By: Anon (no.delete@this.thanks.com), July 11, 2013 11:21 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
You'd be hard pressed to find a phone in the last 3-4 years which didn't have NEON on it. A9 or Snapdragon Samsung Galaxy-S series, iPhone from Cortex-A8 onwards, recent LG, HTC, Nokia, Blackberry all have NEON. Qualcomm are dominating the smartphone market right now, but not one of their products is available without NEON.
So while you are quite correct to say that Tegra-2 did not have NEON, Tegra-3 and Tegra-4 do as well as any other volume chip in the last few phone generations. Companies that license and build chips for volume consumer markets learned very quickly that removing features such as NEON is not a great idea and reduces sales.
The reason that NEON is optional is because some companies chose to use Cortex-A9, Cortex-A5, Cortex-A7 etc in a controlled environment which will never run any NEON code. For example, a network router in your home doesn't need NEON, does have one of the above processors, is highly price competitive so why carry the area penalty?
There are areas where you can have a legitimate rant about fragmentation, but the facts around NEON usage don't support your position.
So while you are quite correct to say that Tegra-2 did not have NEON, Tegra-3 and Tegra-4 do as well as any other volume chip in the last few phone generations. Companies that license and build chips for volume consumer markets learned very quickly that removing features such as NEON is not a great idea and reduces sales.
The reason that NEON is optional is because some companies chose to use Cortex-A9, Cortex-A5, Cortex-A7 etc in a controlled environment which will never run any NEON code. For example, a network router in your home doesn't need NEON, does have one of the above processors, is highly price competitive so why carry the area penalty?
There are areas where you can have a legitimate rant about fragmentation, but the facts around NEON usage don't support your position.
