Daily Tech: Marvell releases Triple core 1.5 Ghz processor

[cbn]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=19702

While dual-core smartphones have been touted as the wave of the near-future by companies like Samsung and LG, chip manufacturer Marvell has leapfrogged the others with the announcement of the world's first tri-core processor.

The Armada 628 is an "ultra-low power, ultra-high performance" 1.5 GHz three-core processor that is the "first to feature 3D graphics performance with quad unified shaders for 200 million triangles per second delivered on mobile devices," Marvell announced in a press release this morning.

The holy trinity of the Armada is made of two symmetric multiprocessing cores with a third, ultra low-power core that is designed for routine tasks. The third core acts as a system manager "to monitor and dynamically scale power and performance."

The Armada 628 is also the first to incorporate a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design with three ARM cores and six additional processing engines, totaling nine dedicated core functions. It can deliver dual stream, 1080p 3D video on mobile devices without expensing much battery life. In fact, an Armada-equipped smartphone would be able to play 10 hours straight of 1080p HD video or 140 hours of music on a single charge.

"Marvell's groundbreaking tri-core architecture is a unique solution to a long-time problem—how to achieve enterprise performance without breaking the limited power budget of smartphones, tablets and other mobile consumer devices," said analyst Linley Gwennap in the press release.

Some other key features of the Armada 628:



* Up to 1.5 GHz for the two main cores and 624 MHz for the third low power core
* "Heterogeneous multiprocessing" with "hardware-based Cache Coherence"
* 1 MB System Level 2 Cache
* Platform leading multimedia capabilities, including support for both WMMX2 and NEON acceleration; and a highly optimized pipelined VFPv3 floating point engine
* High performance, integrated image signal processor (ISP)
* Ability to project images on multiple simultaneous displays
* 2 LCDs
* 1 HDMI
* 1 advanced EPD controller
* Peripherals support: USB 3.0 Superspeed Client, MIPI CSI, MIPI DSI, HDMI with integrated PHY, UniPro, Slimbus, SPMI



The Armada 628 will also be the first mobile CPU to offer USB 3.0. It is compatible with RIM OS, Android, Linux, Windows Mobile, and full Adobe Flash. The CPU is currently available for sampling to customers. No word yet on when we can expect it to power smartphones or netbooks in the U.S. market.

Sounds really interesting with the third power saving core.

 

[DivideBYZero]

It sounds pretty sweet. Let's see who'll use it.

 

[SunnyD]

So it's really only a dual core CPU, given the single core is for system management? Or does the main system run on the single core all the time, while dedicating the dual cores to high performance tasks on demand? The latter sounds like a programming nightmare.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Tegra 2 beat them to "Triple cores" with the dual core Cortex A9 and the ARM v11 aid chip.

 

[Bateluer]

Who picks the model numbers for CPUs these days? Everyone that makes xPUs seems to pull them completely out of their ass.

Good for Marvell, but until they've got a design win in a compelling device, its moot. Weak point of every mobile CPU, Samsung, Qualcomm, TI, etc, all announce high performing ICs with a plethora of features that make customers drool . . . and its 18 months to get them into devices you can actually buy. Improve your time to market and execution guys.

 

[slightlyhuman]

holy shit balls. can't wait to see who's going to step up to the plate and be the first to use it.

 

[cbn]

So it's really only a dual core CPU, given the single core is for system management? Or does the main system run on the single core all the time, while dedicating the dual cores to high performance tasks on demand? The latter sounds like a programming nightmare.

I'm under the impression it is the latter.

So the OS wouldn't be the software that determines tasking which cores do what?

 

[tatteredpotato]

I'm under the impression it is the latter.

So the OS wouldn't be the software that determines tasking which cores do what?

I don't see how anything other than the kernel would be able to schedule tasks.

Edit: After reading this:

The third core acts as a system manager "to monitor and dynamically scale power and performance."

It doesn't sound like this is a tri-core processor at all from the user's perspective. The article doesn't give details, but unless the OS can schedule tasks to the lightweight core it sounds like marketing spin on a power management feature. A good dual core CPU can still be a home-run in the mobile market, but I'm not sold on this as a tri-core.

 

[zerocool84]

Weak point of every mobile CPU, Samsung, Qualcomm, TI, etc, all announce high performing ICs with a plethora of features that make customers drool . . . and its 18 months to get them into devices you can actually buy. Improve your time to market and execution guys.

???

That's how every cpu on any platform in existence has been. They get announced forever in advance. It's impossible to quickly create enough of them. Intel/ATI announces theirs just as far in advance.

 

[s44]

It doesn't sound like this is a tri-core processor at all from the user's perspective. The article doesn't give details, but unless the OS can schedule tasks to the lightweight core it sounds like marketing spin on a power management feature. A good dual core CPU can still be a home-run in the mobile market, but I'm not sold on this as a tri-core.

As noted above, Tegra2 has the exact same chip management "core" arrangement. They're both dual-core, not triple.