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NVIDIA explains why its 64-bit chip should be Android's speed champ
NVIDIA set out to claim the Android performance crown when it unveiled its 64-bit Tegra K1 processor at the start of the year, and it's now ready to explain why it expects to come out on top. The chip's two Project Denver cores will have an edge partly because they'll optimize code on the fly -- they'll break down big instructions into tiny, super-efficient functions that can be recycled as often as necessary. The company expects roughly twice the speed it would get from ordinary code, making the 64-bit K1 faster than you'd expect just by looking at the hardware. It should tout "significantly higher" performance than current four- and eight-core mobile CPUs, and run as well as some PC processors; be prepared for more Tegra-powered laptops and high-end tablets.
NVIDIA reveals second Tegra K1 with 64-bit support, dual 2.5GHz Denver CPUs
Ever since the introduction of Apple's A7 chipset on the iPhone 5s, 64-bit has become somewhat of a buzzword for manufacturers like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Samsung and MediaTek. The former has already followed in Apple's footsteps with 64-bit support on the Snapdragon 410, an SoC destined for budget devices and emerging markets, but we were anxiously awaiting word on NVIDIA's next-gen aspirations at tonight's press conference. And now we have it -- the company just announced a second version of the Tegra K1 introduced earlier, this time with a dual-core 2.5GHz Denver CPU (yes, that Project Denver) and 64-bit support. We're still waiting to hear specific availability, but NVIDIA tells us to expect more details in the coming months, so the extra boost in performance will require a bit of patience. Update: We received a little extra clarification from NVIDIA reps, who have told us that the K1 has already been certified by AT&T and Vodafone (among other carriers), and we should expect to see devices with the new chipset near the end of the first half of 2014. We also learned that although LTE support doesn't come natively on the chipset, it'll still be available thanks to an external chip that will be part of the K1 setup. It's hard to say whether or not this will help NVIDIA gain some lost ground on Qualcomm, but only time will tell. Ben Gilbert contributed to this post.
TSMC ramps 28nm ARM Cortex-A9 chip to 3.1GHz, gives your desktop jitters
We know TSMC's energy-miser 28-nanometer manufacturing process has a lot of headroom, but the company just ratcheted expectations up by a few notches. Lab workers at Taiwan's semiconductor giant have successfully run a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor at 3.1GHz under normal conditions. That's a 55 percent higher clock speed than the 2GHz maximum that TSMC normally offers, folks, and about twice as fast as a 40nm chip under the same workload. Don't expect that kind of clock speed from your next smartphone or tablet, though: expect processors of this caliber to find "high-performance uses," which takes us that much closer to NVIDIA's Project Denver as well as other ARM-based desktops, notebooks and servers that should give x86 chips a run for their money.
NVIDIA announces Project Denver ARM CPU for the desktop
A "full custom processor," designed by NVIDIA in partnership with ARM. World's first ARM processor targeted at high performance computing. NVIDIA really sprung this Project Denver as a major surprise at the end of its CES press conference here. This chip is "in development" and seems intent to conquer the desktop and laptop scene that is currently wholly owned by the x86 duo of AMD and Intel. It's true folks, NVIDIA's building a CPU! Madness! It's hard to properly express the gravity of a move like. ARM processors, as Jen-Hsun Huang just pointed out, are becoming the most ubiquitous around the world because of their great success on the mobile front. Taking them into the fortress of high performance computing is a daring decision, but if anyone has the requisite technical knowhow and OEM relationships to hit that ball out of the park, it's NVIDIA. For its part, Jen-Hsun's company is taking its antagonism with Intel to the next logical stage, finally announcing that it'll leap out of the GPU market and into the shark waters of CPU manufacturing. And oh yes, Microsoft just announced ARM compatibility for the next version of Windows. The future just got a lot more exciting. Update: The press release (available after the break) informs us that Project Denver will integrate graphics processing with straight computational skills in a fully integrated CPU / GPU hybrid package -- much like AMD's Fusion hardware -- and we've got a highly informative blog post from NVIDIA's Chief Scientist Bill Dally for you at the link below.
