-
by Joe Levi | May 13, 2013 10:10 AMRead OnIntel makes processors for all kinds of notebook, desktop, workstation, and server computers. They make excellent products that power the world -- well, the world outside your pocket anyway. Intel's chips are conspicuously few and far between when it comes to smartphones and tablets. That's something they hope to change with their new Silvermont SoC. Silvermont is the code-name for an upcoming line of chips from Intel. According to their documents, chips based on the Silvermont architecture will run up to three times as fast as their current models, handle up to eight cores, and some ...
-
by Joe Levi | April 11, 2013 1:59 PMRead OnAt the core of every smartphone, phablet, tablet, computer, or piece of electronic equipment is a processor. Processors aren't as simple as a single chip anymore. The processor inside mobile devices today is what's called a "System on a chip", or SoC for short. This SoC includes a lot of "processors". Some handle video, some handle traditional "CPU" tasks. Others take care of your cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios. Still more process audio, and others monitor and handle the vast array of sensors that are tucked away snugly inside modern phones and tablets. Each SoC has its advantages ...
-
by Joe Levi | January 10, 2013 10:43 AMRead OnSingle-core processors are going the way of the dinosaur, and dual-core processors are all around us, but today's powerhouses run quad-core. Some chips even throw in a low-powered fifth-core just for good measure. Just days ago NVIDIA announced the Tegra 4, which outclassed everything else, hands down. That victory was short-lived as Qualcomm introduced us to their new Snapdragon 800. Both new product offerings come in quad-core (or fifth-core) configurations. Not to be left out, Stephen Woo (the president of Samsung's System LSI division) dropped a bomb on the SoC world shortly ...
-
by Joe Levi | January 7, 2013 10:01 AMRead OnNVIDIA has long been one of my favorite chip-making companies. Back in the PC days they were always leap-frogging ATI to see who could make the best video card on the market. NVIDIA has since moved into more than just graphics and has a fairly impressive presence in mobile technology, specifically SoCs. The best NVIDIA SoC on the market today is their Tegra 3. Unfortunately, it's starting to show its age. Not to worry, at this year's CES, NVIDIA announced the Tegra 4! Not unlike the Tegra 3, inside the Tegra 4 is a quad-core CPU with an extra "low-power core" to help extend battery life. ...
-
by Joe Levi | November 2, 2012 3:16 PMRead OnSnapdragon is one of the most successful and vastly popular mobile SoCs and is brought to us by Qualcomm. Something we don't often consider is that the Snapdragon is based on ARM's designs. To see where Snapdragon is headed, we first need to look at the ARM roadmap. ARM is the company that many of today's mobile SoCs are based upon. Some are ARMv5, some are ARMv7a-compatible. Others are something entirely different. Notice that I said "based upon". One might think that an SoC based on ARMv5 technology is old and slow. Not necessarily. Since ARMv5 has been around for a while there's been a ...
-
by Joe Levi | October 26, 2012 7:39 AMRead OnSingle-core versus dual-core used to be the big debate. As expected, we saw a fairly substantial jump in day-to-day activities when we went from one to two cores. People thought we'd see the same kinds of improvements going from dual-core to quad-core -- though we really haven't. Some have argued that we haven't seen a similar performance bump because Android isn't optimized for quad-core processors. I'm sure there's some truth to that, however, it looks like SoC architecture -- rather than the number of cores -- is more important to overall performance than just cramming a couple ...
Posts tagged with: soc