Nvidia’s Upcoming Quad-Core Kal-El Chip Has Special Fifth Core

Nvidia has published two white papers about its next generation Tegra processor code-named “Project Kal-El,” and it looks like Superman chip has a lot more going for it than we first thought. The first of the white papers reveals that the quad-core chip actually has five-cores. The fifth core, known in Nvidia’s parlance as a “companion core” is built using a low-power silicon process that performs tasks at low frequency such as standby mode and video and music playback.
The companion core is put to work on processes that don’t require a lot of heavy lifting, like the aforementioned video and music playback. When you want to play a 3D game, the companion core is automatically disabled and its four high-performance cores begin to power up. But they don’t all just switch on at once. Instead, the cores power on one-by-one, scaling as their work load increases. Nvidia also says that this “Variable SMP” processor architecture is operating system transparent, meaning developers won’t have to go back to the drawing board to take advantage of this new tech; it’ll just work.
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