News Nvidia's Tegra CPU has a mighty battery life

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/06/02/nvidia-s-tegra-cpu-has-a-mighty-battery-lif/1

Nvidia shows off hardware using its new Tegra system-on-a-chip, promising astonishing battery life for tiny computers.

 

Wow I want one :O I never thought I'd get anything from nvidia but if it's really that good when it's in stores I'll accept them with a giant hug

 

It would be awesome to make some cool small form factor mods with one of these.

 

Very interesting; at first glance, it looks like a similar approach to that used by Gumstix in their OMAP 35xx based miniature computer boards. (The Overo 3530 used on them contains an ARM Coretex 8, DSP and Graphics accelerator in a 1W device if I remember.) The Gumstix Overo looks very similar in size too.

Will certainly be very interesting to see how this stacks up performance - wise in the real world when pitted against the OMAP platform and the (significantly higher power) Atom platform.

Edit: Given that Nvidia get the low power consumption for doing things like playing MP3s etc by shutting down all the parts of the chip that aren't being used, it my be a little clunkier than expected. Surely it means that while playing MP3s in ultra low power mode, for example, you won't be able to do anything else, as only the ARM7 part of the chip will be running? I would have thought that it would take some time to reboot and initialise the other parts of the chip to switch to doing something else.

 

I didn't bought a smart-phone yet, because I'm expecting this little wonder... Just hope that it doesn't come at a big price...

 

*Gibbers happily about the possibilities*

 

i want Nvidia to say this when the first releases it

" IT'S OVER 9000 !!!!!!!!!! "

 

I should imagine that you can do whatever you want with it (obviously within limits of performance. I wouldn't go installing Crysis, that's for sure!), and the othe rchips would simply power on and be used in conjunction, assuming a different chip had to be used. In fact, I think that would be a better choice really. If you need to use the same chip for two different tasks, then there would be issues with performance. If you are using two different chips, or even three depending on what you are doing, this should allow much greater multitasking (depending, of course, on what the tasks are).

As for a "reboot" time etc before a chip can be sued, I find it highly unlikely. I don't know that much about chip designs and the like, but since it isn't like loading an OS, and is simply powering up a chip, I should imagine the delay would be minimal.

 

This could go in my car nicely

 

a full twenty-computer system as big as a book. yay. at 1 watt, does this thing even need cooling? i'll be waiting eagerly.

 

Wut.

 

imagine these things powering small tablet like net-tops with multitouch OLED screens, filled with e-books and sold or given to school kids....

 

Ok, but what's the battery life like when using a reasonably sized battery? I highly doubt this thing could even idle for 25 days with something considered even remotely portable by today's standards.

 

With a 1W draw, I can see the battery lasting for a very long time. The problem is, I doubt this is factoring in powering a screen, as well as half the features that are expected in a smart phone etc.

 

How much power do mobile phones draw? And what battery size do they have? I'd like that comparison if they claim 25 days
Also, is this shipping with xp?

 

What is the die size compare to SnapDragon ( Which is an very capable chip ), It could be 10 times faster but 10 times bigger.

Most of these can already be done with other design. PowerVR SXD and VXD plus ARM Cortex A9. The only special thing is that it uses low power Geforce 6, which gets much better software support. However, how does Geforce 6 stacks up against PowerVR in performance per watt per die space?

I really hope to see Quad Core Cortex A9 inside Tegra.

 

QFT

secondary system driving download box anyone?

 

I could be mistaken, but this looks like it's not an x86 type processor, and as I understand it, Windows is only designed to run on x86 processors. You could probably get some kind of Linux to run on it, though.

 

That is awesome!

 

All nVidia have done is make a smartphone chipset and brand it as a netbook chipset. Open up any smartphone and you'll find an ARM11 CPU or two, a video DSP, a display driver, lots of wireless hardware (WiFi, GSM, bluetooth etc) and sometimes a 3D chip. The lot in my N82 (two ARM11 CPUs, a 3D processor, video DSP) use about 500mW when they're in use. The wireless hardware uses another watt or two. If you attached my phone to a laptop battery, I have no doubt that it'd last 25 days. And yes, it can play Quake at a decent framerate too.

Aside from the excellent marketing, the only special part about Tegra is that it supports high resolution displays, and (being nVidia) better 3D processing too.