TI's new dual-core OMAP5 processors demonstrate that less can truly be more

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Texas Instruments

At the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, I had the chance to speak with Texas Instruments about its new TI OMAP5 processor platform. While quad-core systems powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 3 "Kal-El" processor have been grabbing headlines, TI has been positioning its dual-core OMAP5 platform as being the smarter, faster, and more efficient processor play.

One of the key differences between OMAP5 and Tegra 3 is the version of the ARM processor technology that each platform uses. NVIDIA's Tegra 3 processors make use of 4 ARM Cortex A9 processor cores, which are the same as used in its Tegra 2 processors, as well as in TI's own OMAP4 line of chipsets. OMAP5, on the other hand, uses ARM Cortex A15 cores, which make use the next generation of ARM technology and deliver superior performance than the A9 cores.

TI demonstrated the A15 advantage with a web page rendering benchmark demo running on Android. Twenty web pages were rendered and the total time required for OMAP5's dual-A15 cores was compared with the score from a quad-A9 processor. The dual-core OMAP5 processor completed the task in 95 seconds, while the quad-core A9 device required just over 200 seconds to do the same thing.

You might think that this has something to do with clock speeds, since I didn't mentioned them, and you would be right. Just not in the way you would expect. The OMAP5's dual A15 cores were running at 800MHz, compared with the 1.2GHz speed the four Cortex A9 units operated at.

That gives you a hint as to just how much more powerful A15 technology is over A9. At the same clock speed, A15 cores consume more power, but they are so much more efficient than A9 cores that, even when run at lower speeds, they still outperform A9. On top of that, TI has also added other distinct non-processor cores into OMAP5, such as its composition engine, that offload tasks that would traditionally fall to the GPU or the main processor cores.

This presents TI with a problem from a marketing perspective, though. Not only is "quad" sexier than "dual", 1.5GHz sounds far better than 1GHz to the ears of most any consumer. TI, and the manufacturers that choose to use its high-tech OMAP5 platform, will have to work hard to convince consumers that less really can be more.

I don't envy the new math that TI will have to teach consumers, but I certainly look forward to reaping the benefits that OMAP5 has to offer.