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ST-Ericsson claims to have the first Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP)-enabled mobile platform running on Symbian OS at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
Interestingly this is running on the ARM Cortex-A9 multicore processor, which is a big step forward for the low power processor in a mobile handset application.
According to Monica De Virgiliis, v-p wireless multimedia, ST-Ericsson, the overall system performance is optimised by balancing the applications across the number of instantiated CPU’s and their operating frequencies for the best achievable MIPS/mW.
For example, a device running multiple applications simultaneously can spread applications across different processors, while individual computer-intensive applications can also exploit multiprocessing by means of software multi-threading, a well-known technique used for PC’s and high-performance computing.
“This endorsement of the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor by ST-Ericsson demonstrates the rapid adoption of SMP by our partners, paving the way for a new category of mobile devices that deliver significantly more processing performance on demand,” said Ian Drew, EVP Marketing, ARM.
The expectation is that 3G and LTE mobile phones will support data downloads of up to 100Mbit/s, and will demand greater processing power from terminals.
The Cortex performance is lifted by the integration of ARM NEON accelerators coupled to each of the two CortexA9 SMP processors.
Power management is provided by adaptive voltage scaling which adapts the voltage to the different characteristics of each single chip, induced by silicon process variations.