We think the A5 is likely not built around Cortex A9 cores, but instead probably uses two [of] the same custom low-power A8 cores used in the A4. If Apple had indeed used two Cortex A9-based cores, raw performance should be more than double that of a single core A8-based design.
To be honest, until someone (iFixit and friends) rips the silicon in the iPad 2 apart and sticks it under a microscope, none of us will have much more than guesses to go on about what exactly the Apple A5 is. But it seems very likely that Apple has made expedient decisions to maximise performance as well as keep battery life gains.
I’ve have always maintained that Apple’s mobile silicon lineup is more than powerful enough in the CPU department, and what it really needed was a kick on the GPU side. Even the CPU in the original iPhone is still very capable. But the GPUs in all current iOS devices are constantly fighting an uphill battle with fill rate.
It remains to be seen if the iPhone 5 will get this Apple A5, or a further iteration.
[Intel Executive Vice President Dadi Perlmutter] basically said (and I paraphrase from memory here) that Microsoft has a long ways to go on the tablet software front, and that an ARM port will help them get there. And, by the time they get their tablet software sorted—a fresh, tablet-centric UI and much-needed power optimizations—Intel will be ready with an Atom-based chip that can compete directly with ARM in the milliwatt power draw range.
Right now, Atom is significantly more power-hungry (and more high-performance) than the ARM Cortex A8-caliber hardware that’s showing up in Android tablets. But Intel will continue to close that gap with each new process generation. So, by the time Moore’s Law delivers an Atom SoC with the same power profile as A8- and A9-based SoCs, Microsoft will either be ready with a tablet-worthy OS, or it will be further along than it would’ve been if it had been waiting for Intel to catch up.
Windows will not only run on x86 processors, but also certain ARM ones. Specifically, it will support certain ARM system-on-chip (SoC) designs from NVIDIA (with its Tegra family), Texas Instruments (with its OMAP 4 family), and Qualcomm (with Snapdragon).
Windows 8 (or whatever it ends up being called) will include a new shell, apparently known as “Modern Shell” or “MoSh,” that will bring touch friendliness and modern elegance to the Windows platform.
It seems that Microsoft is making all the same mistakes over again. They’ve just introduced Windows 7, and Windows Phone 7. They still have the vestiges of an ARM OS kicking around in Windows CE, and now they are introducing another cludge to try and shoehorn Windows onto mobile devices.
The sum total of their “Windows on ARM” demo at CES was a direct port of Office, and the same for Windows. Perhaps there is more to come this week?
Perhaps Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will be based on the same OS underpinnings as each other, much like OS X and iOS. But, frankly, I doubt it. Why not just move forwards with Windows Phone 7 more aggressively?
With an expected ship date of 2012 I can’t see this panning out well for Microsoft. iOS and Android will be streets ahead by then. And RIMs new tablet OS might even be gaining momentum. And slowly but surely the reasons to want Windows on a mobile device will continue to diminish as people transition to other mobile solutions for working with Office documents and the like.
Perhaps Microsoft are hoping that NVIDIA’s new multi-core ARM SoC is going to handle all the bloat on Windows 8, and they can unify desktop and mobile that way? If so that is all-together the wrong approach, and even if they did pull that off then it’s already too late.
“We are not building any more chipsets, we are building SoCs now. We are building Tegra SoCs, and so we are going to take integration to a new level. [...] The chipset business [has] not grown largely this year because we have not really been expanding the sales of it.”
I have been trying to wrap my head around these comments attributed to Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia. Ultimately SoCs, and a merge of OpenGL and OpenGL ES (at least in terms of API compatibility with stepped feature sets) is where we are heading. But I was quite surprised at how fast NVIDIA had come to this conclusion, when you consider they are in the business of shipping GPUs today, and not just R&D or licensing of the technology.
This article seems to illuminate NVIDIA’s strategy to some degree…
NVIDIA has spent the better part of a decade establishing itself as a major GPU player in everything from notebooks to workstations, but the imminent introduction of new products and technologies from competitors like Intel could detrimentally impact the company’s bottom line, particularly as these competing products transition to smaller process nodes and more advanced designs. Up until now, every CPU in existence had to be paired with a GPU that was either integrated into the motherboard or sold separately as a discrete solution; NVIDIA competes in both of these markets with its various integrated chipsets and discrete cards.
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If Intel successfully establishes itself as a major player in the discrete GPU market, both NVIDIA and AMD will be faced with an unwelcome third opponent with financial resources that dwarf the two of them combined. As the dominant company in both desktop and workstation graphics, NVIDIA literally has more to lose from such a confrontation, and it’s the only one of the three that does not possess an x86 license or an established CPU brand. This leaves the corporation at a distinct disadvantage compared to AMD; the latter can combine a CPU and GPU into a single package and / or design itself a graphics core based on the x86 architecture. With no simple way to address these issues, NVIDIA is exploring a separate market altogether, and that’s where Tegra comes in.
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The last twenty-five years are littered with examples of companies who claimed Intel (and, by extension, the x86 architecture) couldn’t possibly challenge the performance or scalability of their various processors or products. Faced with a future where integrated CPU / GPU hybrids chip away at its budget products and Larrabee challenges the midrange (at least), NVIDIA is pursuing the barely tapped market for smartbooks, UMPCs, MIDs, and next-generation smart phones. The company’s lack of an x86 license could prove to be a disadvantage, but the market space Tegra is targeting is the only one where a non-x86 architecture actually has a chance of succeeding.
