Nvidia's Kal-El Tegra Will Have Fifth "Companion Core"

Blacklaw writes with an article in Thinq about the upcoming quad-core Tegra chipset. Quoting the article: "Nvidia has released a few technical details of its upcoming 'Kal-El' Tegra processor, including a secret it's done well to keep under its hat thus far: it's a five-core, not four-core, chip." The fifth core will be clocked lower and is intended to let the system use little power without having to fully suspend. A few years ago Openmoko had a vaguely similar idea to include a microcontroller for low-resource idle tasks (e.g. GPS logging), but this design is superior since it should be more or less transparent to user space programs.

Do you have to incinerate it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Companion Core cannot speak. In the event that the Companion Core does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice.

In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

we call him "comrade core"

Re:Damn it!

[MachDelta]

Pfft.
The correct cyberpunkish term would be "auxiliary" core, since it sounds so badass and semi-mechanical.
Plus, most people can't spell auxilli- auxiler-, auxxi... the word, which makes it more exclusive.
And there's an X in it. Only the cool, eyeliner wearing words have x's... other than "extreme" anyways. That guy's a dick. He stuffed me in a locker once.

Anyways; Auxiliary core.
Yeah.

These have five

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigel: ...the chips have five cores. Look...right across the board.
Marty: Ahh...oh, I see....
Nigel: five...five...five...
Marty: ...and most of these chips go up to four....
Nigel: Exactly.
Marty: Does that mean it's...faster? Is it any faster?
Nigel: Well, it's one faster, isn't it? It's not four. You see, most...most blokes, you know, will be running on four. You're on four here...all the way up...all the way up....
Marty: Yeah....
Nigel: ...all the way up. You're on four on your processes...where can you go from there? Where?
Marty: I don't know....
Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is if we need that extra...push over the cliff...you know what we do?
Marty: Put it up to five.
Nigel: Five. Exactly. One faster.
Marty: Why don't you just make four faster and make faster be the top number...and make that a little faster?
Nigel: ...these have five.