Tweaktown : Nvidia Jetson (Tegra K1)

[lefty2]

Think about what you are saying. Tegra 4 in Xiaomi's Mi3 phone is used only with China Mobile. Tegra 4i in LG's G2 mini phone is used only outside of the USA. This has nothing to do with contra revenue. Prior generations of Tegra were always designed in a cost-conscious way.

Obviously Qualcomm and Mediatek will win the lion's share of smartphone business outside of Apple and Samsung because the former is able to cost-effectively bundle their modem with their SoC (and in fact some large cellular service providers such as Verizon and Sprint have legacy networks that require Qualcomm's WCDMA tech) and the latter is the lowest cost SoC supplier.

Until all the major cellular network providers migrate over to newer technologies such as VoLTE ( http://www.latimes.com/business/tec...-volte-what-exactly-is-it-20140522-story.html ), there will still be a need to rely on legacy 3G networks, and therefore Qualcomm's modem tech will still be required in many cases.

Xiaomi's Mi3 was definately a contra revenue deal. That's why they switched to Qualcomm as soon as the subsidised SoC's ran out. TD-SCDMA is a requirement for the Chinese market (and, no it's not legacy either).
The fact is OEM have to design two mobile's if they use Tegra. One for Chinese and US markets and one for rest of the world. That adds to development costs and why Nvidia has to pay contra revenue to get design wins.

 

[TreVader]

K1 won't touch the 805 in phone form. K1 probably won't be even accepted for a phone design because of it's horrible thermals.



And btw the A7 in the iPad performs exactly like it does in the 5s. It's just clocked 100mhz lower. The reason it doesn't have 3x the battery life is the screen.

 

[ams23]

Xiaomi's Mi3 was definately a contra revenue deal. That's why they switched to Qualcomm as soon as the subsidised SoC's ran out. TD-SCDMA is a requirement for the Chinese market (and, no it's not legacy either).

LOL, that is completely false. Xiaomi's Mi3 launched with two different variants: Tegra 4 variant [TD-SCDMA] for China Mobile, and an S800 variant [WCDMA] for China Unicom and other parts of Asia.

The fact is OEM have to design two mobile's if they use Tegra. One for Chinese and US markets and one for rest of the world. That adds to development costs and why Nvidia has to pay contra revenue to get design wins.

Again false. Tegra 4, with ~ 50% lower SoC die size in comparison and fabbed on 28nm HPL instead of the more bleeding edge 28nm HPM, is a less costly design than S800 and more than suitable for the China Mobile network.

 

[ams23]

K1 won't touch the 805 in phone form. K1 probably won't be even accepted for a phone design because of it's horrible thermals.

Tegra K1 has superior CPU and GPU power efficiency compared to S805. S805 has ~ 20% better GPU power efficiency than S800, while TK1 has ~ 50% better GPU power efficiency than S800.

 

[TreVader]

Tegra K1 has superior CPU and GPU power efficiency compared to S805. S805 has ~ 20% better GPU power efficiency than S800, while TK1 has ~ 50% better GPU power efficiency than S800.

TK1 is actively cooled. I don't think it's even capable of being a phone SoC.


Smart that they went 64 bit tho

 

[lefty2]

LOL, that is completely false. Xiaomi's Mi3 launched with two different variants: Tegra 4 variant [TD-SCDMA] for China Mobile, and an S800 variant [WCDMA] for China Unicom and other parts of Asia.



Again false. Tegra 4, with ~ 50% lower SoC die size in comparison and fabbed on 28nm HPL instead of the more bleeding edge 28nm HPM, is a less costly design than S800 and more than suitable for the China Mobile network.

The Tegra 4 variant had to be shipped with a third party modem because their i500 does not support TD-SCDMA and that's why it needed to be subsidised. And here is some confirmation:

Nvidia’s own promotional pages lists only one device powered by Tegra 4 10 months later, and SemiAccurate’s sources tell us it was a purchased design win.

https://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/20/well-nvidias-tegra-k1-really-perform/

 

[ams23]

The Tegra 4 variant had to be shipped with a third party modem because their i500 does not support TD-SCDMA and that's why it needed to be subsidised.

The "third party modem" was surely a dirt cheap 3G modem compatible with TD-SCDMA that does not come from Qualcomm (note that Icera i500 DOES support TD-SCDMA, but it was not certified for this particular device with China Mobile). Again, the cost savings from the Tegra 4 SoC die should more than make up the difference vs. the much larger S800 SoC die that already includes a high end built-in LTE modem. Saying that this is contra revenue is just as silly as saying that Tegra K1 consumes 30-50w.

 

[ams23]

TK1 is actively cooled. I don't think it's even capable of being a phone SoC.


Smart that they went 64 bit tho

TK1 is an SoC. It will not be actively cooled in most consumer ultra mobile form factors. Surely if it can fit well inside a thin Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9" tablet then it can fit well inside a 5" smartphone too at slightly reduced clock operating frequencies (even Tegra 4 worked fine in Xiaomi's Mi3, and Tegra K1 has superior CPU/GPU power efficiency in comparison).

 

[altairauditore]

TK1 will fit into a phone! What is good about it is that it is efficient. Nvidia can underclock it, to reduce power and heat, and it will still compete with S805. When need, eg like Shield, Nvidia can clock it high when thermals allow to unleash it's performance.

Thermal problems on S800 /S801 / S805 devices is something that nobody want's to talk about. Within a minute they start throttling too, and in 2 minutes CPU Freq drops from 2.3Ghz+ to 980-1,200 Mhz. Tegra thermals might be a bit more serious, but with the TK1, Nvidia has a lot of room to play with. They underclock, keep the phone cool with good battery life, and they will still be able to beat S801, if not compete with S805.

