At the 2010 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, a number of very intriguing mobile devices and technologies were announced. Many of these devices and technologies were demonstrated in production and/or pre-production form, which makes 2010 likely to be a banner year for mobile broadband. While the latest mobile gadgets and gizmos are usually incremental improvements over their predecessors, something interesting and different is in tap for this year’s crop of mobile devices: the ability to actual push the boundaries of current mobile broadband technologies. The newly announced technologies that seem most relevant to consumers would be Intel’s new Atom SoC (System on a Chip) that they refer to as Moorestown, a quad-core ARM CPU, and the handful of new mobile graphics chips from companies such as Imagination Technologies.
It is true that most forms of mobile broadband can be used in fixed locations, but it stands to reason that mobile broadband was meant to appeal primarily to those on the go. The only stumbling block for many has been processing horsepower in mobile devices, or the lack of it, on portable devices other than laptops and netbooks. While most laptops sold in the past 5 or so years and even most netbooks are fully capable of utilizing the full bandwidth of mobile broadband services, the same cannot be said of cellular phones. Even Apple’s much-hyped iPhone 3GS takes nearly 20 seconds to completely load nytimes.com and over 3 seconds to load the very basic text-menu based Chicago.craigslit.org. In short, mobile broadband subscribers that are using the latest mobile phones/smartphones to browse the Internet and handle other online tasks are essentially only receiving a portion of the benefit offered by modern mobile broadband. With the next generation of mobile broadband standards being deployed around the world, this disparity seemed likely to continue until the newest round of hardware announcements were made.
Obviously the current and previous generation mobile devices have simply lacked the raw processing power and memory required to run applications capable of making the best use of mobile broadband services. This is certainly an understandable limitation as portable devices have thermal and power restrictions that are simply inherent in their design, but technology marches on and brings additional power to older platforms and gives birth to newer platforms. These new platforms and advances to old platforms will help consumers that want the full speed of mobile broadband at their disposal justify the cost of mobile broadband, which will hopefully increase market penetration.
The People Want More Moorestown!
While netbooks are not particularly fast compared to laptops, they are dozens or even hundreds of times faster than the fastest smartphones of 2009, which makes them easily capable of effectively using the entire bandwidth of current mobile broadband services. This is why Intel decided to try to take their Atom-class netbook CPU, turn it into a SoC design, and scale it down to the point where it can be used in smartphones and tablets. The resulting performance may not exactly be netbook level, but it is far superior to what other mobile phones are using. Intel demonstrated multiple smartphones and tablets using the forthcoming SoC Moorestown, but consumers will have to wait until the second half of 2010 to actually buy such devices.
Get ARMed!
Many current mobile phones, especially high-performance phones with integrated browsers and rich-media capabilities use ARM CPUs, which means that Intel’s Moorestown is a threat to ARM’s market. Not wanting to lose market share to Intel, ARM is prepping its own quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU. Computer enthusiasts might wonder if quad-core is the right move, especially considering how few apps are well-threaded today, but the mobile market is very different from the desktop and laptop computer market and the developers are different too.
The excess amount of CPU power and other resources possessed by even the cheapest modern desktop and laptop computers has permitted developers to spend less time coding for efficiency and more time coding different products to generate revenue. The days of hand-coding lines of archaic assembly or spending man-months looking for ‘loose loops’ seems to be gone on the desktop, but it lives on in the mobile space due to the demands of consumers for rich-media applications running on modest hardware. Take a look at any of the modern mobile phones on the market and try imagining a desktop from approximately a decade ago performing these same tasks; sure the browsing and media playback would have been possible, but not as elegantly presented. Such achievements are only possible due to the tireless efforts of extremely talented and dedicated software engineers who spend a great deal of time finding ways to eek out every iota of performance from the hardware their applications will run on.
It is this programming skill and dedication that are likely to make the multi-core transition in the mobile space a much quicker one. Add to this the fact that desktop and laptop CPUs have blazed a multi-core path in the recent past, and developers will be able to benefit from lessons that have already been learned. This should increase the ability of mobile platform developers to build effective multi-threaded apps out of the gate.
Even if multi-threaded apps do not take off, the ARM9 architecture provides a lot of performance on a per-core basis. For each MHz (Megahertz) of speed, each individual core can process 2 million integer-based calculations. That is an impressive level of performance, and may allow the OS and driver layer functions to be handled by a single core while background and foreground apps are swapped amongst other cores in an intelligent fashion. Another ARM-based CPU also received a lot of attention at the show, the Snapdragon. ASUS, Google, HTC, Lenovo, LG, and Toshiba have either announced or released products based on the Snapdragon CPU in the past month or so. Many more industry heavyweights are expected to make product announcements at CES following the release of the Snapdragon-based Google Nexus One, which is already receiving critical acclaim.
Graphics Gets a Boost Too!
Imagination Technologies announced the newest member of its PowerVR line of graphics processors that destined for mobile devices, dubbed the SGX545. While names like Snapdragon and Moorestown may be more memorable, the SGX545 is a game changer in its own right for a handful of reasons. Arguably the most important reason is that the SGX545 supports major industry standards such as DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3x and Open CL 1.0, both of which help bridge the gap between the desktop and portable devices that feature the SGX545. Another reason is that the SGX545 is quick, capable of handling high-definition graphics and anti-aliasing, yet remains small enough to be adapted to SoC designs.
Tablets Slates Galore, but Will They Gain Traction?
Tablets have tried to break into the mainstream for a very long time, but may have been held back by the lack of performance parts, battery life, and mobile broadband availability. All of those obstacles seem to be gone today, as the aforementioned mobile parts are nothing if not quick and energy-efficient, and mobile broadband penetration is certainly an all-time high. More mobile devices could potentially drive mobile broadband forward in a big way, so it would seem likely that tablets are likely have plenty of support from mobile broadband providers if and when the devices catch on. Unfortunately, the name tablet now carries a stigma within the IT/computer enthusiast community, and perhaps this is why nearly everyone is starting to refer to tablets as slates. Even Apple is rumored to have set aside the name iSlate for its fabled tablet device which may be announced later this month.
A Bright Future For Mobile Broadband? Almost Certainly
With all obstacles to widespread mobile broadband adoption potential removed, it would seem that the next-generation of mobile devices could finally be the ones that countless millions of consumers have been waiting for. No more waiting 10 or 20 seconds for media-rich pages to load sounds like a perfect selling point, and hopefully that will be enough drive more consumers to adopt mobile broadband. This in turn should hopefully spur wireless network growth and maturity, which would benefit consumers, businesses, and a country that is in danger of falling behind in terms of broadband access.
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