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Originally due for a September release, the Kal-El system-on-a-chip (SoC) from Nvidia is now expected to arrive inside tablets sometime in Q4. In the meantime, Nvidia is trying to ensure that the public’s interest in Tegra 2's successor doesn’t wane due to the delay - and what better way of doing that than by telling the world about the upcoming SoC’s hitherto secret fifth core.
The company today published a couple of new whitepapers detailing the upcoming SoC’s all new Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP) technology, which includes a “fifth CPU core (the ‘Companion’ core) built using a special low power silicon process that executes tasks at low frequency for active standby mode, music playback, and even video playback.”
While less power-hungry tasks are entrusted entirely to the fifth companion core, Kal-El switches to the four main CPU cores when it’s time to kick some butt. Nvidia has designed the Variable SMP architecture to be “OS transparent,” meaning that even current operating systems and applications can leverage the technology without any tinkering.
According to Nvidia, an average phone is in active standby state for eighty percent of the time. So the companion core is designed to keep power usage to a bare minimum in such a state and, in the process, extend battery life.
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Citizen Snips
September 21, 2011 at 8:17am
Marketing hogwash.
The 5th core is just a clocked down version of the *exact same* core used in the other four. Anyone can just clock a core down, migrate the processes, and sleep the other cores.
In fact, if you read the paper, it says the 500 MHz core *cannot be on at the same time as the other four.* And because the 5th core is just a 500 MHz version of the other 4, the 5th core doesn't even need to exist.
Why don't they just release a quad core, and instead of waking and resting a 5th core, just use core 0 as the 'companion core,' and shut down the other three. This would give you the exact same result as using 5, except for the fact that your marketing team can't throw buzz words around like 5-core and companion-core. Also you might save some power because you now wouldn't have to context switch 1/4 of your processing power, it'd already be there.
Really, the only interesting thing that's come out of this is the scheduler.
" special low power silicon process that executes tasks at low frequency for active standby mode, music playback, and even video playback "
If you look at the picture and read the paper it's exactly the same silicone (Cortex A9), just clocked to 500 MHz.
They basically threw a 5th core on just to say they did, it does nothing anything the other 4 couldn't.
Marketing hogwash.
