LG's Optimus smartphones go dual-core

LG Electronics said on Tuesday its Optimus range of smartphones will be loaded with dual-core Nvidia's Tegra 2 CPU.

Chang Ma, VP of Marketing for LG, said: "LG is committed to making its Optimus Series smart devices the de facto standard in speed and graphics performance. We selected NVIDIA because it is the visual computing leader and has a long history of creating amazing consumer experiences."

NVIDIA Tegra 2 smartphone processor (AP20) offers a number of "mobile firsts" including the first mobile dual-core CPU, the first ultra-low-power GeForce GPU, and the first 1080p HD mobile video processor.

The 1Ghz processors will offer consumers the possibility of assessing Internet browsing speeds two times faster than before, in addition to up to five times better gaming performance when compared to single core solutions.

The NVIDIA Tegra chipsets uses several small, specialized processors built into the chip with each meant for a particular task. A layout which allows dedicated processors handle specific tasks frees up the general purpose processor to handle user tasks. Supposing a user is listening to music on the phone with the screen off, it's sufficient that only the audio processor works rather than all processes being fired up. This saves on energy consumption and also makes the chip faster.