CES Mobile Wrap: DSP, GPU, CPU Redefined

Junko Yoshida, EETimes
1/13/2014 07:40 AM EST

LAS VEGAS — There is no such thing as “game over” for the mobile apps processor battle.

Evident at the International CES this year was that the ever-increasing flood of features into mobile devices is keeping silicon designers on their toes.

The new differentiators cropping up for mobile devices are the always-on mobile SoC that can be promptly awakened by voice activation, sensor fusion, multi-channel surround-sound audio, eye-tracking, post video processing, and more. An additional wrinkle is that many mobile SoCs are also being pitched as the brain that drives an automaker's in-vehicle infotainment system.

Such changes are prompting apps processor designers to rethink DSP, GPU, and CPU cores, giving birth to a new generation of "light" apps processors, designed as co-processors to be used in conjunction with a main apps processor. Many designers are also intent on beefing up the performance of their own apps processors, by re-crafting graphics cores (e.g., Nvidia's Tegra K1) and/or adding more processor cores (e.g., MediaTek's octa-core apps processor).

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