TI Dual Core OMAP 5 Cortex A15 (800 Mhz) Twice as Fast as Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad Core Cortex A9 (1.3 Ghz)

Texas Instruments released a video showing the Web page loading time between TI OMAP 5 featuring two ARM Cortex-A15 cores at 800MHz (as well as specialized cores and accelerators), compared to a commercial device powered by a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor at 1.3 GHz. They did not say it, but it’s got to be the Nvidia Tegra 3 since this is the only ARM Cortex A9 Quad-core processor with products available on the market today. In this  benchmark, the devices handle 3 tasks simultaneously: Rendering 20 web pages Downloading videos Play a MP3 file The result is quite amazing, even hard to believe, with the OMAP 5 rendering the 20 pages in 95 seconds whereas it took the NVidia Tegra 3 over 200 seconds. I’m sure we’ll get an explanation of this performance difference at MWC 2012. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before […]

Toradex Will Unveil Colibri T30 Nvidia Tegra 3 COM at Embedded World 2012

Toradex, a Swiss technology company specialized in embedded systems, will be at Embedded World 2012 to showcase their products and technology including: An Embedded Computer Kit with Colibri T20 (Nvidia Tegra 2 Computer on Module) and Iris carrier board. Instant boot demo (480 ms) in WinCE with their NVidia COM The new Colibri T30 COM powered by Nvidia Tegra 3 (Quad-core Cortex A9 processor) At the conference, they will give away 100 Embedded Computer Kits (they also call it “Performance Kit”)  based on Colibri T20 and Iris board to the attendees who give 20 Euros to the Red Cross. The regular price of this kit is 200 Euros.  This embedded module comes preloaded with Windows Embedded Compact 7 , but you can download the Linux BSP and update the board firmware. The Colibri T20 key features include: Dual Core Nvidia Tegra 2 ARM Cortex A9 Processor @ 1 Ghz 256 […]

Microsoft Provides Windows 8 On ARM Technical Details

Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, has written a long blog post entitled “Building Windows for the ARM processor architecture” where he explains how Windows On ARM (WOA) will be deployed, the steps they took to develop it and what developers can do to program or port existing apps to Windows 8. Here are some keys and interesting points I noted: WOA and Windows 8 for x86/64 PCs will ship at the same time and the user experience should be the same for consumers on both platform. WOA PCs will be powered by Texas Instruments, Nvidia and Qualcomm processors. Microsoft will release an Unified OS Binary for WOA – That means one binary will run on all platforms (be it TI, Nvidia or Qualcomm). That seems impressive, and something Linux is not capable of, although much work is done on that and a unified linux kernel should […]

Asus Unveils 249 USD Nvidia Tegra 3 Android 4.0 Tablet

During Asus Keynote at CES 2012, the company showed the Eee Pad MeMo 7 (ME370T) featuring a Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-core processor running Android ICS with 1GB of RAM, 16GB to 32GB of storage, WiFi, Bluetooth, aGPS, a SIM card slot, micro-HDMI output and up to 8.5 hours of battery life. As you can see in the picture above, the good news is that the Tablet would be available for 249 USD in Q2 2012 according to reports in several websites. I could not find Asus official press release. In another blog, I found that Nvidia also announced DirectTouch technology that uses the Nvidia Tegra 3 companion core to sample touch on the device more frequently (about three times more often) resulting in a more responsive UI. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting […]

Acer Iconia Tab A700 10.1″ (1920×1200) Android 4.0 Tablet

CES 2012 is almost there. Yesterday, Acer introduced its new Android Tablet based on the quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 @ 1.3 Ghz, with a 10.1″ capacitive touchscreen (1920×1200) and running Android 4.0. Acer Iconia A700 comes with Bluetooth support, a microSD card slot, HDMI port and a 5MP rear camera. Acer customized the UI with Acer Ring, a circular launcher menu that lets you access specific apps straight from the lock screen. although this is still broadly Android 4.0. As we could expect, Android runs pretty smoothly with the Tegra 3. The 1920×1200 resolution allows to play 1920×1080 (1080p) videos and have the Android menu bar at the bottom of the screen at the same time without scaling the video. The device is expected to ship in Q1 2012 for an undisclosed price. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job […]

Nvidia Announces CARMA Tegra 3 CUDA Development Kit

Nvidia has just unveiled its Tegra 3 development kit, the Nvidia CARMA. The development kit codename has been crowdsourced as Nvidia asked its followers to propose a name and vote for the best name. This development kit particularly targets CUDA, Nvidia parallel computing platform and programming model that enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU). The CARMA hardware has been designed by Seco and features an NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM Cortex A9 Quad-Core CPU and NVIDIA CUDA GPU QuatroTM. Here are the technical specs for the development kit: CPU NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-Core ARM A9 GPU NVIDIA QuadroTM 1000M with 96 CUDA Cores Memory • CPU Memory: 2 GB • GPU Memory: 2 GB Peak Performance 270 Single Precision GFlops CPU – GPU Interface PCIe x4 Gen1 link Network 1x Gigabit Ethernet Storage 1x SATA Connector USB 3x USB 2.0 Display […]

NVidia Tegra 3 ZTE T98 Android Tablet

We’ve already seen some Quad Core Tegra 3 demos and talks about Tegra 3 Tablets coming this year, but we had not heard about real products yet. ZTE (中兴) is expected to releast ZTE T98, possibly the first Tegra 3 Honeycomb Tablet later this year., which has been spotted in Beijing by zol.com.cn at PT/EXPO COMM CHINA 2011. Here are the ZTE T98 product features and specifications: Operating System: Android3.2 Processor: Nvidia Tegra 3 @ 1.5GHz System Memory: 1GB Flash Storage: 16GB Display: 7″ Capacitive Touche Screen with 1280×800 resolution. Network: Wifi, 3G (TD-SCDMA) Built-in Audio Chip Video output up to 1080p External Ports: 3.5mm headphone jack and power jack. Battery:  Lithium Battery, 4000 mA Camera:  Front camera: 2 MP, Rear camera: 5 MP. Support for JPEG,GIF and BMP pictures Sensor: gravity and accelerometer 11.5mm thick ZTE announced it would be ready in 2011, but no exact date and pricing […]

OMG! Quad Core Nvidia Tegra 3 Has Actually 5 Cores

We’ve been deceived ! All along we thought the new quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 (codename Kal-El) would just have 4 cores…right… But Nvidia has just posted a blog entry talking about a mysterious fifth core. There is also the 12-core GPU, but we already knew about that. Here’s what Nvidia has to say about the fifth core: This extra core – which we call the “companion core” – runs at a lower frequency and operates at exceptionally low power. During less power-hungry tasks like web reading, music playback and video playback, Kal-El completely powers down its four performance-tuned cores and instead uses its fifth companion core. For higher performance tasks, Kal-El disables its companion core and turns on its four performance cores, one at a time, as the work load increases. The Variable SMP architecture is also completely OS transparent, which means that operating systems and applications don’t need to […]