Nvidia build its own Android smartphone: 5-inch 1080p, 13-megapixel, two stereo speakers at the back, Dual camera LED flash, and integrated 4G LTE Tegra 4i processor chipset. Nvidia Phoenix is a fully functionally reference smartphone that Nvidia trying to convince device makers by showing the speed and battery performance of Tegra 4i.
As mentioned by Nvidia, “It takes full advantage of our second-gen PRISM 2, Direct Touch and Chimera Computational Photography Architecture, which enables instant, lag-free HDR photos, HDR videos, HDR Panoramic photos and tap-to-track object tracking.” According to The Verge, Phoneix might be coming later this year in different branding with thinner body compares to Phoenix’s 8mm body.
Nvidia seems like having problem searching for partnership on their latest mobile processor – Tegra 4. The processor was announced by in January, at the CES 2013 exhibition in Las Vegas, but manufacturer such as HTC, SONY and LG are choosing Qualcomm Snapdragon processors for their new devices instead of Nvidia.
Finally, Nvidia announced they will partnering with ZTE and expects to launch the first Tegra 4 super phones in China on first half of 2013. In addition, Nvidia introduced its first integrated Tegra LTE Processor (Tegra 4i) but with lower resolution support, older Cortex-A9 and only 2GB memory compares to Tegra 4. In short, it is Tegra 3 with LTE integrated instead of actual Tegra 4.
Nvidia take another step further on expanding their Tegra 4 to more users with the annoucement of “Project SHIELD“. As mentioned by CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang: “Project SHIELD was created by NVIDIA engineers who love to game and imagined a new way to play. We were inspired by a vision that the rise of mobile and cloud technologies will free us from our boxes, letting us game anywhere, on any screen. We imagined a device that would do for games what the iPod and Kindle have done for music and books, letting us play in a cool new way. We hope other gamers love SHIELD as much as we do.”
Features:
full-sized console-grade game controller
flip-out 5” 720p retinal multi-touch display for high fidelity visuals
Nvidia Corporation, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang unveiled next-gen mobile processor “Tegra 4″ (codenamed “Wayne”) at CES 2013 today, titled “The World’s Fastest Mobile Processor” and “world’s first quad-core mobile processor with Cortex A15 cores”. It features:
Quad-core processor with Cortex A15 cores, 4x faster compare to Tegra 3
same “4-plus-1″ CPU core configuration as Tegra 3, 5th core as a secondary single-core unit for battery saving purpose
72 custom GeForce GPU cores, 6x faster, support for DirectX 11+, OpenGL 4.X, and PhysX
integrated LTE baseband chip
Capable to output 4k resolution (Ultra HD) video, with PRISM 2 display tech that claims to reduce the power used by the backlight
45% decrease in power consumption compared to Tegra 3
NVIDIA GeForce® GPU with 72 custom cores – Enjoy a variety of unique mobile device innovations in media, gaming, and web—including WebGL and HTML5
Computational photography architecture – This new mobile architecture fuses together the processing power of the CPU, GPU, and ISP to allow device makers to dramatically enhance mobile imaging. This enables the first Always-on HDR camera with features like live HDR preview, instant HDR photos, HDR video, HDR burst, and HDR Flash
LTE capability — Tegra 4 leverages proven Icera technology in an optional chipset to deliver exceptional mobile communication capability
Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15s — Tegra 4 harnesses ARM’s most advanced CPU cores ever, plus a second-generation battery saver core, to deliver record levels of performance and battery life. This Variable SMP architecture invented by NVIDIA, enables four performance cores to be used for max burst, when needed, with each core independently and automatically enabled and disabled based on workload. The single battery-saver core handles low-power tasks like active standby, music, and video playback, and is fully transparent to the OS and applications
Always wonder what is going on in the mobile processor chip. I only knew it includes GPU (Graphics processing unit) that responsible for graphic display and the CPU (Central processing unit) core units that do all the processing.
After read through some articles and Nvidia Blog, based on my understanding, Tegra 3 can be divided into 12 different parts with different tasks as below:
01. Quad Core Processor (Core 1,2,3,4)
02. Plus-1 core, Battery Saver Core
03. GPU (3D Display)
04. ARM7 (Supports system management functions & several battery life extending features)
05. HD Video Decoder (Video playback)
06. HD Video Encoder (Video record and conference)
07. Audio (HD audio, 7.1 channel surround)
08. ISP (Image Signal Processor for camera)
09. Memory Input/Output (Read and write storage)
10. HDMI (External display output)
11. Security Engine
12. Display
On 23 February 2012, Nvidia has official trademarked a name for the unique processor architecture used for its quad-core Tegra 3 chip: “4-PLUS-1“. The “Plus-1″ is referred to the fifth core “Battery Saver Core” that previously called as “ninja core” or “shadow core”. As image below:
It is an additional fifth core that has a variable SMP (variable symmetric multiprocessing) architecture that runs on very low power and executes tasks at low frequency when the chip’s more powerful and power-hungry ARM Cortex-A9 cores aren’t needed.
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