Wars aren’t won by sitting at home and waiting for the enemy to come to you, especially when your foe has ten times your revenue and far-reaching connections. Graphics and GPU design will remain a critical part of the company’s future—you don’t pump two years into creating the concept of “visual computing” only to quit—but NVIDIA’s decision to capitalize on the on the same market opportunities Intel is working to create in Atom’s target market is, at the very least, strategically sound.
The OMAP 4 platform is a highly-optimized system-on-chip (SOC) leveraging two ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore general-purpose processors, reaching speeds of 1.5 GHz per core, complemented by two ARM Cortex-M3 cores to power-efficiently offload time-critical and control tasks. High-performance multimedia capabilities are provided by programmable cores including a POWERVR™ 3D graphics engine, TI IVA 3 for high-definition/multi-standard video, TI image signal processor (ISP) for high-quality/high-megapixels imaging, TI low-power audio processor and TI digital signal processor (DSP) based on the TI C64x DSP for natural user interface and signal processing innovations optimized for mobile applications.
Knock a few .1 GHz off, add some custom power management, cull a couple of ports and this is not a bad approximation of what I think the Apple A5 will look like.
BARCELONA (Dow Jones)–Microchip designer ARM Holdings PLC (ARM.LN) has an “active technical dialogue” with Google Inc. (GOOG) that extends to Google TV, Chief Executive Warren East said Thursday.
East’s comments come after Dow Jones Newswires reported late Wednesday that ARM was in preliminary discussions with Google on a potential cooperation deal linked to Google TV, which lifted its stock.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecoms conference in Barcelona, East said: “It’s well known that all the Android phones that are out there at the moment are running on ARM, and so clearly Google are active users of ARM.
So here’s the real question mark in my mind regarding the PSP Phone leak – does it really make sense for Sony, probably less than a year away from getting PSP 2 out into the public eye, to start building tech from the (pretty unsuccessful) PSPgo into phone handsets? One might argue that it could help to head off Apple’s assault on the gaming sector – and certainly, a phone that can play Monster Hunter Portable would be pretty attractive in Japan – but the potential for a PSX style high profile failure which would pollute a future, PSP2-focused effort cannot be discounted.
What is Sony’s plan?
We have heard that PSP2 hardware is with developers right now. And yet this week we are seeing leaked images and specs of a “Playstation Phone”. Which is apparently an ARM based smartphone with slide out controls.
Japanese console hardware, be it handheld or full size, is typically very focussed, low cost, high performance hardware (as long as you can do the programming equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your tummy).
As good as the current crop of 1Ghz ARM processors and their GPU sidekicks are, they are not really suited to emulating PS2, or even PSP games.
If the PSP2 and the “Playstation Phone” both come to market it is extremely unlikely that they will be compatible in any way. The former is likely based on specialised silicon and relies on proprietary languages and APIs. The latter is just a branded Android smartphone.
This is fragmentation of a brand and a hardware base of the very worst kind.
Colour me confused.
My fear is that Sony Ericsson just want in on the smartphone explosion. And we are going to see yet another Android handset. Which will achieve nothing more than killing the PSP2 outside Japan.
Perhaps it is just time to kill the PSP line altogether? If I was actually using my PSP developer credentials, and was half way through a project for that platform I would be very concerned right now.
Meanwhile, Quanta has reportedly landed orders for 11.6-inch MacBooks from Apple. Shipments of 11.6-inch MacBooks are expected to top 400,000-500,000 units in 2010.
A lot of people are theorising that this is for a new MacBook Air.
Possible. But what CPU are they going to stick inside this revision?
A little bird told me months ago that as well as playing with different enclosure material, and touch sensitive screens for the Air, Apple has also been flirting with ARM based silicon.
I don’t see it happening for the Air in this upcoming refresh. It’s too early. But with Intel’s mobile silicon being so underwhelming on the GPU front, I am sure that ARM SoCs are something Apple are at least considering, moving forwards…
You only need to consider new GPU silicon like this, and this, to see how much trouble Intel is in this decade if it keeps up its obsession with home made integrated GPUs.
It’s a foregone conclusion that the personal computer of the future is [mobile phone sized]. You could add wireless HDMI to it someday, and it could also be your set-top box.
The PC of the future will be made by new OEMs, sold through new distributors and use a new instruction-set architecture. ARM will be the most important CPU architecture of the future, and it already is the fastest growing processor architecture.
Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, speaking at the company’s annual conference.
Couldn’t agree more.
There is no love lost between NVIDIA and Intel. And these comments are certainly directed Intel’s way, at least in part. But that doesn’t make his comments any less valid.
ARM’s shares price growth resembles the lower end of an exponential curve right now. I think that curve fits most charts relating to their business activities.
I still remember when I thought my Newton was the most powerful thing I would ever hold in my hands. Or ever need, for that matter. Admittedly I was in the first flush of un-boxing on launch day, at the time.
It’s crazy to think that in a few years time we’ll probably be going similarly gaga over PS3 and current gen. iPhone games running via an emulator on our iPod Nanos.
