ARM Community: ARM-based dual-core chips make Smart Mobile Devices even smarter for 2011 - ARM Community

It was easy to get caught up in the tablet buzz at CES this year. There were an unbelievable number of ARM Powered tablets on display to demonstrate that we are really at the beginning of the innovation cycle in this emerging market. If you missed CES this year, I was able to catch a few of these devices and the partners behind them in my Day 1 and Day 2 CES blogs and Charbax has some great videos hosted on his site. But while tablets generally captured the headlines at CES, I was more interested in the technology that was powering this new generation of devices.

ARM-based dual-core platforms have arrived!
New ARM-based dual-core systems were behind some of the most exciting products and announcements at CES. ARM partners were highlighted everywhere: NVIDIA’s dual-core Cortex-A9 Tegra2 platform was featured in Motorola’s XOOM tablet, Qualcomm’s ARM-based MSM8260, dual-core Snapdragon™ platform was reported as powering the ASUS Eee Pad MeMO device, and one of my favorite dual-core demos from the show was the Blackberry ® Playbook™ tablet (featured in my earlier blog) and which has since been revealed as Texas Instrument’s OMAP4 SoC which features dual Cortex-A9 processors and OS by QNX Systems.

I was so impressed with the multi-core capabilities of the Blackberry PlayBook that I managed to track down and speak on camera with Brian Carlson from the Texas Instruments OMAP team about the multi-core capabilities of the PlayBook.



So why is multi-core such an important milestone for Smart Mobile Devices?
Unlike PC platforms which tend to leverage dual-core platforms to provide more performance on the top-end, mobile platforms are leveraging dual-core systems to provide an extra degree of flexibility for power-efficient processing at both the low-end and the top-end of the spectrum. Power-efficient mobile processing has always been based on utilizing the right-sized technology for the task at hand.

Many ARM-based SoCs (those above included) combine high-performance general processing from the ARM CPU together with excellent 3D graphics and HD video. They seamlessly power on all or parts of the system as needed to complete the tasks at hand – powering off all unnecessary elements when not needed.

However, in new devices like those on display at CES this year, devices are running multiple applications with wildly varying degrees of complexity. This requires a general purpose, power-efficient CPU that is even more adaptable to this wide range of tasks. By leveraging ARM dual-core SoCs, these devices have a new degree of flexibility to manage power efficient processing. Software can easily leverage across a Cortex-A9 dual-core system, using the full capabilities of both CPU cores when you have multiple heavy tasks, turning off one of the CPU cores when needed, or scaling back the frequency of the dual-core CPU system to meet the requirements for multiple lighter tasks. The end result is a more power efficient system and responsive system. The BlackBerry PlayBook is a great example – easily adapting the performance of the system as you run gaming, graphics, and browsing applications simultaneously.



So I’ll remember CES not only for the exciting new tablets, but for the breakthrough technology they ushered into the next generation of Smart Mobile Devices.

Kerry McGuire Balanza, Director of Strategic Marketing, ARM, Growing up in a tiny little technology town and then moving to Austin to work in the mobile industry has led to a lifetime of being a technology groupie. Fascinated by the changing technical industry and the impact of technology on society trends, she enjoys watching the industry evolve by working with the best of ARM’s partners.