Clash of the Rumours: Nokia N9 to have ARM or Intel Hardware?

Two new rumours about the Nokia N9, both in slight contrast with each other.

First comes from a tweet this morning from @Addiermedina (in conversation of course with none other than camb078) who says

New info Confirmed. #Nokia #N9 Comes with this baby – #Broadcom BCM2763 1080i Multimedia Processor – #MeeGo #Carl Zeiss

with BCM2763 20% to 50% power reduction in comparison to the prior generation VideoCore® III multimedia processor.

This same source once claimed the N9 was capable of processing 190 Million triangles per second. That’s 85 Million less than the PS3.

What processor? Camb078 says it’s rumoured to be from Texas Instruments:

1GHz TI OMAP3

Not OMAP4? (1GHz dual core, ARM cortex A9 with Power VR SGX540)

However, we got tipped by Janne that a Finnish site, prosessor.fi reckons that the N9 is actually sporting Intel hardware. Google translated:

, which should now have Intel’s Atom.

. “We have hard data,” according to N9 of the processor clock speed of 1.2 gigahertz, or it would be Nokia’s fastest mobile processor to date. If the rumors are true, N9 beats to the table many “first”. First MeeGo, the first atom, and hopefully the company’s first LTE network, a working model.

At least the N9-phone is loaded competent expectations. It follows that the problem that if even one piece of the puzzle is missing, you can clobber a disappointment. And on the other hand, nothing much may be satisfied critics

To add to the mix, there’s also rumours that the Nokia N9 has the ST Ericsson ARM Cortex A9, Dual Core 1.2GHz with MALI400

Qt and MeeGo Phone OS has already been demonstrated on the ST Ericsson chip. Qt was also demonstrated at MeeGo conference on TI OMAP 4.

Or that there’s a 1GHz Snapdragon QSD8250 << This was back in August 2010 btw.

Which one is it?

The N9 could have had all or none of these processors during development stages. Last year it was pretty much a certainty to be ARM based but that was back when it was expected for a Nokia World 2010 launch. We didn’t anticipate that the Macbook design would be “canned” and a keyboardless version to take the N9 name (with the keyboard version being the N9-01). Note, even this is still ALL RUMOURS.

Nothing is yet clear on what will be seen at Launch. And even that is completely uncertain that it will actually be announced at MWC. And if it does, how could Intel phone CPU be ready by then? So something from ARM then, but again, which one? What I do hope is that they prove Eldar wrong that the N9 will come out with old hardware. Had MeeGo phone launched in 2010, it might actually be true that “MeeGo phone will push the boundaries of processing power” as mentioned by MeeGo EVP, Alberto Torres.” It would be quite a shame if it’s still the same internally, quietly ageing behind the curtains compared to upcoming fresh competition.

Category: MeeGo, Nokia, Rumours