Nvidia has an interesting surprise. Its upcoming four-core Tegra GPU actually has five cores. The extra “companion” core will be used for less-compute-intensive tasks to save on battery and includes an ARM Cortex-A9.

This is a new idea for a processor company, whether it’s a GPU or a CPU. It’s not a new idea for a systems company. Depending on how you define the system, SoC makers have been doing this for the better part of a decade and Dell has been offering similar approaches in its laptops for years.

But what’s intriguing here is that Nvidia is basically turning the GPU into an SoC, and if you had mentioned that to Nvidia five years ago its executives probably would have stared at you like you were from another planet. But given Intel’s push into the SoC world, this is no longer such a foreign concept. Nvidia has just released a white paper on the subject.

One of the interesting side notes in that paper is a hint at a basic flaw in Android 3.x, which appears to suffer from the same limitations as more mature OSes such as Windows and OS X. Android supports muiltiprocessing, but it assumes all cores are created equal. They are, but they shouldn’t be if power is an issue, which raises questions about what exactly general-purpose processors and operating systems will be used for—or limited to—in the future.

The approach that Nvidia has come up with is variable SMP, meaning cores get used as needed and tasks are split depending on where they can run most efficiently. It doesn’t make sense, for example, to do background maintenance on a GPU, while it also doesn’t make sense to do high-performance tasks on an A9. Efficiency is now the driver, and we are simply at the starting point for re-engineering just about everything.

–Ed Sperling

As the Android platform gains widespread adoption, it’s incumbent upon device manufacturers and network operators to find compelling and innovative new ways to differentiate one Android-based device from the other. Of course, there are the basic factors that influence the success of a handheld device such as price, functionality, ease-of-use, network carrier, and brand name recognition to name a few. But the device’s graphical user interface (GUI) also has a direct impact on its success or failure.

Unfortunately, differentiating a GUI usually requires significant engineering investment and while the Android platform does offer basic GUI functionality, the platform doesn’t go far enough to facilitate a truly unique and one-of-a-kind user experience. This paper takes a closer look at one available GUI technology that allows for the rapid creation and radical customization of a GUI in any Android-based device. To download this paper, click here.

By Ed Sperling

Business seems to be picking up everywhere in the design world, with an emphasis on speed—quicker deals, faster product rollouts and overall time to market—and all of it with an underlying emphasis on low power and tighter power budgets. Could it be that after the recession, everyone is trying to get back on track quickly?

Virage Logic completed the acquisition of NXP’s IP technology and its development team. That comes on the heels of its recent acquisition of ARC. The fact that Virage completed both of these acquisitions in a 12-day period is nothing short of an accounting miracle. And just in case the company didn’t have enough to do, it added a Silicon Browser for post-silicon bring-up and system debug.

Android seems to be getting its share of attention these days. Mentor Graphics introduced an Android Development System for Texas Instrument’s OMAP35x processors. TI’s processors also include ARM Cortex-A8 technology, which puts ARM squarely in the center of this effort, as well, with a heavy push toward better battery life. But will any of this take a bite out of the Apple iPhone?

On the get-things-done-quicker side, Digital Imaging Systems used Synopsys’ Galaxy Custom Designer to achieve first-pass silicon in 22 days. Not all of it was from scratch, of course, but that’s still a very tight timetable.

And Atrenta’s deal with Fujitsu’s Kyushu Network Technologies is aimed at reducing design risks in integration of third-party IP from multiple vendors with different clock domains. Translation: Faster time to market.

Also on the business side, Cadence expanded its design alliance with Toshiba for the consumer and mobile markets.

Intel invested millions of Euros in an Exascale Computing Research in France, as part of Intel Labs Europe. This is the second time in two weeks that Intel has paid out big bucks to appease antitrust regulators. This deal will add 900 new research jobs in Europe. That follows Intel’s settlement with AMD, clearing the way for Intel to go after ARM with its Atom chip.

ARM’s comeback was largely a reiteration of the strength of its ecosystem. It struck up a strategic architectural license agreement with Infineon for advanced security applications and created a solutions center for Android.