The ARM based chip will hit the market soon and comes with a few surprises under the hood. The Nvidia mobile quad-core SOC now features a fifth companion core. Now, some might be hesitant to buy a quad-core mobile device considering the amount of power consumption of a five core system. However, Tegra 3 will use less power than the dual-core Tegra 2.
As with Tegra 2, Tegra 3 is still at 40nm and will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp., Ltd. So, if the Tegra 3 uses less power than Tegra 2 without a die shink, how does it work? Well, here’s how:
During less power-hungry tasks like web reading, music playback and video playback, Kal-El completely powers down its four performance-tuned cores and instead uses its fifth companion core. For higher performance tasks, Kal-El disables its companion core and turns on its four performance cores, one at a time, as the work load increases.
So, the fifth core is active during low power everyday tasks. This is a great way to dynamically adjust to users’ demands. Additionally, performance over other competitors’ offering is going to be substantial.
In benchmarks, the new chips were also shown posting almost twice the benchmark score of rival Qualcomm Inc.’s (QCOM) MSM8660 dual-core SoC and Texas Instruments Inc.’s (TXN) OMAP4 (1 GHz) processor.
Kal-El will be released within the upcoming months, in Q4 2011 (originally suppose to release in Q3). Tegra 3 will first be released on Android based tablets and later smart phones. Also, a future release on Windows 8 based tablets could be one possibility. Lastly, future releases of the Nvidia Tegra SoC, such as Wayne (Tegra 4 – 2012), Logan (Tegra 5 – 2013), and Stark (Tegra 6 – 2014) promise even more performance and will most likely employ similar power saving techniques.
Source: Dailytech.com
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Sigh I am personally one of those people who think that so long as batteries aren’t improving, improving hardware and power saving is pretty pointless.
We need to reinvent the battery if we ever want true mobility.
I agree with you 150%. I would love to use my cell more then half a day before recharging it.
And while they are at it, invent less power hungry screens. The screen takes about 60% of the battery charge.
don’t expect batteries to become significantly better in the next decade lol. (at least the affordable kind used in common electronics lol)
I’m paying, what? 700 euros for a smart phone? I wouldn’t mind paying 750 for a smartphone that actually lasts a couple of days of full use.
sadly the experimental batteries are a lot more expensive than what the current ones are (mainly cause of a lack of a method to manufacturing)
i think they got experimental batteries that’s got a power density rating 20-50% better than the current lithium ion but costs 10x the price lol
^but then it actually be good and useful, we cant have that now can we
as I said, instead of 700, 750. Current batteries cost peanuts to mass produce.
It’s all a matter of production vs demand, as always. When enough factories start producing them, the costs will drop. Unless ofc we’re talking about rare materials, which I doubt.
it’s not production vs demand. it’s literally the process of manufacturing that needs to be worked out and that can take years. right now the production methods are only able to make small lab samples that take a shit ton of time and long term tests on stability and degradation of the compounds haven’t even been performed yet.
and $50 is chump change compared to how much these lab batteries cost. my school had one of those zinc air batteries made in one of its labs doing research on them (which is cheap as shit for materials) and it costed literally nothing for the base materials. but it took about 2 months to get enough stable compound to precipitate from the reactions and then house them in a container. (heard the professor had a grant of like $20k to make it in a 3 month period.
You don’t understand killer, prototypes always take a lot of time and in some cases money, to make.
Let’s say you need a compound that takes 10 months to create. After that you can mass produce the product from the said compound since the production of the compound will be stable for the months to come.
It’s like whiskey! lol
After that, there is research into ways to increase production speeds etc. Usually those come first but it’s not necessary. Depends on the manufacturing facility.
it’s not nearly as easy as whiskey. in order to speed up reactions, you need catalysts. without a proper identification of catalysts that can potentially speed up the reactions, there’s no possible way to increase the precipitation of a certain product or the rate of reaction.
you’re literally saying that all of these things have already been found and is waiting for someone to make it into a process for a factory.
And you can’t just make a giant vat of the said chemicals and just let it sit there for 10 months. chemical reactions aren’t just one sided. they’re based on a equilibrium constant (basically saying that it will create a certain amount of product before the process reverses and the conversion between reactant and product will be the same rate)
and you guys are making research seem like a walk in the park that only takes a few months to years accomplish. usual time period between making something in the lab and it becoming commercially viable is around 10-15 years due to all the regulations and testing and developing it to a commercially safe product.
Believe it or not I have studying mining and metallurgical engineering so I do know how reactions work as well as how production in general works 😛
Yes you can put everything in a giant vat and wait for the products to be produced. You just have to keep the input constant and thus the output will remain constant with no potential side effects. After all, the idea is to keep a constant production.
The catalysts could be useful in order to reduce space or increase production speed. That doesn’t mean that a facility can’t produce the said materials without the catalysts. It simply means it produces them at a slower pace or with increased space requirements.
Research is by no means a walk in the park. It just shouldn’t be so hard to go from research to production.