Friday, 22 November 2013

Core number-arms race in processors for smartphones and tablets

A true octo-core chip for smartphones and tablets with Android 4.4 "Kitkat" wants the Taiwanese company Mediatek sell 2014. The "True octa-core" had already Mediatek months ago announced and now provides details of the system-on-chip (SoC) MT6592 by: Each of the eight Cortex-A7 cores should be able to reach up to 2 GHz. In addition, an ARM Mali GPU included with four cores, decoder for 4K video, modem - whether UMTS or LTE remains open - as well as controllers for WLAN, GPS, and radio reception.
4K support Mediatek describes slightly more accurate than "Ultra HD 4K × 2K", but only when playing videos. According to press release but only "Full HD" displays are oddly supported. Hardware acceleration there is therefore except for H.264 for H.265 and VP9, also can "Clear Motion" project, the frame rate of 24 or 30 to 60 frames per second.

Core number-arms race in processors for smartphones and tablets

In the Chinese online store of Zopo is already the Zopo ZP998 with MT6592, 5.5-inch display to find (Full HD) and 2 GB of RAM. In this run, the eight ARM cores with a maximum of 1.7 GHz GPU Mali-450 MP4 with 700 MHz. The operating system Android is installed 4.2 (Jelly Bean). Very similar data - up to a 5.7-inch display - called Goophone for the N3.

The Cortex-A7 was actually first ARM as more economical companion of the Cortex-A15 in the Big-Little-trailer combinations were presented, but does now in several multi-core SoCs, the main work, as also in the Mediatek MT6589 - there, however, in combination with a PowerVR GPU. Unfortunately, the public documentation is extremely sparse at Mediatek, one finds also the MT6589 only brief information and no precise to its variants MT6589M and MT6589T.

Impressive is the increasing clock frequencies: The fastest MT6589T is supposed to reach 1.5 GHz, the upcoming Octo-Core MT6592 but a third more - even though both are produced using 28-nanometer technology. Whether really, all eight cores running at 2 GHz at the same time, however, is not clear. In any case varies the performance of smartphones but depending on usage patterns and environmental conditions.

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