
Marvell's tri-core ARM chip has near-PS3-level graphics - lotusleaf1987
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/09/marvells-tri-core-chip-has-near-ps3-level-graphics.ars
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jra101
Not really an accurate statement. They are basing this entirely off of the
theoretical triangle throughput and not comparing pixel shading power, memory
bandwidth, cpu perf (those SPUs on the PS3 actually do get used), etc...

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palish
So basically: a completely inaccurate statement.

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Das_Bruce
I wouldn't even be that generous, it's an outright lie.

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dstein
"Given the amount of hardware on this new chip, it's complete overkill for a
smartphone. "

No it's not! I can't wait to have a killer smartphone with HD graphics on a
high-resolution 5" screen. That would really rock. Smartphones this powerful
could replace laptops as long as they had monitor-out and usb plugs.

~~~
wtracy
The information is pretty vague, but seems to hint that the power draw is too
high for a smartphone.

That said, apparently someone has already hacked Symbian to interact with the
Wiimote, so the current smartphone hardware is already capable of supporting
Bluetooth controllers. If you had S-video out to plug into a TV (or if you
supported one of the newfangled wireless video protocols) you could have a
gaming console that folds away into your pocket. Oh, the possibilities. :-D

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wtracy
I hate to reply to myself, but here's a product idea:

A Sheeva-plug form-factor device with video output, and Bluetooth support,
sold with a set of Bluetooth controllers and a sleek carrying bag with pockets
for the cables and controllers. You can carry it to your friend's house in one
hand, plug it in to his/her TV set, and be gaming in under two minutes.

Package it with a bunch of casual multiplayer games, and whoever owns one will
be invited to every party ever. ^_^ You could even sell it to those little
businesses that operate children's birthday parties.

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ajg1977
Ahh, the old "triangles as an absolute measurement of power" fallacy. Shame on
you Ars, shame shame.

Still, an amusing headline given that among developers the RSX (the PS3 GPU)
is widely acknowledged to be a bit lacking. One of the big challenges of PS3
development these days is figuring out how to move basically everything onto
SPUs and leave the RSX as a basic rasterizer.

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rbanffy
Three (two-and-a-half) symmetric ARM cores seem to be easier to program than a
PPC and an entourage of SPUs.

One of the things that always made me wonder about Cell's future is that it
looks devilishly hard to program.

Wouldn't things like OpenCL sort of ease that pain? IIRC, IBM is one of the
companies behind it.

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Samuel_Michon
"OpenCL was initially developed by Apple Inc., which holds trademark rights,
and refined into an initial proposal in collaboration with technical teams at
AMD, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia. Apple submitted this initial proposal to the
Khronos Group. On June 16, 2008 the Khronos Compute Working Group was formed
with representatives from CPU, GPU, embedded-processor, and software
companies. This group worked for five months to finish the technical details
of the specification for OpenCL 1.0 by November 18, 2008. This technical
specification was reviewed by the Khronos members and approved for public
release on December 8, 2008"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL>

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rbanffy
IBM has <http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/opencl> for Linux on PowerPC. It
covers Cell.

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pietrofmaggi
This micro is not for smartphone, Marvell is not in that business.

Currently Marvell has the best micro's for Server class machine based on ARM
(XScale) architecture, look at the Plug Computer
(<http://www.marvell.com/platforms/plug_computer/>). This last micro, with
three core is in the same family of the ones used in the Plug Computer
(armada) and in the OpenRD reference platform (<http://www.open-rd.org/>); And
none of this chip are in any smartphone.

Not for lack of computing power, but because they have a different target
market (and different on-chip peripherals). Marvell's Armada SoC have Gigabit
Ethernet and SATA interface on board... not exactly something you need on a
smartphone (at least not on mine).

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rbanffy
> This micro is not for smartphone

TFA says that on the second paragraph

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pietrofmaggi
They say that the micro is overkill for a smartphone, I'm saying that Marvell
is not in that business. This are two complete different story.

Look at current Symbian hw (nokia) and you'll see that for them even Cortex-A8
(the core of current and previous iPhone generations) is overkill.

ARM itself is targeting the Cortex-A15 in his single and dual cores
implementation to smarphones.

And the core is only half (or less) of the story today. On smartphones the GPU
is as important as the core... but this is all another story.

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rbanffy
I stand corrected. Sorry.

Still... Marvell is not in that business, but neither was MOS in the personal
computer business when they launched the 6502 ;-)

Accidents happen and the wildest things become real. Besides that, this level
of performance will be quite mundane two years from now. In a decade, low-end
smartphones will have this kind of capability. Not because they need it, but
because nobody makes a simpler part anymore.

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pietrofmaggi
Sure, but when the Motorola engineers left to built the 6502 there was no
Personal Computer market. The 6502 (its low price) created it. At 25$ it was a
bargain against the the Intel 8080 which costs about US$150:
[http://www.commodore.ca/history/company/mos/mos_technology.h...](http://www.commodore.ca/history/company/mos/mos_technology.htm)).

What about smartphones? they're already here and they're evolving.

Is this new chip something new and revolutionary? NO Is it an innovation? YES

    
    
      "In a decade, low-end smartphones will have this kind of capability. Not because they need it, but because nobody makes a simpler part anymore."
    

I'll not put my money on this. In electronics price is king, and for large
volumes every dime is important. For example I'll not be surprised to find in
my kid's toys some sort of 6502.

Phones are now an ARM territory, and the low cost ones will probably stay on
ARM7TDMI for a long long time (may be in some speedy versions, around
300-500MHz).

BTW thanks for the nice "saturday" conversation. I love HN

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zitterbewegung
I would like to see actual games on the device to actually judge how good this
chip is in relation to the PS3.

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hoggle
Have a look at the "Epic Citadel" tech demo on an iPhone 3GS or 4. We're
almost there already , of course subjectively (lower resolution on the mobile
displays). The future is now, it really is pretty amazing.

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lotusleaf1987
Wow that is very impressive, here's a link to the Epic Citadel demo for anyone
else interested: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymlCWbxTgds> Here's the link
in iTunes as well: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/epic-
citadel/id388888815?mt=8>

Also Project Sword looks incredible, coming this holiday season they said:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImdjgUip0Nc>

Also, that Rage demo by John Carmack was amazing also:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeXe_G0xmY0>

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rbanffy
I like the "2.5 core" design. The OS can switch off the fast cores if the load
goes below a certain level and resurrect them when needed.

IIRC Linux kernels had a memory and processor plug-and-play thing in place
that could be used to dynamically "plug" and "unplug" cores as required by
changing load conditions. Was it limited to SPARC?

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rbanffy
Good. Now I want a Windows-proof computer I can hook up to a reasonable LCD,
keyboard and mouse, with a rich Linux desktop I can use to work.

And, while it's no pushing triangles, the GPU could help with OpenCL stuff.

Is that too much to ask for? Nobody makes Windows-proof personal computers
anymore.

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wtracy
I'm closely watching these guys: <http://alwaysinnovating.com/>

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malkia
Even if it does, you would need 5 years to understand how to use it to the
full, if that is ever allowed, and not limited by what the underlying OpenGL
ES 2.00 would give you.

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aresant
Useless without pics.

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palish
Considering this is completely about graphics, the parent comment is totally
valid.

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aresant
Thank you for appreciating Friday night downvote bait.

Point is technical specifications do not alone support the headline!

