It looks like iambillbil is making an impression everywhere. He’s the one who has constantly banged the drum about memory bandwidth being a limiting factor with China tablets. Until he made it an issue people focused mainly on CPUs and their speed.
Now Rockchip must be feeling some heat because they’ve raised the issue on Weibo.
First Weibo communiqué:
Second Weibo communiqué:
Third Weibo communiqué:
While everything they wrote is true, it doesn’t alter the fact that the iPad has extreme memory bandwidth.
And there’s another factor consider: It’s Android.
Apple can fine tune iOS to be tightly coupled to the hardware. It’s their own CPU and they can squeeze electrons through it more efficiently than Android can. In addition, iOS’ guts are filled with things that Android lacks. That’s another advantage. So while, yes, memory bandwidth increases require more power, the iPad is still unmatched in battery life by any Android tablet and this will likely be the case for quite a while.
All that being said, memory bandwidth still matters with Android tablets. And Rockchip can’t dance around it.
Previously here:
Retina-Class Screen Tablets From China: Avoid
Again: Avoid All Chinese Retina-Class Tablets
SDK 2.0 Can’t Fix Chinese Retina-Class Tablet Hardware Limits
Phones/Tablets: Bandwidth Matters
Mike Cane’s xBlog 