Must speculation at this point, but a dual core one is inevitable.
Two questions arise.
First, to pick the chipset.
Second, to pick the manufacturer.
The first answer can decide the first.
When Google picked the Snapdragon for the Nexus One, its a little strange because the Snapdragon's core, the Scorpion isn't really a bonafide ARM Cortex A8 core. In PC terms, that's like choosing AMD instead of Intel. Might be a surprise to some, the Scorpion is actually slightly faster than the A8 in computational tasks, and you may see this when the Nexus One nips past the Nexus S in non graphical benchmarks.
Generally, Google's developer or flagship phones have been consistent using a true ARM core. The Droid had a Cortex A8 core courtesy of Texas Instruments OMAP 3630. Then jump to the Nexus S, we see Google return again to the Cortex A8, this time courtesy of the Samsung Hummingbird.
Now to the dual cores. This time, ARM reverses again. This time, the A9 core is faster than the Scorpion cores. That means in the same clock speed, with non graphical computational tasks, an A9 Cortex dual core will nip past a dual core Snapdragon with the same clock speed. I won't be surprised to see HTC Pyramid Quadrant scores to be on the low side against Tegra 2, OMAP4400 or Exynos benchmark and that 1.2GHz bump is necessary to even things up with the 1GHz A9 chip.
In any case, Google on Honeycomb went with the Tegra2, which means its coded for the A9 core first. Take a little while to get Honeycomb on the dual core Snapdragon.
Next is the GPU.
This is the tricky part. You got multiple parties with GPUs, like PowerSGX, Adreno, and now nVidia. I
OMAP 4400 - A9 PowerSGX540
Snapdragon 8660 - Scorpion Adreno 220
Tegra2 - A9 nVidia
f you develop your OS first on one, the other party gets slighted. But if you ask the original ARM, its called the MALI. The latest is the MALI 400MP and T604.
Mali-400 MP - ARM
I suppose if I were Google, I want to be as vendor neutral as possible, and I should support ARM in its purest. That means an A9 for the computational core and a MALI for its GPU.
Once you decide on that, it points to whoever makes such a chip and that manufacturer.
And that seems to be the Samsung Exynos chip. With Cortex A9 dual cores with the MALI 400MP GPU.
Oh now, our focus is narrowing. Given the chip, it points to Samsung. I won't be surprised to see the next Nexus being a Samsung too, one with identical specs to the Galaxy SII with the Exynos (there is another Galaxy SII with the Tegra2).
Two questions arise.
First, to pick the chipset.
Second, to pick the manufacturer.
The first answer can decide the first.
When Google picked the Snapdragon for the Nexus One, its a little strange because the Snapdragon's core, the Scorpion isn't really a bonafide ARM Cortex A8 core. In PC terms, that's like choosing AMD instead of Intel. Might be a surprise to some, the Scorpion is actually slightly faster than the A8 in computational tasks, and you may see this when the Nexus One nips past the Nexus S in non graphical benchmarks.
Generally, Google's developer or flagship phones have been consistent using a true ARM core. The Droid had a Cortex A8 core courtesy of Texas Instruments OMAP 3630. Then jump to the Nexus S, we see Google return again to the Cortex A8, this time courtesy of the Samsung Hummingbird.
Now to the dual cores. This time, ARM reverses again. This time, the A9 core is faster than the Scorpion cores. That means in the same clock speed, with non graphical computational tasks, an A9 Cortex dual core will nip past a dual core Snapdragon with the same clock speed. I won't be surprised to see HTC Pyramid Quadrant scores to be on the low side against Tegra 2, OMAP4400 or Exynos benchmark and that 1.2GHz bump is necessary to even things up with the 1GHz A9 chip.
In any case, Google on Honeycomb went with the Tegra2, which means its coded for the A9 core first. Take a little while to get Honeycomb on the dual core Snapdragon.
Next is the GPU.
This is the tricky part. You got multiple parties with GPUs, like PowerSGX, Adreno, and now nVidia. I
OMAP 4400 - A9 PowerSGX540
Snapdragon 8660 - Scorpion Adreno 220
Tegra2 - A9 nVidia
f you develop your OS first on one, the other party gets slighted. But if you ask the original ARM, its called the MALI. The latest is the MALI 400MP and T604.
Mali-400 MP - ARM
I suppose if I were Google, I want to be as vendor neutral as possible, and I should support ARM in its purest. That means an A9 for the computational core and a MALI for its GPU.
Once you decide on that, it points to whoever makes such a chip and that manufacturer.
And that seems to be the Samsung Exynos chip. With Cortex A9 dual cores with the MALI 400MP GPU.
Oh now, our focus is narrowing. Given the chip, it points to Samsung. I won't be surprised to see the next Nexus being a Samsung too, one with identical specs to the Galaxy SII with the Exynos (there is another Galaxy SII with the Tegra2).
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