TI Demos Windows RT UI Performance on OMAP 4470
by Brian Klug on June 14, 2012 2:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- TI
- OMAP 4
- Mobile
- Tablets
- Windows RT
Last week at Computex, TI showed Anand Windows RT running on one of their own reference tablets. While performance was good according to Anand, Microsoft has instructed partners to not show off anything but the start screen for Windows RT and not much more in the way of video. Today, at TI's Media day, I was given a video (in addition to shooting some of my own, which is the second one below) of Windows RT performance being demonstrated on one of Toshiba's upcoming Windows RT devices. This runs on an OMAP 4470 SoC (which consists of two ARM Cortex A9s and PowerVR SGX544MP1) at final clocks. I'm told that Windows RT will not utilize the 2D composition engine on OMAP 4470 at launch, but may at a later date.
The last I saw Windows RT running on OMAP 4 was on an OMAP4460 at MS Build, where the platform was emulating Direct3D 9_3. Today's implementation on OMAP4470 runs native Direct3D 9_3 on a PowerVR SGX544, and is obviously much, much smoother. There were a few capacitive touch calibration issues on the tablet I played with, but overall smoothness was impressive on the Start screen and browsing the AnandTech homepage. This is a definite positive departure from Microsoft's previous rules passed onto partners which forbade showing much beyond still photography of the home screen.
I've uploaded my own video of the demonstration as well, which was on TI's own OMAP4470 development tablet.
Source: Texas Instruments
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B3an - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Dont you mean Clover Trail? I dont think they'll be any Cedar Trail tablets. And i've seen a video of Win 8 running on a Clover Trail tablet and the performance was even better than this.xaparu - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Clover Trail performance is way better than this. It's too bad TI can't get more out of their design. They are probably having problems with the ARM driver ports.powerarmour - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
The Toshiba WT200 is a well known one, obviously doesn't come pre-installed with Win8, but will have the cheap upgrade option.lilmoe - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
Well, since they don't have a working prototype of the OMAP 5 SoC, it seems it'll be delayed beyond Q3 2012... Bummer.zorxd - Thursday, June 14, 2012 - link
OMAP 4470. Wasn't that the chip that was supposed to come out in 2011 as an answer to the Exynos? At some point we even talked that it could be in the Galaxy Nexus.TI seems to be loosing that game. The 4470 better be cheap or it won't sell. 45nm dual cortex A9 just isn't cutting edge any more in 2012.
ImSpartacus - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
But if they can get WinRT running well, what's the difference?B3an - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
It's funny how Win RT, and it's drivers and hardware are not even finished yet, but already the interface runs smoother than every single Android tablet i've tried or seen.This is true for both x86 Win 8 and ARM Win RT tablets. Windows is also a far more advanced, larger and a more capable OS compared to Android, yet it still runs smoother. Maybe one day Google will actually hire some good programmers. Or it just shows how good MS are.
xaparu - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Not sure abotu the smoothness but my Android tablets are relatively smooth. The thing that drives me nuts though is that the Android platforms pre-load all their apps. If have a bad app (of which many Android apps are) then over time the tablet performance because abysmal. Then you have to spend hours finding out what app is causing problems.Someone should create an Android app to find the bad apps and kill them :).
Penti - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
Actually the Metro SDK just isn't that capable, developers will find out and whine more then they have yet. Either they will get Win32-access or stay away from RT.Guspaz - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
So, you'll give us a native DirectX 9 driver, but you won't give us a native OpenGL driver? Sigh. OpenGL ES is nice and all, but it rules out hardware acceleration for a huge amount of Linux software that only supports OpenGL.