Asus Transformer Drops Quad-core In Favor of Dual-core 207
MrSeb writes with this news from Extreme Tech: "In a move that will shock and disgust bleeding-edge technophiles everywhere, Asus has announced at Mobile World Congress 2012 that its new Transformer Pads — the high-end Infinity Series — will use the recently-announced dual-core Qualcomm S4 SoC. The critically acclaimed Transformer Prime, the Infinity Series' predecessor which was released at the end of 2011, used the quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3. Why the sudden about-face? Well, the fact that quad-core processors don't really have a use case in mobile devices is one reason — but it doesn't hurt that the Krait cores in the S4 are significantly faster than the four Cortex-A9 cores in the Tegra 3, too. The S4 is also the first 28nm SoC, while Tegra 3 is still on 40nm, which means a smaller and cheaper package, and lower power consumption to boot. The S4 is also the first SoC with built-in LTE, which was probably a rather nice sweetener for Asus."
The Snapdragon S4 "Krait" CPU is still a bit shrouded in mystery as far as hard specs (Qualcomm has never been one to release docs), but it appears to be similar to the Cortex-A15 in performance; how they stand up to Intel's new Medfield designs remains to be seen.
Re:Core count obsession (Score:5, Funny)
What happened with odd-core configurations? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought 3 and 5 core tablets were supposed to be coming out, where the "odd" core is so underpowered it can be left on when the screen and other cores are off, using practically no battery but still letting the tablet run its background processes.
I'm surprised more emphasis isn't being put on improving "standby" battery time because that seems to be the real killer in so many mobile applications these days (like my 14h SGS2 battery of doom).
Re:Right tool for the job (Score:5, Funny)
I have to agree with the article. I am shocked and disgusted beyond measure.
I'm just not sure why. Maybe I need further desensitising against run of the mill tech news.
Re:Core count obsession (Score:4, Funny)
/there goes my karma
Re:Core count obsession (Score:4, Funny)
Why is everyone obsessed at the number of cores? The more processors you ahve, the more complex scheduling your apps needs to perform to actually work faster. It's better to hav ea single core that is twice as fast, than two cores running in parallel.
Pfff... actually, the Tegra 3 has five cores, four of them are high-performance, and one is high-efficiency. The CPU is designed to shutdown the four cores for almost nearly everything, and just use the high-efficiency core in order to save on battery life.
Introducing the 16 core processor.
The first core walks by the process assessing it's potential time consumption.
The second core types this out into a report and forwards this report to the other cores.
The third core skims the report before filing and ignoring it.
The fourth core empties the inbox of the third core, failing to note the process.
The fifth core is focusing on it's career and promotion through middle management.
The sixth core notices that there is a process and tries to point this out the the third, fourth and fifth core.
The seventh core is having a nervous breakdown.
The eighth cor0xDEADBEEF.
The ninth core is dealing with the problems from the malfunctioning 8th core.
The tenth core distracts the process by acting as a door to door salesmen.
The eleventh and twelfth core hold the process down whilst the thirteenth core goes through it's wallet.
The fourteenth core takes the process's statement.
The fifteenth core actually runs the process.
and the sixteenth core is just along for the ride.