NVidia has starting showing off it's new Tegra3 ARM based system (code named Kal-El). It has 4 cores based on the Cortex-A9 architecture and a 12 core GForce graphics GPU which allows for hardware accelerated affects such as dynamic lighting, Flash Player 11, HTML5 and WebGL.
It can also output to HDMI and support NVidia's 3D Vision technology which converts OpenGL to stereo 3D for viewing on a 3D TV.
However the main advancement is that it offers 3 times the graphics performance while offering a 61% lower power consumption than the Tegra2. It achieves some of this by actually having 5 CPU cores (the 5th being a low power ARM variant) and only using the Cortex-A9 cores for intensive CPU applications, so when a system is just playing music or some other non-CPU intensive task the big cores are powered down. This is known as variable symmetric multiprocessing (vSMP) and is a technology patented by NVidia.
The Tegra3 will be used in a forthcoming tablet from ASUS known as the Asus EE Pad Transformer Prime.
Other ARM licensees such as Texas Instruments (TI) are already snapping at NVidia's heals with forthcoming high performance OMAP chips which will support technologies such as holographic displays, HD augmented reality, real time voice translation and natural speech interaction.
There are now more ARM processors than actual arms in the world now.
Showing posts with label TIM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TIM. Show all posts
2011/11/10
2011/07/22
TIM is 75 on Sunday 24th July
TIM is affectionate name for the BT speaking clock (or as it's now called Timeline), which was the first 3 letters of the T.I.M.E on the old telephone pad.
It's now accessed by dialling 123 and it still gets around 30m callers per year.
It was originally designed at the Post Office Engineering Research Station at Dollis Hill in North London (which is also where Collossus the code breaking 'computer' was conceived) and introduced on July 24th 1936. It was only available to London callers, only going national in 1942.
There have been 4 permanent voices the first being Jane Cain 1936 - 1963, followed by Pat Simmons 1963 – 1985 and Brian Cobby 1985 – 2007 (the only male voice) and finally Sara Mendes da Costa 2007 to present.
There have also been celebrity voices (Lenny Henry for Comic Relief in 2003 and Alicia Roland for ChildLine. Mae Whitman the voice of Tinker Bell in 2008 for the release of the movie and Gary Barlow, Cheryl Cole, Chris Moyles, Kimberley Walsh and Fearne Cotton for Comic Relief 2009).
The speaking clock used to be accurate to 1/10 of a sec on, but is now accurate to 5/1000's of a second (and Big Ben's time is checked against the speaking clock).
It's now accessed by dialling 123 and it still gets around 30m callers per year.
It was originally designed at the Post Office Engineering Research Station at Dollis Hill in North London (which is also where Collossus the code breaking 'computer' was conceived) and introduced on July 24th 1936. It was only available to London callers, only going national in 1942.
There have been 4 permanent voices the first being Jane Cain 1936 - 1963, followed by Pat Simmons 1963 – 1985 and Brian Cobby 1985 – 2007 (the only male voice) and finally Sara Mendes da Costa 2007 to present.
There have also been celebrity voices (Lenny Henry for Comic Relief in 2003 and Alicia Roland for ChildLine. Mae Whitman the voice of Tinker Bell in 2008 for the release of the movie and Gary Barlow, Cheryl Cole, Chris Moyles, Kimberley Walsh and Fearne Cotton for Comic Relief 2009).
The speaking clock used to be accurate to 1/10 of a sec on, but is now accurate to 5/1000's of a second (and Big Ben's time is checked against the speaking clock).
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