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October 2015
ture and can then nevertheless cover all the requirements in the low-
power segment from entry-level to premium-class models.
With this performance increase the new embedded Intel Celeron and
Pentium processors are also filling the performance gap towards Intel
Core i processors, as shown in table 1. The table compares the aver-
age scores of the popular processor board benchmark Geekbench
with the new Braswell, Intel Core and important Bay Trail processors.
Particularly impressive are the peak values which the new Braswell
processors achieve in the multicore score per TDP (Thermal Design
Power). The TDP which has been reduced to 6 watts and 4 watts SDP
(Scenario Design Power) for typical applications of the new Intel
Pentium class smoothly paves the way for developing fanless systems
even for low-power systems requiring highest performance.
Even in the increasingly critical area of graphics, the new generation
of processors seamlessly connects to the latest Intel Core processors
which, compared to the very good predecessor generation, has once
more developed impressively. In fact it has been doubled. Users and
developers can now also benefit from this performance range of
high-resolution GUIs in 4K or even from high quality, latency-free
3D animations. Especially in touchscreen operation, delay-free 3D
graphics are a must for user experience and increased operating safety.
Like the Intel Core processors, the new processor generation sup-
ports three independent displays, which can be connected on the
SoC side via HDMI 1.4b, DP 1.1a and eDP 1.4. Plus, for the first time,
the new Intel Celeron and Pentium processors support ultra-high 4K
displays (3840 x 2160 pixels). This is relevant for sophisticated digital
signage applications operating large format displays with diagonals of
several meters or POS/POI and gaming applications where the viewer
is situated in close proximity to the monitor and can recognize even
the smallest of details.
The double performance was achieved by switching to the energy-effi-
cient Intel Gen 8 graphics, also used in the 5th generation of Intel Core
processors. In order to limit the power consumption, the Intel Celeron
N3150 and N3050 processors were, however, limited to 12 EUs (Exe-
cution Units) and the Pentium N3700 to 16 EUs, resulting in seamless
scalability to the Intel Core class. Needless to say, the new Pentium
and Celeron processors also support latest graphics APIs like DirectX
11.1, OpenGL 4.2 and OpenGL ES 3.0/3.0+. Thanks to OpenCL 1.2
support, the new processors can outsource computing-intense paral-
lel tasks - which to date have been carried out on the CPU - to the
GPU. This is important, for example, in medical technology imaging
or face recognition in video surveillance systems. To achieve this, each
EU of the GPU integrates two SIMDs (Single Instruction Multiple
Data) floating point units, which can each carry out up to eight 16-bit
or four 32-bit integer or floating point operations (FLOP). The 16-bit
half-float support is new too. It enables any FPU to carry out simulta-
neous additions and multiplications (MAD). With 16 EUs, the result
is the impressive figure of up to 512 FLOPs per clock cycle (16 EUs* 2
SIMD-FPUs * 8 FLOPs * 2 MAD = 512 FLOPs) and with that a the-
oretical peak performance of 358.4 GFlops per second, assuming the
execution units are running in burst mode (700 MHz).
Intel has upgraded the integrated video engine responsible for the
hardware-based real time de- and encoding of high-definition video
material. A new feature is the support of H.265/HEVC compressed
video. Compared to its predecessor H.264/AVC, H.265 saves a mas-
sive 50 percent of the data rate, so that users can now also play 4K
videos – a feature previously reserved for specialized or more pow-
erful processors. The encoder section supports H.264, MVC and
JPEG. This is particularly relevant for the MIPI-CSI2 interface
integrated in the processor. This allows the connection of two HD
