The upcoming TI OMAP 5 processor will be one of the first chips designed around the ARM Cortex-A15 architecture. Theoretically it will offer more power than today’s fastest chips, while using less energy. But that’s theory. How does is stack up in practice?

TI OMAP 5

Pretty well, if a new demo video from Texas Instruments is anything to go by.

The company pitted a dual-core OMAP 5 against a “competing” quad-core processor using an ARM Cortex-A9 design. NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 processor is pretty much the only such chip on the market today, so there’s a good chance that’s what the competing chip was.

The test involved playing MP3 audio, downloading a video file, and loading websites with HTML5-heavy graphics.

Oh yeah, the OMAP 5 chip was clocked at 800 MHz, while the competing chip was running at 1.3 GHz.

TI probably wouldn’t have released the video if their chip lost… but what’s impressive is that the tablet with the OMAP 5 chip complete the test in less than half the time of the tablet with the Cortex-A9 CPU.

We’ll have to wait until early 2013 to get our hands on products with OMAP 5 processors — and by then it might not be the only game in town. But if you’ve been wondering  what the real-world performance difference between Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 chips looks like, now you know.

via AnandTech and Engadget

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5 replies on “2 cores (can be) better than 4: TI OMAP 5 benchmark preview (video)”

  1. I really hope Windows 8 on ARM takes off with major developers. I’d rather have all that power in a Windows UMPC than my Android phone. I really don’t want the Metro apps turning out like the apps in the Android and Apple markets. Mostly little apps that often get abandoned by the dev or don’t really have many useful features.

    1. That’s what I’m hoping for too. Ditto on the devs abandoning their apps. Can’t really expect much from just one guy. Of course, Metro apps may end up the same way.

      Hopefully, being part of Microsoft’s flagship OS, software vendors see it as a good opportunity to develop for. Or, maybe, somehow Microsoft adds the ability to easily target the desktop environment for both ARM and x86. I’d prefer that since I’d rather have a mouse pointer and keyboard. Slider UMPC anyone?

    2.  Yes, Windows ARM UMPCs! Too bad WoA and desktop app development is still TBD.

  2. by 2013 kal el+ and grey will be out both penta cores by nvidia. I think Grey is A15 cortex. Plus, I would rather believe a comparison by an independent body

    1. Grey is a more specialized ARM Cortex MPCore with Integrated Icera 3G/4G baseband, release date is suppose to be sometime after Wayne (Tegra 4), which is due in June barring more delays.

      Tegra 3 (Kal-El) + may or may not come out as it’s basically just a 28nm update to the present 40nm Tegra 3.

      Wayne (Tegra 4) will be a 28nm quad to octor core Cortex A15 with companion MPCore.  The quad core version will get 24 GPU cores, and the octo core version will get 32 to 64 GPU cores with support for Directx 11+, OpenGL 4.X, and PhysX. 

      Benchmarks right now can be leveraged pretty heavily, especially if the benchmark doesn’t accurately reflect more than two cores.  Along with the effect of other components like drive speed, working from a microSD instead of SSD, etc.

      While it remains to be seen whether TI will offer a quad core version of the OMAP 5.

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