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ROFL
So you're absolutely sure the 3DS' SoC had already taped out when the console was paper-launched in March 2010?
BTW, I wonder if the childish\elitist mockery was really necessary.
ROFL
Let's bring out the classic Silicon valley cliche and agree to disagree.metafor said:That's not "a lot" of use cases in modern smartphones. At least, not yet. And even if so, the CPU in general is not taxed. The GPU and memory controller isn't going to push 800mW. Nowhere close.
Does a Tegra 2 really consume more than an equivalent qcom or Ti chip? (Charlie's opinion doesn't qualify.)It's not. Look at a modern smartphone design and tell me which one discriminates based on active power (so long as it's below say, 1W) of the SoC in lieu of performance, features or price. If power were the primary discriminant, Tegra 2 would be shunned.
Let's bring out the classic Silicon valley cliche and agree to disagree.
Does a Tegra 2 really consume more than an equivalent qcom or Ti chip? (Charlie's opinion doesn't qualify.)
Hard to answer that one for now: because there's nothing on the market ready for production that has 2 cores. They had the market for themselves right now.
Cell phone makers are desperately trying to find an edge over Apple and they're looking at the SOC check marks to do so. But if there were an equivalent competitor, there's no doubt that the one with 20% lower power consumption would win.
In every-day use, the iPhone last longer than a Samsung; despite the same SoC. It just isn't that big of a factor.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...-tegra-2-3d-in-january2c-tegra-3-by-fall.aspx
Nothing surprising considering the CPU. 3x times faster graphics?
NV claims Tegra3 started sampling in 4Q10 whereas Freescale implied i.MX6x wasn't even sampling yet, so yes, they do get to claim that. Although if it's true that the PSP2 is also quad-core, then that would have taped-out first. Since that's a proprietary solution it wouldn't really be comparable though.
Not that I disagree with you general sentiment, however your example probably not a great one, as the two Socs are significantly different.
It has a different graphics core, different video encode and decode cores, its widely assuming Apple isn't running it at 1Ghz (probably 800Mhz ?), and I don't think Apple is clocking their SGX535 at the 200Mhz that Samsung is clocking their SGX540.
So you're absolutely sure the 3DS' SoC had already taped out when the console was paper-launched in March 2010?
BTW, I wonder if the childish\elitist mockery was really necessary.
Does Tegra 2 3D use different silicon compared to Tegra 2?
That's what public benchmarks show unfortunately at the moment. But that's not the point.Well that 3X is probably a marketing number but even if its true i wouldnt be surprised. Tegra 2 trades blows with SGX 540 and Adreno 205 right now and maybe approx 10-20% faster depending on the benchmark.
I can't make up my mind as a layman if the GPU ALUs in T3 will be hot-clocked or not. Hot-clock means obviously ~half the unit amount and no hot-clock ~twice. In any case to expect something in the MP2@200MHz performance range could be well realistic (but then again I was way too optimistic too for the T2 GPU and expected twice the T1 units). My personal disagreement and Arun knows, is that NV is concentrating in this case way too much on CPU power. In terms of marketing a quad core CPU definitely will give you advantages, but albeit I'm anything but against multi-core I find it hard to believe that applications will scale from single to quad threading over night. Besides how many chances are there that CPUs in the embedded space will scale beyond 4 cores anytime soon? After that isn't there a possibility of changing the entire strategy?With Samsung moving to Mali 400 we should see at least a doubling of performance compared to SGX 540. Apple is rumoured to be going for 4X their current performance with SGX 543 MP2. Im not sure about Adreno 220 v/s 205 though. But Nvidia also had to aim for at least double the performance of their current part, lest they be left behind(they are already going to have the lowest graphics performance of all the dual core SoC's, even TI with their SGX 540 will beat them)
Tegra2 is using TSMC 40G afaik. They must have had a good reason for not picking something like LP instead, but yes I can't help but think that the TSMC 40G problems might have affected T2 production too. I think it taped out somewhere in late 08'.Is TSMC 28 nm ready though? Or are we gonna have another 40nm fiasco?
Edit: And i remember you mentioning that they were using a different version of 28nm too.
Good question. It sounds to me rather like a SoC with faster clocked units. I wouldn't be surprised if the GPU block is also clocked higher by say 20% as the CPU.
That's what public benchmarks show unfortunately at the moment. But that's not the point.
I can't make up my mind as a layman if the GPU ALUs in T3 will be hot-clocked or not. Hot-clock means obviously ~half the unit amount and no hot-clock ~twice. In any case to expect something in the MP2@200MHz performance range could be well realistic (but then again I was way too optimistic too for the T2 GPU and expected twice the T1 units). My personal disagreement and Arun knows, is that NV is concentrating in this case way too much on CPU power. In terms of marketing a quad core CPU definitely will give you advantages, but albeit I'm anything but against multi-core I find it hard to believe that applications will scale from single to quad threading over night. Besides how many chances are there that CPUs in the embedded space will scale beyond 4 cores anytime soon? After that isn't there a possibility of changing the entire strategy?
