The BlackBerry PlayBook Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2011 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Smartphones
- RIM
- BlackBerry
- PlayBook
- Mobile
TI's OMAP 4430
You have to hand it to NVIDIA, up until the launch of the iPad 2 if you were talking about a dual-core tablet or smartphone you were likely talking about something running the Tegra 2. Both Qualcomm and TI are late to the dual-core SoC game, but with the PlayBook we have the first shipping device based on TI's Tegra 2 competitor: the OMAP 4430.
At a high level the 4430 looks a lot like the Tegra 2, but dig a little deeper and you'll see that the SoC should be faster overall.
Like the Tegra 2, TI's OMAP 4430 has a pair of ARM Cortex A9s running at up to 1GHz with a shared 1MB L2 cache. Unlike the Tegra 2 however, TI implemented ARM's Media Processing Engine which gives it both a pipelined FPU as well as support for ARM's NEON SIMD instruction set (think SSE but for ARM SoCs). It won't be until Kal-El before NVIDIA brings NEON support to its SoCs.
On the GPU side TI uses a PowerVR SGX 540 by Imagination Technologies. The SGX 540 has four USSE pipes (SIMDs) each capable of up to two MADs per clock.
| Mobile SoC GPU Comparison | |||||||||
| PowerVR SGX 530 | PowerVR SGX 535 | PowerVR SGX 540 | PowerVR SGX 543 | PowerVR SGX 543MP2 | GeForce ULP | Kal-El GeForce | |||
| SIMD Name | USSE | USSE | USSE | USSE2 | USSE2 | Core | Core | ||
| # of SIMDs | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 12 | ||
| MADs per SIMD | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 1 | ? | ||
| Total MADs | 4 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 8 | ? | ||
| GFLOPS @ 200MHz | 1.6 GFLOPS | 1.6 GFLOPS | 3.2 GFLOPS | 6.4 GFLOPS | 12.8 GFLOPS | 3.2 GFLOPS | ? | ||
At the same clock speed, the SGX 540 has the same theoretical compute potential as the GeForce in NVIDIA's Tegra 2. The SGX 540 is a tile based renderer and thus tends to have an appreciable memory bandwidth advantage in current smartphone/tablet gaming workloads.
TI's memory interface is often touted as a significant performance advantage for the OMAP 4430. While NVIDIA has a single 32-bit LP-DDR2 interface, the OMAP 4 embraces a dual-channel (2 x 32-bit) LP-DDR2 interface giving it twice the theoretical bandwidth of what you'd get on a Tegra 2. NVIDIA argues that its bandwidth efficiency is high enough on the Tegra 2 that you don't need two channels, but it's honestly difficult to really validate claims like that.
The other major piece of the OMAP 4430 is its video engine, something TI calls the IVA 3 multimedia accelerator. This hardware encode/decode engine is what makes full 1080p30 playback and recording possible on the PlayBook. As you'll see in our video tests, the PlayBook is the first ARM based tablet we've used that can decode a 1080p H.264 High Profile video stream.
Overall the OMAP 4430 has the specs to be performance competitive with anything else out there today, definitely anything Tegra 2 based. Apple's A5 still has a much faster GPU but from a CPU standpoint, the PlayBook should be competitive. Any non-3D performance differences would likely be due to software optimization, not hardware limitations.
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name99 - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
"I am starting to doubt the iSupply numbers you quoted."And I am starting to doubt that your contrary opinions are of much value.
"Their memory prices are also highly suspect, clinging to $2/GB for what are still really small drives compared where higher performing SSDs already are."
(a) The price here is for STORAGE, not memory as you call it.
(b) The issue is that Apple wants flash that is low power, not high performance. This probably means that want flash that works at low voltage.
This is not trivial --- as evidenced by the fact that pretty much EVERY SSD vendor is incapable of shipping a drive that can write reliably at USB power levels.
If the market for low power flash is different from the market for high performance (and high peak power) flash, then comparing prices as you are doing makes no sense.
MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
That is kinda sad. I find the tablet market a bit of a mystery still. The hardware is either loaded and expensive, or cheaply made junk. The software is still in limbo. I wanted to try a tablet without much risk, so I ended upgetting a Nook Color and a microSD card and went through the mod community. If all fails, its still a good dreaded, but its actually been a lot of fun trying all the mods. Can't wait to see a good build of HC for it, as the prerelease build isn't too bad already. A prefect tablet? No, but the specs are decent, the screen is great, and the cost was very acceptable. :)MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
LoL. Dreaded = e reader. Nice spell check android! :Deliotw - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
They are clearly prioritizing the corporate market that is their bread and butter. I'd never buy this for myself but the "too big to fail" bank I work for could deploy these quickly with the bridge features. That wouldn't be possible with iOS or Android. This isolation capability is impressive but I it still seems like they are releasing it with too many things missing.Spivonious - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
For business users yes, but I think most home users (aka non-techies) use web mail and wouldn't be too bothered.PeteH - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
The problem is that RIMM appears to be primarily targeting business users. Maybe their thinking is that business users will have their Blackberry on them anyway, making an application unnecessary, but it seems like a big oversight to me.galuple - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
It's a corporate security thing. Corporate types very serious about security. No email client means that if one of these gets lost, it doesn't have sensitive documents on it since it's all on the blackberry.Kiddo2050 - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
I could care less. This is aimed at Blackberry users as of now, and I am one. With Blackberry Bridge this is a none issue.Sorry, but I just can't go for Apple and it's closed app eco system (the AOL of today). I've had numerous apple products (everything except the ipad in fact) and I just got so sick of plugging everything into iTunes. Just tired of that company ripping me off left right and center. Here's the "New" Macbook Pro, yes it's already out of date in terms of specs but you don't care because it's Apple. Sure my Blackberry phone is not cutting edge but the point is no one at RIM pretends it is. The iPad2 was rolled out as the hotest new tablet and they didn't say anything about the RAM which was sub par - "just don't tell our consumers they won't know." No thanks Steve, iPad2 and Apple = FAIL start caring about your customers instead of screwing them every chance you get.
zephyros - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
it's true but so wat? apple came out without cut and paste before...why is everyone so surprised? it's how they fix the issue and how fast that matters. at least they know about it and came out mentioning it instead of letting customers find out themselvesEthaniel - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
... great job, Anand.