Google Nexus S Processor Overclocked To 1.2GHz 78
dkd903 writes "Though Google's Nexus S is powered by a single core Hummingbird processor, it looks like the one core would be enough to put LG's dual-core processor powered Optimus to shame. An XDA Forums user morfic has overclocked the processor on Nexus S up to 1.2GHz in a new kernel based on the Bionix NS1 mod."
And? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Funny as it seems, but overclocking could sometime save battery life as it could alter the default voltage usage of a particular frequency. At least, this is the case of Nokia N900 with Titan's Kernel Power, where we could choose 'starving' profile for overclocking with less voltage than default. Say it can run at almost half as much voltage at 600Mhz than normal. (fyi. N900 can be overclocked to 1.15GHz max. with Kernel Power)
That's not necessarily overclocking -- see also, undervolting or even underclocking.
On my Droid 1, I do all three: It runs at, IIRC, 1GHz, some of the time. Its lowest clock speed is 125MHz, where it spends most of its time (half of the default lowest rate of 250MHz). And all of these speeds are at lower voltage than default.
In the end, it's about a wash: I get a faster device for about the same battery life as I had at stock clocks. Heat generation is about the same, by my estimation, in common use.
None of this is particularly new: I have a fanless, diskless K6-2 350 that gets used for some realtime audio processing tasks using KX audio drivers. It is equipped with a big heatsink, clocked down to 200MHz, and running at low voltage. The hard drive is a CF card on an IDE bus.
It's stable as a champ, doesn't make a peep, and never gets too warm. (These days there's better options for that sort of work, with Atom and SSD, but it was the best I could come up with back then, and it still works just as well today as it did then.)
Re:Really?? (Score:5, Informative)
Quadrant is a pretty flawed test. [briefmobile.com]
That said, based on some other benchmarks and their respective specs, tegra2 has roughly 2.5x more CPU power compared to the hummingbird SOC. (1ghz A9 runs 25% faster than 1ghz A8, and tegra 2 is a dual core A9) Anadtech's Linpack scores seem to show that too. [anandtech.com] (Ignore the bloated snapdragon class scores, it has floating point performance optimisations) Article here [anandtech.com]
GPU performance is where it gets interesting. It seems like the PowerVR 540 GPU on the hummingbird SoC is better than the GPU used in the Tegra 2 SoC. Odd considering nVidia make the tegra2. Instances where Tegra 2 outperforms the hummingbird in GPU benchmarks are as far as i can tell down to the extra CPU power (roughly 250% faster)
Samsung's upcoming [engadget.com] Orion chip also looks promising, and is a closer match to the Tegra 2.
Re:Overclocking != Dual Core (Score:5, Informative)
That's not dual core... All current smartphones use that... One Application CPU that runs Android/Symbian/iPhoneOS/whatever and another CPU inside the modem that runs the GSM stack on a RTOS... Only very low end phones run the GSM stack on the app processor...