701t-with-2560x1600-display

As discussed previously, the TF701T will sport a 10.1” 2560x1600 IPS display. Powering the new Transformer is an NVIDIA Tegra 4 T40X quad-core SoC, which has four Cortex-A15 cores running at up to 1.9GHz and a 72-core GeForce GPU – the same SoC used in NVIDIA’s SHIELD. The new Transformer will initially launch in two models, both with 2GB DDR3L RAM: one has 32GB onboard storage and one has 64GB onboard storage (and both with microSDXC slots). Dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0 are included

 

[A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y]

More news on T4

Tegra 4 confirmed for Surface 2 tablet

Shows up in GFXBench results

Although we already wrote a while back that Microsoft's next Surface 2 will be based on Nvidia's Tegra 4 SoC, the recent appearance in GFXBench's results page confirms the information. Scheduled to be released sometimes this year, Microsoft's Surface 2 tablet will be running on the Windows 8.1 RT OS.

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/32391-tegra-4-confirmed-for-surface-2-tablet

 

[AlphaWolf]

So are they going to release the surface 2 at a discounted price?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Microsoft isn't killing WinRT?!

They're crazy!

 

[Turbotab]

I posted this in another thread, but is also pertinent to Tegra 5, as it will probably be manufactured on TSMC's 28nm HPM process.

Below is the voltage of a Krait 300 core, built on 28nm LP vs Krait 400 28nm HPM, so not completely analogous, but more of an indication on the current leakage / performance of TSMC's HPM process. I took the data from published kernel sources, both are from the same binning level (PVS 5).

28nm LP @ 1.7 GHz = 1075mv

28nm HPM @ 1.7 GHz = 900mv

I am suddenly more confident about the claims made for Tegra 5.

 

[Helmore]

How does TSMC's 28 nm HPL process compare to their LP process? Tegra 4 is build on the 28 nm HPL process, that's why I want to know. TSMC's site doesn't tell you much, just that HPL is a bit like LP with high-K metal gates if I get it right.

 

[french toast]

I posted this in another thread, but is also pertinent to Tegra 5, as it will probably be manufactured on TSMC's 28nm HPM process.

Below is the voltage of a Krait 300 core, built on 28nm LP vs Krait 400 28nm HPM, so not completely analogous, but more of an indication on the current leakage / performance of TSMC's HPM process. I took the data from published kernel sources, both are from the same binning level (PVS 5).

28nm LP @ 1.7 GHz = 1075mv

28nm HPM @ 1.7 GHz = 900mv

I am suddenly more confident about the claims made for Tegra 5.

Nice find turbo, but I dont expect much from tegra 5, with the proviso nvidia stick with the current 5 × A15 cores nonsense and the lte modem is not on die.

A15s make very little sense for a smartphone...its like a intel core duo or something..5 of them.

 

[xpea]

get news that T5 uses R4 revision of A15 with some optimizations towards efficiency

 

[A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y]

Xiaomi announces Mi3 Tegra 4 phone

The Mi3 (a three short from Mi6 ed.) is a 5-inch 1080p phone with 441ppi and a 1.8GHz clocked Tegra 4. It comes with 2GB RAM, 13-megapixel camera based on Sony’s Exmor RS 28mm wide angle and storage that goes all the way up to 64GB. The dual LED flash come from Philips. The display can be operated with gloves on, which is not something that you see every day. The phone is 8.1mm thick and it hides a 3050mAh battery that should provide ample juice for this device

...

The price is astonishing as Xiaomi, plans to sell this unlocked and unsubsidized phone for $327 (1999 yuan) which is roughly half what big brands charge for similar devices in Europe or the US.

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/32420-xiaomi-announces-mi3-tegra-4-phone

Links:

Xiaomi: http://www.xiaomi.com/mi3
Nvidia: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/09/05/xiaomi

 

[Mariner]

It's interesting that Xiaomi are producing versions of the Mi3 with either the Tegra 4 or the Snapdragon 800. The T4 version supports TD-SCDMA for use within China (and other markets, I suppose).

Snapdragon for the WCDMA and CDMA2000 markets.

Strange choice to develop two separate devices when the Snapdragon 800 supports TD-SCDMA in any case. I'd imagine NVidia must be giving them a very good deal?

 

[Helmore]

Strange choice to develop two separate devices when the Snapdragon 800 supports TD-SCDMA in any case. I'd imagine NVidia must be giving them a very good deal?

Probably. Any clue where the baseband in the Tegra version is coming from? Maybe they got a good deal on that too. It's not NVIDIA's i500 LTE modem.

 

[Mariner]

Probably. Any clue where the baseband in the Tegra version is coming from?

I don't know - probably Qualcomm! :smile: