NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor details leaked
engadget.com
engadget.com
I've been using a Droid Incredible for 2 years. It was released 1.5 years before that. It handles all of my mobile computing needs just fine, CM7.2 is sturdy as hell (just passed 30 days uptime) and I haven't spent money on mobile hardware for 2 years.
I've gone wifi-only since buying this phone. I have wifi everywhere I need it except grocery store checkout lines. The phone lasts 2 days on a charge in perpetual airplane mode too.
the definition of "enough" will change in 2013
This thing will sit in tablets, nettops, maybe even consoles.
I know the steambox is likely to be x86, but with the power on offer here you could certainly make a living room media-box and games-machine in one.
So in so much as we can do more faster with our phones I think it is not a bad thing to add computational power into our phones. One day we will all have one handheld to rule it all - phone, tablet, desktop with external display, gaming console etc.
Imagine that you just dock your phone into a screen when you want to work and that you don't have to haul a laptop around with you anymore. To get there, we need the machine-power-per-square-inch to shrink further and this is what drives that.
You also have to remember that these clock numbers don't really mean anything. The processors are designed for low power consumption, and frankly, it shows.
I do.
Higher resolutions, especially for tablets. For example iPad 4 has only now gotten enough GPU performance to be as fast as iPad 2 running at its old native resolution. So iPad 4 at 2048x1536 is as fast as iPad 2 at 1024x768.
So basically the iPad has stagnated for a year and a half in performance, just to get the benefit of that crisper display. And only with new upcoming chips, the iPad will start to get higher performance for native-resolution apps.
However, about speech recognition for instance, it is for now done "in the cloud": your recorded voice is sent to a server which does the intensive computations and sends the corresponding text back to your phone. Why would that change? It even allows Google or Apple to train their speech recognition system so I think they will want to keep it that way.
More generally, more and more computation are done in the cloud, even on the desktop (Chrome OS).
That said, I agree about high-res gaming and augmented reality, etc.
Also, hopefully, the more power for the same TDP, the sooner we can get phones which much better TDP for the same power /hopes
However this also may be because when they make the chip twice as fast - for the same content as before - and using the same energy, that means that once content catches up with the chip, and is 2x more bloated/advanced, then the chip will consume twice as much energy processing it. I'm making it sound a lot more simplistic than it probably happens, though.
We don't only use the phone for calls, but also for:
1) high performance 3D games 2) demanding web use, with Canvas, SVG and other technologies 3) image editing 4) movie editing 5) audio editing 6) hi-res video capture and playback
And at some point we will do several of those at once.
I personally don't care for gfx intensive mobile games, i would rather OEM's focus on efficiency rather then raw power. But thats just my 2 cents.
There are some decent options for low power; the new A7 is basically a lower power/multicore A8 (found in SGS1 gen devices). But anything close to 1/6 is not happening, unless you get an E-ink display, possibly.
Obviously when it comes to battery life there are a million and one different factors, but considering a mobile devices usefulness is directly related to its ability to run(have battery) you would think this would be a more focused area. I mean i know most people are happy with a full days charge but i dont think it would be outlandish to say that the majority of phones limp in one 1 days use. Battery life has decreased over the years not increased.
My comment of "1/6 the battery usage" was more to if it has 6x the power does it use 6x the energy?
If you take the cutting edge gaming, then it would seem that you will get less playing time on the go with the tegra4 than the tegra3; there is no way that at full-tilt they use close to the same power.. but it can't be 6x either[2] But there seems to be a growing rift between the 'mobile' games and the cutting edge 3d ones.. perhaps we will see more 'low power/graphics' options available for OTG playing?
1. and we are really 'there' with chips like (quad core A15) tegra 4; the dual core A15s in the chromebook are already matching DC atoms.
2. you do have to wonder; how many watts can you pack into a smartphone without burning someone's hands off-- so there is a limit, and it can't be too far from today's devices! Having said that, tegra4 may well be tablet targeted anyway? or feature lower clocks in a phone; we don't really know much about it yet.
EDIT: also, i really don't think we will see much from the OEMs on this front, unless it becomes an in thing at some point. It is hard to successfully push anything that doesn't have a well understood metric to it (like screen resolution, cores, clock speed) The issue is really one for the SOC guys (samsung, nvidia, qualcomm etc) and CPU designers (ARM, qualcomm, apple); we may see some movement if apple makes good progress and starts to use the fact heavily in marketing. Just look at the razr max; not efficiency exactly-- but battery life. And that didn't have much of an impact.
As did the Tegra 3.
Android breaks down battery use stats for each part of the phone; it really depends on what you are doing. But for the normal phone use; a bit of web browsing, simple apps etc, the screen dominates power consumption (say 70%).
It's like Apple TV 2 vs Apple TV 3. You're hard pressed to notice the difference. Both are the same platform, but the newer one can display 1080p.
That's a sweet spot, people don't know the console but can consider giving it a try because of its price. Choosing Tegra 4 would probably increase the cost of the hardware.
Maybe in the future we will be able to buy a Ouya 2 (backwards compatible) with Tegra 4 at the same price, that would be wonderful.
The Tegra 4 sounds like it might be a platform for hardcore games. Not with every last bit of the latest 3D glitz enabled, but good enough to run a version of most recent games.
From the user's point of view, maybe not. If you do not do anything which requires much CPU power, then the difference may be between waiting 6 milliseconds and waiting 1 millisecond. I believe the parent's question was to know which kind of task requires the CPU power.
Realistically,its probably already a challenge to ship the console with existing hardware, so it makes sense
You never know, how long before Lego starts adding more intricate parts beyond motors.
It will be this that will give us true programmers who have control over there enviroment again unlike today with API's that are out of your control and changed at a whim sometimes and thats upon your local desktop PC.
ALso with the move of windows and secureboot then the time is right for more user packaged Raspberry Pi type micro's of yesteryear.