Tablets to be supercharged by quad-core chips

IDG News Service - Just as tablets with dual-core processors start to hit shelves, chip makers are now shipping samples of quad-core chips that could make the devices even faster.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nvidia announced a new quad-core Tegra chip code-named Kal El, which the company claims is two times faster for Web browsing than the current dual-core Tegra 2 processor, which is used in tablets from Motorola, LG, Asus, Viewsonic and Toshiba. Qualcomm announced a new quad-core Snapdragon chip, which will offer speeds of up to 2.5GHz per core and consume 65% less power than current ARM-based CPU cores, according to a company statement.

The first mobile devices with Kal-El chips could come as soon as August and deliver up to 12 hours of battery life while playing 1440p video, said Ken Brown, an Nvidia spokesman. Qualcomm did not respond to requests for comment on when its chips would reach devices, but in the statement said test units of its new Snapdragon chips could start shipping in the second half of this year. The companies did not provide clock speeds for the processors.

The first mobile devices with Kal-El chips could come as soon as August and deliver up to 12 hours of battery life, said Ken Brown, an Nvidia spokesman. Qualcomm did not respond to requests for comment on when its chips would reach devices, but in the statement said test units of its new Snapdragon chips could start shipping in the second half of this year. The companies did not provide clock speeds for the processors.

The quad-core chips announced in Barcelona are based on the ARM architecture, as is one announced by Texas Instruments last week.

The use of these chips is a sign that smartphones and tablets are trying to grow up and be more PC-like, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.

Nevertheless, quad-core chips could be overkill as use of all cores could drain battery quickly, just as in laptops, Gold said. High-definition graphics applications are notoriously power-hungry, and Nvidia's Kal El chip deploys many graphics cores that could contribute to the battery drain, Gold said.

"When you are deploying four cores and 12 [graphics] cores, you're sucking battery. Will users be willing to put up with that?" Gold said.

Average users who mostly browse the Web and make phone calls will be satisfied with mobile devices with dual-core processors. Users who want blazing performance may opt for quad-core chips, but may have to prepare to keep devices plugged in all day, Gold said.

The success of quad-core chips in mobile devices will also depend on the number of applications that take advantage of all processing cores, Gold said. Mobile applications are still being written for single- and dual-core processors, and developers will need to change the way they write applications so processing is equally distributed across multiple cores, Gold said.