Intel Corp (INTC)

[Andy Grave]

.from neolib on SI

.......already shipping.....how about dem MediaTekies?

remind us all who predicted there would be no A72 based products until late 2016/early 2017.......oh wait.......that would be YOU

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=110532880



News & Analysis
MediaTek Wrestles ARM A72 into Tablets
Jessica Lipsky
3/1/2015 09:30 AM EST
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OAKLAND, Calif. – Taiwan-based chip vendor MediaTek announced a tablet SoC based on ARM’s new Cortex-A72 processor. The quad-core MT8173 chip is already shipping, targeting high-end systems.

“The tablet category is totally deceived by lots of cost containment but is not relenting on the specs. I think industry as a whole is scratching its head as to what you can make a tablet do,” MediaTek’s business marketing vice president and general manager Mohit Bhushan told EE Times. “The next big thing is to make the tablet your workhorse for productivity, for enterprise.”

To that end, MediaTek wants to leverage ARM’s new offerings to grow its share in tablets. The MT8173 is a 64-bit multi-core big.LITTLE architecture that combines two Cortex-A72 CPUs and two Cortex-A53 CPUs to provide a six-fold performance increase over MediaTek’s previous generation tablet chip. MediaTek did not provide power consumption or exact performance specs.

The SoC runs at 2.4 GHz performance thanks to updates to MediaTek’s software. “We’ve innovated on CorePilot, the software that looks at the characteristics of cores and moderates them on thermal frequency and power planes to match the best CPU to best kind of job,” Bhushan said.

The chip also supports 120Hz displays, ultra HD/HEVC video playback, and a 20 megapixel camera with so-called face beautify effects. While the MediaTek offering is a pure applications processor, Bhushan expects it to easily interface with forthcoming LTE chips.

Sixty percent of MediaTek’s revenue comes from mobile but its LTE share is small, MediaTek President C.J. Hsieh previously told EE Times. Hsieh said his company wants to offer more advanced features in mobile chips and “take over the high-end market.”

While many have forecast the stagnation of the tablet market, MediaTek hopes to snag more share. The company ended 2014 with 50 million tablet shipments and expects to increase that number in 2015 as major devices such as the Amazon Kindle, which uses MediaTek chips, release upgrades.

— Jessica Lipsky, Associate Editor, EE TimesCircle me on Google+