And yes the first best argument from someone like Arun will be that A9 cores are relatively small; but so are GPU ALUs especially if they should be hot-clocked
Tegra2 is using TSMC 40G afaik. They must have had a good reason for not picking something like LP instead, but yes I can't help but think that the TSMC 40G problems might have affected T2 production too. I think it taped out somewhere in late 08'.
However even if T3 ends up by several months later than currently projected, NV is still going to have a time advantage against their competitors considering quad core CPU SoCs.
Tegra2 is using TSMC 40G afaik. They must have had a good reason for not picking something like LP instead, but yes I can't help but think that the TSMC 40G problems might have affected T2 production too. I think it taped out somewhere in late 08'.
No, he did mean late 08 They actually had early samples back in the lab during Mobile World Congress 2009 (but obviously not at the show), and then they did a respin and started sampling to customers in July 2009 iirc. As for Tegra 2 3D, it could be a derivative with very minor changes ala APX 2600 or it might be the exact same chip. Not sure it really matters.Im sure you mean late 09 and not 08 :smile: And yea i suspect it affected their production. I think arun mentioned that they are using 28 LPG or something for Tegra 3.
They were going to tape-out in mid-2010, so I assumed the semiaccurate tape-out date was correct (even if Charlie's Tegra sources are pretty awful *cough* Rayfield *cough*). That presentation slide also clearly says they are sampling it in Q4 2010, and AFAIK that slide is very recent so that means it has definitively already started sampling.I heard they might just demo Tegra 3 at MWC if all goes well. They haven't even got first silicon, its expected back from TSMC late this week so if they can get it running by then they'll demo it
That's rather unlikely given that ARM finished work on that macro in late 2009, and NVIDIA taped-out Tegra 2 in Q4 2008. Unless NVIDIA made the time machine and ARM made the hard macro, but it'd be pretty lame if that was the best use of a time machine they could think of
IIRC, ARM only offers the A9 hard-IP in 40G. They have two versions in 40G, one using mostly HVT cells targeted at 1GHz and one using more LVT cells targeted at 2GHz.
I imagine due to their aggressive push for time-to-market, nVidia went for the hard-macro solution from ARM rather than do the synthesis and back-end work themselves.
Could also explain why all the Tegra 2 phones announced are packing 1900mA-h batteries.
No, he did mean late 08 They actually had early samples back in the lab during Mobile World Congress 2009 (but obviously not at the show), and then they did a respin and started sampling to customers in July 2009 iirc. As for Tegra 2 3D, it could be a derivative with very minor changes ala APX 2600 or it might be the exact same chip. Not sure it really matters.
They were going to tape-out in mid-2010, so I assumed the semiaccurate tape-out date was correct (even if Charlie's Tegra sources are pretty awful *cough* Rayfield *cough*). That presentation slide also clearly says they are sampling it in Q4 2010, and AFAIK that slide is very recent so that means it has definitively already started sampling.
metafor: That's rather unlikely given that ARM finished work on that macro in late 2009, and NVIDIA taped-out Tegra 2 in Q4 2008. Unless NVIDIA made the time machine and ARM made the hard macro, but it'd be pretty lame if that was the best use of a time machine they could think of
And while I'm not convinced either that NV's Tegra 2 A9 implementation is very power efficient, it seems to me that very large batteries are something you want anyway in an ultra-high-end phone as long as you can maintain a very thin profile (which the Motorola Atrix does) so I don't think there is any correlation here.
Welcome to the handheld industry. Snapdragon started sampling in late 2007 and the Toshiba TG01 was released in mid-2009, with the vast majority of OEMs only shipping in late 2009/early 2010. The OMAP3430 taped-out in August 2006 (not sure when it started sampling) and the first OMAP3 phone was (iirc) the Samsung Omnia HD in May 2009. Cycles are shortening, but we're not quite there yet.Really? They started sampling to customers in July 2009 and we're getting end products 6 quarters later?
Errr... Toshiba AC100? Turned out pretty well on the hardware side, I think. Not so much in terms of software and most partners actually delivering end-products.Well i've got first hand info that they haven't yet received first silicon back from the fab. That slide also mentions Tegra 2 phones in Fall 2010 and we know how that turned out
Errr... Toshiba AC100? Turned out pretty well on the hardware side, I think. Not so much in terms of software and most partners actually delivering end-products.
And it just so happens that 300/333/400MHz are the exact maximum memory frequencies for AP20/T20/T25 iirc. Anand's article is very nice, but there are tons of minor technical mistakes, so you'll have to excuse me if I don't quite believe this just yet.Well the entire article is a very interesting read, but the GPU blocks being clocked at 300 and 333MHz respectively explain the T2 3D scores a whole lot better than the 240MHz I assumed so far.