Nvidia Tegra quad-core Kal-El has the fifth "power parks"

Nvidia Tegra quad-core Kal-El has the fifth "power parks"


Kal-El: The current parkers only runs instead of four others.
Image: Nvidia With an additional piece of information, Nvidia wants the interest in the upcoming quad-core ARM SoC Kal-El to keep alive, which will be to buy more before the end of the year in tablets. Presumably as the Tegra processor has combined three published according to a blog entry and a white paper  not only four Cortex-A9 cores, but five. The fifth is very economical and only active if none is running the other cores. Nvidia wants to achieve through this trick very long battery life.

But even if all four of Kal-El-cores running at 1 GHz, it should be more economical than the two nuclei of the rival Texas Instruments OMAP4 or Qualcomm MSM8660 - while Nvidia promises but almost double the performance in the core market  benchmark. The full power of ARM SoCs including ULP GeForce GPU and other embedded processors and controllers, Nvidia reveals it still does not, but only the power hungry CPU Parts: This draws Nvidia, the power consumption under load of those from at rest system . Kal-El, the four cores at 1 GHz together swallow therefore 1.261 watts. For dual-core rivals TI and Qualcomm MSM8660 OMAP4 Nvidia has however found higher values, the latter was clocked slightly higher to provide a comparable Core-Mark value. The Core-Mark value of Kal-El at 1 GHz - may come faster versions - it is even slightly higher than the preliminary data in February , presumably due to better compiler optimization.

ARM SoC / Frequency Power Core Mark
(Number of current cores) (CPU cores) [points]
Nvidia Kal-El (4 core) 0.48 GHz, 0.579 W 5589
TI OMAP4 (2 cores) 1.00 GHz, 1.501 W 5673
Qualcomm MSM8660 (2 core) 1.20 GHz, 1.453 W 5690
Nvidia Kal-El (4 core) 1.00 GHz 11 667 1.261 watts

Nvidia has no competitors and MSM8660 OMAP4 selected randomly, but these ARM SoCs are among the few , which Microsoft has chosen for the special version of Windows 8th By Kal-El Kal-El-up version + Nvidia wants to enter even into the notebook market. In a further White Paper  Nvidia says, why are quad cores especially well suited for mobile devices.

The concept of the fifth core Nvidia has come up with a patent by its own account. The most economical building core from Nvidia to more fuel-efficient transistors, but they can not reach such high switching frequencies as those of the four fast cores. The entire chip is produced as its predecessor Tegra 2 (Tegra 250) with 40-nanometer process technology at TSMC. Several contract manufacturers offer separate manufacturing processes for low-power or high-performance transistors. Also, AMD and Intel use for their ARM competitors C-50/Ontario, E-350/Zacate or Atom low-power SoCs, special manufacturing processes.

The data from Nvidia to power the Cortex-A9 cores coincide roughly with data, the ARM has released in 2009. According to these two A9 cores at 2 GHz to make do with 1.9 watts, also at 40-nm technology by TSMC. Unfortunately it is difficult to estimate how high the power consumption of the remaining functional units of a Kal-El. By comparison, for the Tablet Atom Z670, with the Intel Android as powerful as one assesses Tegra 250, 3.75 Watt TDP, that manufacturer in conjunction with the on-chip "chipset" SM35.