The Dual-Core ARM Powered products are coming

Posted by Charbax – December 22, 2010

Buy a Gingerbread Nexus S now or wait for Dual-Core Android? That is the question early adopters have.

Nearly a year ago, Nvidia unveiled its awesome Tegra 2 platform at CES, I was there and I filmed it (2), (3). It took a while for Nvidia and its manufacturing partners to start bringing actual products with Nvidia’s Tegra 2 ARM Cortex-A9 processor onto the market. Possible delays may have been due to manufacturing problems or a wait for stabilized software, new versions of Android and Flash to support this new type of Dual-Core processor.

Other Dual-Core processors are about to reach products in the market as well:
- Texas Instruments OMAP4430 1Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 based products will be introduced in products to the market soon.
- Qualcomm MSM8660 or faster Dual-Core Snapdragon platform may be imminent.
- Marvell Armada 628 Tri-Core platform available in products soon offers upwards 200 million triangles per second.
- Samsung Orion with Mali-400 was unveiled last month (2), will probably show in products within months. Although some rumors also say Samsung may be using the Tegra 2 platform for some products to be shown even earlier.
- ST-Ericsson is working with Nokia to release some Dual-Core Meego devices probably soon.
- Nufront are releasing their Nufront ARM Cortex-A9 for Laptops and Desktops.

Google may focus on Tegra 2 for Honeycomb as some rumors are saying, just as Google prioritized their “Reference designs” like this:
Eclair + Froyo: Snapdragon (Nexus One)
Gingerbread: Hummingbird (Nexus S)
Honeycomb: Tegra 2 (Motorola’s upcoming Tablet)

A “reference design” to Google basically means the actual development hardware Google engineers work on to get their new software released. Though I expect Google and the Open Handset Alliance to bring-up Gingerbread and Honeycomb about as fast on all other Single-Core and Dual-Core platforms as well, just as Froyo got ready on all the other platforms relatively fast.

Dual-Core ARM Processors are probably also what we need for Chrome OS and Ubuntu powered Laptops and Google TV Powered set-top-boxes.

  • http://uduogah.wordpress.com/ Phlegon

    Just a quick note that the Galaxy S has been dropped to £429 here in the UK to give a less obnoxious price for those who balk at the gingerbread tax.

  • Darkseider

    Coming? Let me assure they are here. I have a Viewsonic GTab, which is basically an Advent Vega, running TnT Lite 3.0.0 and it is amazing. Viewsonic is going to be releasing the kernel source this week as well and once that happens OOH YEAH!

  • http://ARMdevices.net/ Charbax

    £429 is still repulsively expensive for a phone. They probably exaggerate on unlocked prices to discourage people from buying unlocked and have them choose the even more expensive 2-year contracts instead.

  • http://ARMdevices.net/ Charbax

    The few Malata based designs like Gtab and Toshiba’s AC100 have only been released in small quantities for now. Sure enough they are released, but only in a limited fashion for now. The full release should be happening after CES coming up.

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