CPU - 3/3 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Feb

Holy Mobile Computing, Batman: TI Announces OMAP 5, A Monster 2GHz Quad Core Mobile Processor

Posted by David Ruddock in News

Yeah, Nvidia's Tegra line of mobile processors is pretty exciting, and will be getting the quad core treatment later this year, but don't forget about the competition - namely, Texas Instruments. TI chips have powered most of Motorola's Android products to date (excluding the upcoming ATRIX / BIONIC / XOOM), but Nvidia ended up beating TI to the punch in the marketplace for multi-core handsets and tablets.

Fear not, though: Texas Instruments just announced its OMAP 5 line of mobile processors (there aren't even any OMAP 4 devices out yet), and they're truly ridiculous. Four cores? It's been done before, you say - but not like this.

Jan

NVIDIA Tegra 3 Will Make PCs Obsolete In 2012

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Development, News

CES 2011 was an occasion for manufacturers to flood the market with a plethora of Android devices, and powering many of them was NVidia's Tegra 2 chip.

Released late last year, the Tegra 2 chip uses the "system-on-a-chip" design to integrate an ARM CPU (1GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor) and a NVidia GPU into one package. This allows faster communication between the cores and the integrated memory controller. Most of the tablets and smartphones, and other unique hybrids, launching in 2011 will be using the Tegra 2 chips.

But, no sooner has the dust settled and NVidia is already planning for the future. A leaked slide from NVidia reveals that the Tegra 2 will soon be replaced by the Tegra 2 3D, which will subsequently be usurped by the "world's first mobile quad-core processor," the Tegra 3.

Jan

Intel Sandy Bridge Quad-Core Processor Coming Soon To Acer Android Tablets

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Acer, News, Tablets

There's no doubt about it: tablets are getting more and more powerful. How powerful? If you ask Acer, they will soon have enough horsepower to gradually "phase out" netbooks.

The computer manufacturer told Computerworld that in the first half of 2011, it will begin selling two or three new Android tablets in the 7- to 10-inch range. While Acer didn't specify the price or Android version, the company did say something that's sure to get your Android-loving heart racing: the tablets will be "faster than laptops with Windows operating systems," and will use a quad-core Intel Sandy Bridge processor.

XOOM who?

Dec

Revision 2 Of The Archos 7 Home Tablet Official, Not Much Better Than The Original

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in 7, ARCHOS, News

Nope, the Archos 70 wasn't the death of the good (or not so good) ol' Archos 7 Home Tablet, apparently. The manufacturer has just let revision 2 of the Archos 7 loose, and while it's still got a resistive touchscreen (ugh), its CPU has been upgraded to an 800 MHz Rockchip processor (the older model was powered by a 600 MHz chip), and it now comes with Android 2.1 (as opposed to Android 1.6 on the original).

Expansys will sell you the device for $194.99, though it's currently out of stock and is said to be shipping within 5-10 days.

Nov

Qualcomm Unveils 2011 Dual Core Snapdragons: 5x CPU Performance, 1/4 Power Consumption, GPU Rivaling PS3/XBOX 360

Posted by Nate Kimmey in News

Despite all this talk about upcoming phones and tablets running on the Tegra 2 processor, you may want to stop and consider the new offering in the Snapdragon line of processors from Qualcomm. Taking a 28-nm dual core beast (MSM8960), the company promises speeds up to five times their current offerings, as well as 75% less lower power usage.

But the real shocker here is the updated GPU, which Qualcomm claims is capable of delivering gaming performance equal to the of an Xbox 360 or PS3.

We should certainly wait for some real life tests and comparisons to Tegra 2 before really hyping this up, but still: can you imagine the PSP phone launching with these capabilities?

Nov

Samsung Orion Cortex A9 Processor Previewed On Video, Still No Arrival In Sight

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Devices By Manufacturer, News, Samsung

The first time we heard about Samsung's Orion chipset was back in September. Two months later, we're getting our first tantalizing glimpse at what will soon be packed into your favourite TouchWiz-running gadgets. ARMdevices' inimitable Charbax got a look at Samsung's demo boards at the ARM Techcon conference, and came away with some impressive performance details. While we knew most of these specs already from the original Samsung announcement, it's always nice to see it in the flesh, so to speak.

The demo board was shown running stock Froyo fairly smoothly, and was also outputting high definition video content with ease.

Apr

Intel Wants A Piece Of Android Action, Ports Android To Run On Atom CPUs, Goes After ARM

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News

Most, if not all, Android phones on the market run exclusively on an ARM architecture and Intel wants a piece of the action.

On Tuesday (that is today), Intel announced that it had ported Android to run on its Atom CPU line. Intel calls Atom its smallest chip, built with the world's smallest transistors. Atom is aimed at portable devices and consumes only 1-2.5W of power.

To make things even more interesting, Renee James, general manager of IDF (Intel Developer Forum) in Beijing, said the company has plans to port *all* mobile operating systems, not just Android, to run on Atom CPUs.