If you want to get HD in your handheld, NVIDIA's
Tegra processor is the hot way to do it at the moment, and we've got reasonably concrete sounding rumors from disparate sources that a handset containing one of the chips is currently under development by a "top five" smartphone builder (we're guessing it's not Apple), and that it'll be out sometime before the end of the year, selling at T-Mobile and AT&T for just $199. The details of the device beyond that are scant, with Android being a possibility but Windows Mobile looking more likely, and a
continued pledge of battery life of rated for "days and days" of mobile multimedia. We like the sound of that.
Read - NVIDIA Tegra phone due from "big five" firm
Read - Rumor: NVIDIA Tegra phones in Q409?
posted June 30th 2009 6:56AM
Yes, they could, but that requires money and resources and I think they are in a state of mind of "good enough".
Although Tegra uses the ARM dual-core technology, The two processor cores are ARM11 based and can only run around 600mhz. Combined, this should give it a raw capability of ~1500 DMIPS.
The newer ARM Cortex-A8 core (iPhone 3GS, Pre, OMAP3) and Qualcomm's custom, Cortex-compatible Snapdragon core are both significantly faster than the ARM11 on a clock-for-clock basis, with a 600Mhz core coming in at ~1200 DMIPs. More significantly, the Cortex-A8 can easily scale to 1.0Ghz or higher on a 45nm process, and the even faster and more efficient Snapdragon core can go to 1.3Ghz. Additionally, the Cortex generation finally introduces a powerful parallel SIMD engine called NEON, which can be used to speed up intensive multimedia calculations. Finally, having an older dual-core ARM introduces more software complexity than a new single-core ARM of similar power, and as always, you NEVER get perfect core scaling in software, and only certain applications will be able to take advantage of it.
Even a 65nm-produced 800Mhz ARM Cortex-A8 or Snapdragon core would be far faster in real-world use than the Tegra's ~650 mhz dual ARM11.
Additionally, the even newer multi-core capable ARM Cortex-A9 architecture has been available for licensing for a few years now and are just starting to be sampled from major OEMs. No doubt Nvidia could integrate two or more Cortex-A9 cores into a new chip.
T.I.'s OMAP4 uses a dual-core Cortex-A9 clocked at 1000mhz+ and an SGX540+ GPU, and is capable of full 1080P encoding decoding. Similarly, Qualcomm has a monster dual-core, 1.5Ghz Snapdragon.
Overall, I hope Nvidia has an updated Tegra platform in the works. Otherwise the GPU and video capabilities are going to far outmatch general processing on all platforms.
Most importantly, having the greatest GPU in the world will do NOTHING to improve load times and rendering times of web pages, nor general application performance.
Can't wait to see this in the ZuneHD.