ST-Ericsson has announced what it claims is the world's first Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP)-enabled mobile platform running on Symbian OS. The platform is based on the ARM Cortex-A9 multicore processor. The platform also integrates ARM NEON accelerators coupled to each of the two CortexA9 SMP processors, supposedly boosting the achievable performance and offering opportunities to integrate even more features.
The system's optimized power management adapts to a variety of computational loads induced by mobile computing, while minimizing power consumption. Symbian OS exploits Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) to determine the optimal processing power at any given moment, working to ensure consumption of resources without over-extending the system's capabilities. The platform's power management also exploits Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS) which adapts the voltage to the different characteristics of each single chip, induced by silicon process variations.
An advantage of SMP in mobile applications is more efficient power consumption. Multiprocessing uses lower voltages and lets users do much more on a single battery charge. Instead of a single processor running at full capacity to complete a task, multiple processors can work half as hard enabling the entire chip to run at a lower temperature, creating less leakage. This allows the SMP system to deliver the same level of CPU performance one might expect from a larger and faster uni-processor CPU, while using less power.
