Asus drops quad-core Tegra 3 in favor of dual-core S4 in new Transformer tablet | Hacker News Reader

Asus drops quad-core Tegra 3 in favor of dual-core S4 in new Transformer tablet

extremetech.com

35 pointspwg15 comments

I understand very well that my feeling is not (completely) rational - but for me this has another benefit:

Having a Tegra2 based phone and being interested in the latest and greatest Android experience is a .. pain. Counting on NVidia was already annoying for my desktop and Linux, but - well - I kind of am stuck there between a rock and a hard place if I want to play the occasional game.

On a phone? Or tablet? Thank god for alternatives and I'll vote with my wallet. No Tegra* for me until NVidia understands that a driver/documentation for their piece of silicone cannot be treated as secret sauce - and neglected

Qualcomm is the same as Nvidia. If you want documented chip, there is only TI OMAP or Samsung Exynos (partially documented).

Snapdragon or Tegra are both the same way.

Also I'm wondering, why people expect anything open based on ARM platform. For ARM, even the platform programmer's manuals are not freely available. On the other hand, Intel for example, was always publishing documentation.

We will remember this day as we tell over to our children about innovation in this peirod. The latest and greatest technology becomes obsolete the same day it is announced.

To further prove my point. Yesterday, HTC announced a phone running the latest and greatest Tegra 3. Later that afternoon S4 was announced.

There is a difference between announcement, demoing, and shipping. The OMAP 5 was "announced" at MWC last year, it demoed this year, and won't ship until late 2012 or even early 2013.

But in this case, it's because Nvidia chose to go with the more marketable "quad core" than with a "faster dual core". Also because Nvidia's phone version of chips ships months after the tablet version, on top of the already several months delay of the Tegra 3, which seems to happen all the time with Nvidia lately.

I agree with your sentiment that technology is evolving fast these days, though, and there's little breathing room for technology companies.

Tegra 5 was announced last year. Intel announced their plans till 2014 today. There are two forms of announcements. Announcement of plans which is what you are referring to. And announcement of a ready product which is what I was referring to.

That phone (the One X) will ship in a S4-powered model here in the US; the official reason seems to be compatibility with Qualcomm's LTE baseband. The move perplexes me a bit, traditionally HTC has been very loyal to Qualcomm. Unless they felt the need to claim the quad-core bullet point, I'm not sure why they would bother with a totally different SoC vs. the rest of their product line.

> Unless they felt the need to claim the quad-core bullet point

There you go.

It was successful for Asus. Which is another Taiwanese brand.

Didn't seem to matter to them when nVidia beat Qualcomm out the door with a dual-core chip last year. Plus, they only get to claim the bullet point for Europe; presuming AT&T is requiring LTE, their choices are:

a) Wait for a quad-core Krait. Given HTC's close relationship with Qualcomm, they likely know it won't be for a while

b) Wait for a Tegra-compatible LTE chip, which hasn't been proven in the market yet. Still late to market, and with parts of questionable integrity.

c) Fall back on the dual-core chip and ship now. Lose a bullet point in the US market, but actually be on the market.

The sad part is that Krait is faster, so in this case better marketing leads to a worse product.

> Didn't seem to matter to them when nVidia beat Qualcomm out the door with a dual-core chip last year.

When the Tegra 2 showed up, it was not generally considered suitable for phones; the one found in a few phones is a slightly different model to the original. Also, the Tegra 2 was quite flawed; it lacked NEON, in particular, hurting software compatibility.

It's also possible that supplies of the S4 are restricted; it's a 28nm part, and TSMC's rollout of their 28nm process hasn't gone as smoothly as they might like. The Tegra 3 is 40nm, which is now a mainstream process.

One X has Tegra 3 and no LTE. You're thinking the One S.

The One X will have a LTE/S4 configuration[1]. I'm under the impression this will be the only model in the US (AT&T exclusive), and it's getting a release in Asia and Australia as the One XL. AFAIK; the One S won't have LTE at all (but does pack the same S4).

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/26/2823824/htc-one-x-att/in/2...

The latest and greatest technology becomes obsolete the same day it is announced

Interesting view... How do you define obsolete?

One of obsolete's definition is out of date. I used it in this sense.

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