ARM shows off its Mali mobile processors with impressive 3D demos, also bowling (video)
By Tim Stevens 
posted Oct 21st 2009 7:57AM
posted Oct 21st 2009 7:57AM
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ARM is going to rule the world when computer moves from your desk to your pocket.
It does certainly seem that way. Intel seems to be doing very little in the mobile device space. They don't seem to realize that a 6" Atom powered MID isn't really what anyone wants.
This video is sexy shit. Do want. Now plz. (OMG, I BET THEY PUT THIS CHIP ON THE NEXT IPHONE!!!!11111)
What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination...
I believe intel is really kicking themselves for selling their XScale (their ARM implementation) to Marvell. Intel keeps crippling x86 cores (Atom is in-order, short pipelines, currently single-core with very small caches compared to its desktop counterparts) to lower the TDP to the level of ARM processors. Meanwhile ARM CPUs are adding multiple cores and integrated GPUs to a single chip. Add in the fact that x86's ISA is grossly bloated (from years of backwards compatibility) and that Atom still requires an external GPU, northbridge chip, memory controller, etc... they still need a lot of work to cram that into a phone.
The only advantage I see x86 having is being able to run desktop software. But do we really want desktop software on our smartphones and mp3 players?
Bring on the ARM netbooks...
Aww man i love TA, best of all it runs on windows 7 :P It refused to run on xp or vista lol.
crawdad: Oh, Intel knows that the Atom won't solve their problems - but what can they do? They've committed to the x86 architecture, which has proven time and time again to be unable to scale down (power and performance-wise) to ARM's level. The only thing Intel can do right now to save themselves in this market is to pull a magic new microarchitecture out of their hat.
That canvas demo is insane - it looks smoother and more detailed than surface!
Nobody's going to claim that an ARM CPU and GPU is more powerful than a Core 2 Duo and nVidia desktop graphics chip, but it's incredible what you can achieve with well-optimized software versus just throwing faster and faster hardware at the problem.
Tegra ftw!
If it ever comes out in anything other than the Zune HD
or decides to use cortex a8 rather than old arm 11
@bob
The rumour on the street is that the second generation Tegra will be a dual core Cortex A9 with twice the memory bandwidth:
http://news.driversdown.com/News/200906/05-11271.html
Now that sounds tasty, but then we've also seen dual core 1GHz+ Marvell, OMAP 4 and Snapdragon chips announced for next year and, since it's ARM we're talking about, you can include lots of other companies in there too as being likely to bring out similar products (Freescale, Broadcom, Mediatek, Samsung, Infineon, ST-Ericsson and so on)... PLUS there's whatever Intel / AMD come up with to retaliate!
I think we're in for a really good few years for gadgets - competition is good :)
Mali (and the fact that Tegra 1 uses the old ARM 11 core and Tegra 2 will be very late to the A8 party) is the reason why so few OEMs are interested in Tegra. While the fanboys rave about an NVIDIA sticker on a GPU for mobile phones, very few phone / mid / netbook makers seriously expect it to come anywhere near the performance per watt of ARM's homebaked Mali or even Imagination Technology's next generation PowerVR design.
Oh, and you can absolutely guarantee that the cost per unit for ARM / PowerVR's solutions will be much less than NVIDIA's.
@Ernesttechuser
fanboi... I hate ya...
I was like that about Tegra till I saw how fast Snapdragon performs, now I don't care which one it is, I just want it cheap. Dirt-cheap no-stuttering mobile phone with wide multimedia capabilities, including 720p recording at 30+fps, 1080p playback, HDMI-out, 30+ hours of music playback, instant loading of gallery, stutter-free slide show. Tegra, Snapdragon, Cortex A8 - I don't give a damn.
PS: I'm still Nvidia fan when it comes to GPUs!
The second video of the 3D interface looks nice. I'm surprised this sort of stuff isn't really on desktops by now since you could just throw all that power on a graphics card. I'm not sure, but I'm wondering if companies are going a bit overboard on the advantages 3D interface. Will it really make it that much easier to manipulate a desktop full of files? I'd need to play with those things for awhile to see if they're any better than what I already use. It sure seems like they'd take more human energy to move those objects around.
It looks cool - but that's about all it is. I've played with some experimental 3D interfaces to common things before - and in general they are *really* hard to use. It's a marketing gimmick that looks awesome on YouTube, but that's about it. The moment they ship this with a phone is the moment millions of customers will throw up their hands in frustration, and suddenly are silenced.
It's been *more* than possible to do full-3D interfaces like this for a LONG time, we haven't done it because it sucks.
I think the problem is 3D manipulation with 2D input devices, and I don't see a great fix for that problem.
Anyone got a Link of the huge Touchable-Flatscreen at the beginning? Model?
is this a arm gpu or cpu?
GPU
I believe the Mali-200 is a GPU. http://www.arm.com/news/21889.html
Jeez, cool stuff. But why do they always forget about one important thing. These babies will probably require some tremendous power to run. With today's batteries I bet you run out of battery before you leave your house. When will they come with a battery that runs for a month without the need of recharge?
if you're going to be a douche and try to sell shit here, at least spell "clothes" right ass wipe!
all hail the engadget comment system!!!
I have the right to bear ARM processors.
At first it took an entire room to do a calculator's work. I think the future is in these small power-sipping devices. We already have full featured OSs that will run on them. It is only really a matter of time before the jump is made.
I think the surface like demo was impressive, not so much about the contacts. I still believe that Tegra's was more impressive let's see what the next Tegra will bring on, Things are getting really interesting!
@crawdad689
I was interested in what you had to say until you started spouting iphone nonsense....
If that guy says "uh" just one more time... seriously, I almost stopped listening and started counting how many times he said it.
When will Windows support ARM? :(
There already is a Windows that supports ARM, it's called Windows Mobile.
Ok why don't i have this now whats the hold up
I hope this takes over PowerVR's market.
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