[Android Software/Hacking General [Developers Only]] meltwater:
Side Topic: The Future! Quad core and beyond

This time next year, Rodney...

Just saw this, and thought I would share here!

ASUS planning quad-core Tegra 3 tablet

See the two videos which are on the linked page...

Yes that is 2560x1600 resolution, hopefully to go into a 10" retina display.

Simply said, the future of these chips look rather interesting to say the least (no doubt are related to Sony's NGP).

Looking at the video, what we will be able to do with mobile devices will be rather impressive. Combine that with the new touch and perhaps kinect type control technologies as well as improvements with battery capacity/recharge tech, improved clear & colourful screens and things are shaping up nicely.

Boy are we going to have some fun hacking the innards out of them!

It is easy to see that for me, I've made the right choice by not spending lots of money on an impressive and expensive tablet at the moment. Since I'm happy to wait for a better tablet and until then I can have fun playing with my basic one.

Let just hope that the manufactures come up with a decent device, that is able to be hacked and perhaps might even be half decent out-of-the-box.

What is next? Who knows!

It's interesting really since I think that phones are quite close to the point where they have about as much processing power as they need** (perhaps with the exception of ones which include extra connectivity to HDMI/pico projector, keyboards etc). When they are subjected to the confines of a 3.8"/4" screen, you start to hit the limits of usability rather than processing power. Tablets have given the hardware room to stretch it's legs a little and show us what it can do!

**I'm not saying they won't need more in future, but I think perhaps an upgrade won't be as essential or spectacular, as it once was, until they evolve to the next form of course. I suppose the ultimate progression though is the usability of something like a tablet or pc but packaged in the form of a phone or smaller device in some form or another.

The software needs to catch up now though, we need better multi-core programming techniques, far far better privacy protection, and better stability overall. Thankfully hardware gives us the grunt to do this, it just needs to develop and improve to the point where coding can be done at the highest level of abstraction (which allows time to be spent on creative aspects rather than low level code details).

If you want to look even further, the prospect of re-programmable hardware is getting closer. This is where all the single purpose chips (such as video decoders) are replaced/supplemented by ones which can be re-programmed. Not only does this allow for codecs etc to be updated while still keeping the advantage of hardware decoding/coding (i.e. realtime without loading the main processor or drawing lots of power), but some applications could in-theory call in dedicated processing for specific tasks allowing for some amazing performance when performing complex and processor intensive tasks.

Fun times are a-coming!

Bright things are ahead for our fondle blocks, I don't even care too much if they are android or ipad or something else, as long as we can buy it (without selling a leg or two - ok, not iPad then!), program it, play with it and push it to it's limits and beyond!