 

[PingviN]

Nvidia is leaving mobile phones and tablets to the other SoC manufacturers. Cars and gaming, not smartphones and tablets, is Tegras future. I think that pretty much shows what a failure Tegra has been.

http://www.cnet.com/news/nvidia-ceo-sees-future-in-cars-and-gaming-q-a/

 

[witeken]

TK1 is actively cooled. I don't think it's even capable of being a phone SoC.


Smart that they went 64 bit tho

If it has higher efficiency, but consumes too much, you can simply scale down the clock speeds and it will still be faster. That's what efficiency means.

 

[lefty2]

The "third party modem" was surely a dirt cheap 3G modem compatible with TD-SCDMA that does not come from Qualcomm

<citation needed>
Anyways, if you want to believe that Tegra is the best smartphone SoC in existance, dispite Nvidia's own CEO saying that it is a failure, then go ahead. I'm out of here.

 

[altairauditore]

Yup, the Nvidia CEO admitted that Tegra 4i was a complete failure, and that is what probably made them shift to non-mobile devices.

IMO Tegra 4i in a cheap chinese phone seems pretty good. The GPU perf will be between Adreno 320 and Adreno 330, CPU perf will be >APQ8064 .

2.3 Ghz Quad Core seems like a good marketing bluff too

 

[Lonyo]

TK1 is an SoC. It will not be actively cooled in most consumer ultra mobile form factors. Surely if it can fit well inside a thin Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9" tablet then it can fit well inside a 5" smartphone too at slightly reduced clock operating frequencies (even Tegra 4 worked fine in Xiaomi's Mi3, and Tegra K1 has superior CPU/GPU power efficiency in comparison).

You might be underestimating the physical size difference between a 7.9" and 5" device...
Xiaomi: 230cm^3
Galaxy S4: 75cm^3
One third of the volume.

 

[sontin]

Yup, the Nvidia CEO admitted that Tegra 4i was a complete failure, and that is what probably made them shift to non-mobile devices.

Read the CNN article again:
Tegra 4i is a business failure.

Look, we built a great chip. [...] It's a fantastic processor. But from a business strategy, it wasn't a success.

nVidia's problem is that only a few people care about performance or up to date Android on a low cost smartphone.
Wiko announced that they will update their Wiko Highway from Mediathek to Tegra 4i in the second half of this year because of LTE, better performance and KitKat support.

But in the end these points aren't a huge differentiator from Mediathek or Qualcomm.

 

[tviceman]

You might be underestimating the physical size difference between a 7.9" and 5" device...
Xiaomi: 230cm^3
Galaxy S4: 75cm^3
One third of the volume.

You missed the point. As arms pointed out, TK1 has better perf/watt than Tegra 4. Therefore it can operate within the same confines as T4, and again as arms pointed out, T4 was in Xiaomi's smartphone.

 

[blackened23]

It looks like Tegra K1 may win the Google Nexus 8 tablet design:

http://fudzilla.com/home/item/34844-android-source-points-to-tegra-based-nexus-8

 

[erunion]

fudzilla said it so we can be sure it wont happen.

 

[PC Perv]

This thread is so.. amusing. XD


Posted from Anandtech.com App for Android

 

[altairauditore]

I wouldn't be surprised if the 64bit TK1 ends up in the Nexus 8.. or whatever the new Google tablet it.

Pretty sure Android 5.0 (????) will be 64 bit, and Google will probably want to showcase hardware running Android 5, so they'll put a 64 bit chip in the tablet.

 

[itsmydamnation]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1855602&postcount=2451

serious :thumbsup: to NV, looks like they have schooled everyone. companion core is the cache controller ( no flushing of cache etc needed on main core power down) and the A15's and GPU connects directly to a single cache. FYI Rhy works for imgtec.

In case anyone is not clear, it's a joke
-ViRGE

 

[Unoid]

I knew the tegra4i would be failure when the first announced it.
Tegra 3 style cpu's with integrated modem when Snapdragons and everyone else would be on A15's.

Soooo stupid.

 

[TrulyUncouth]

I knew the tegra4i would be failure when the first announced it.
Tegra 3 style cpu's with integrated modem when Snapdragons and everyone else would be on A15's.

Soooo stupid.

Could you be any more off-topic?

 

[sontin]

MiPad gets 27k points in the 3dmark unlimited benchmark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUJuYhySSzw

For comparision:
AMD's Discovery tablet (11,6") only archives 19k points without the power plug cheat:

http://www.golem.de/news/amd-apu-mu...-tablet-wie-es-sein-sollte-1404-106123-2.html

 

[TrulyUncouth]

Again I caution against making bold claims until we get a full review from a reputable site. Here is a benchmark run from one of the first owners of the Mipad who got an Antutu on par with phones released 3 months ago. In his short review thread linked below someone even mentions complaints about gaming performance.

All of this could be a fluke or even issues with just this tablet. I am very excited for the TK1 especially since my dream goal is good computer games, especially DOTA 2, on a cheap arm tablet/laptop/whatever and this is a huge step in that direction- my point is we need to wait for professional reviews including battery life before declaring this chip the grand poobah of tablets.

http://xiaomi.eu/community/threads/review-mipad.24865/

MiPad gets 27k points in the 3dmark unlimited benchmark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUJuYhySSzw

For comparision:
AMD's Discovery tablet (11,6") only archives 19k points without the power plug cheat:

http://www.golem.de/news/amd-apu-mu...-tablet-wie-es-sein-sollte-1404-106123-2.html