With the newest DROID line came news of a new processing system running under the hood. The X8 system isn’t a processor in itself. It’s a combination Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC with two digital signal processors. One of these can be used as a low-power CPU. At the very heart it’s a Snapdragon S4 Pro but with a custom firmware. Iqbal Arshad, Motorola’s senior vice president of engineering, had this to say:
“We’ve done additional optimizations on top of that such as optimizing the entire Linux user space to move it to an ARM instruction set, cache optimization, Dalvik just-in-time optimization, and we’ve changed the file system. It’s full hardware-software integration to deliver best-in-class performance.”
Motorola is playing it close to the chest though as they aren’t saying where the “contextual computing processor” and “natural language processor” are from or who actually manufacturers them. Arshad did mention that they had a hand in its design:
“It’s done by Motorola, a lot of design in the entire system. The actual silicon is specified by us but we don’t go ahead and design and fab it. It’s not an ARM processor, it’s a very low-power separate processor.”
In standby mode, the contextual computing processor looks to control showing the status and notification information on the display; on top of being in control of display and touch interaction. Audio, noise cancellation and estimation are handled by the language processor. Here’s the kicker though: Motorola isn’t using outside noise-cancellation technology.
This separation from the CPU will afford Motorola the ability to build X8s based on other CPUs. According to Arshad:
“We can with with any Qualcomm processor. We can work with anybody’s CPU. That’s the beauty of it; all of our technology and experiences are decoupled from the legacy CPU processor.”
He also commented on how this combination of custom firmware and processors improves performance while also extending battery life of the device. He said:
“If we did not have the contextual computing processor and our natural language processor in place, we would need two additional batteries. The X8 also performs 50 percent better than ‘our competition’ on gaming battery rundown benchmarks and can push higher graphics frame rates.”
Arshad also commented on the fact that Motorola is able to do this without altering vanilla Android or throwing a custom skin on top. While the DROID line will have a small bit of customization the Moto X is rumored to have the pure Google OS on it.
We can assume that the Moto X will run with the X8 system in place but we won’t know for sure until tomorrow. We’ll have full coverage of the event tomorrow with our very own Robert Nazarian on scene. So keep it locked here as we bring you news of the least hyped device since the Galaxy Nexus. Stay tuned!
source: PC Mag
Come comment on this article: More X8 Chip Details Revealed by Motorola
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