Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It looks like Tegra is looking to put serious pressure on the competition in 6 months. With the advent of Kal-El (Tegra 3), Nvidia is going to be pumping out what they claim is 5 times the performance of the existing Tegra 2.

I don't know if that is computational performance or graphical performance or both, but this will be a fast processor. At 5x graphical performance, it will tidily wipe the floor with even the mighty SGX543MP. I don't know if NVidia is late to the party, or early, but one things certain, if they keep up this pacing with sub-1 year release cycles, they will be about a generation ahead of the competition, and releasing roughly at the same time.

Here's a video of it outputting an insane 1440p video from an Android tablet (likely a development machine)!
http://www.jkkmobile.com/2011/02/nvi...t-demo-at.html

Expect aggressive companies to jump on this Tegra bandwagon and start delivering these devices this year. I've never been so happy that PC manufacturers are spilling over into this space, as they can be highly aggressive with release schedules.

So in 6 months, you can safely leave your heavy laptop at home, as ultra-light tablets will be quite able to do the same work, with impressive battery life, and low power sleeping to boot.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Here's a lovely PDF brochure for the Exynos 4210 featuring the Mali 400MP.
http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...Exynos4210.pdf

It's pretty light on info, and doesn't mention anything about the Mali 400. One interesting point of mention is that the product sheet claims that the Exynos 4210 is capable of displaying a mind-melting 3200M pixels per second :eek:! This is the highest count I've seen yet, and it may be due to the number of cores implemented.

What to do with all of these pixels? It is written that the Exynos 4210 can drive a full 1080p screen in addition to two WVGA (800x480) displays, or two 1080p screens for stereo 3D (as seen in a presentation). That is incredibly impressive for a mobile processor.

It also reveals that it implements the ARM Neon instructions, and is worthy noting that it supports DDR3 memory (6,400MB/s)!

Anyone know how many Mali 400 cores are in the Exynos 4210?

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

This guy seems to know what he's talking about :p
http://odroid.foros-phpbb.com/t599-e...ail-400mp#3030

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Here are a few promo videos about the upcoming ARM Cortex A15. These processors mark the crossover point where ARM chips start to invade on the performance characteristics of Intel chips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF0ALmcCiLA

It was quoted in this video that a cortex A15 running at half the frequency of an ATOM processor, would out perform it! Quite impressive, though it was vague and didn't include core count.

Expect these chips in 2013.

Here are some OEM discussions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmopvGpcMAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Eo84Uia0Y

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

The next generation of SoC memory is upon us. The process has now shrunk to a shockingly tiny 30nm!
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget....2-03252011.jpg
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/25/s...ing-2gb-mobil/

These Samsung LPDDR2 chips reduce the footprint of of older 40nm chips and reduce the power requirement by 25%. Faster, smaller, power efficient-ier.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Well we are at the ARM Cortex A9 stage trying to get over the Cortex A8-era. I don't think quadcore A9's will be much of an upgrade/improvement over the dualcore A9's. I say this with confidence because I've noticed how long it took to drive the market to develop applications that target two cores (Windows).

With Quadcores, the push for more power was much less as dualcores were elegantly supplying as much horses as you really needed. Today if you were to benchmark a few applications that target quadcores and compare it on quadcore vs dualcore. You will notice you won't be getting double the performance although you are using double the power.

What will be important is RAM, hard drives (NAND/SSD), motherboard (yes even on ARM) and the gpu architecture. I think by the time ARM Cortex A15 (Eagle) hits they should have made several advances. So yes- with A15 performance may be quadruple that of Cortex A9, if the market allows. Remember, you are only as fast as your slowest component -- these words cannot be truer today.

What I'm interested in is seeing what software will take advantage of such workhorses. Obviously Apple, HP and RIM will use their proprietary software but what about the other guys? MS has shown a very poor effort in this power struggle with their WP7 development. Android is also very poor (my S5PC110 functions slower than A4) but is steadily increasing (more will be revealed when/if 3.0AOSP released) in this field. MeeGo was best set to take advantage of this (if they launched along side with wp7 on e7-sexy hardware, they would've built up a large ecosystem that would rival the big guys when A15 would've become available). Since that overdue foetus was aborted we really have a lack of options, unless Windows Next (aka Windows 8) is a real suprise!

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

s/memory/power/ - these chips don't require memory, they are memory.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Hahaha.. Thanks for the correction. Yes, you're absolutely right!

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It seems that Imagination Technologies has released new drivers for the SGX540, which seem to produce a significant boost in graphics performance.

According to Anandtech:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4179/35417.png
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4238/c...y-tab-10-1-8-9

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Wow.. Benchmarks for the dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 @ 1.5GHz ft. Adreno 220 GPU are in !
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4243/d...220-benchmarks


The test unit:
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/424...1079_575px.jpg

Some results:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4243/36161.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4243/36162.png

Uh, wow. These framerates are truly impressive for a handheld device.

A sign of things to come? No doubt. Get ready for some insane performance this year.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Nice, I was wondering what Qualcomm was waiting for. They're undeniably late/slower than the competitors which sort of slowed HTC in the market, I speculate.

But I can't shake this feeling that the OMAP 4430 should perform better than shown. Cause the 4440 is the current beast:
+TI closesly collaborates with ARM and usually polishes up the reference desing (where others just look for areas that they can modify and cut costs).
+TI adds extra functions such as various DSPs and sound modules.
+And the SGX540 is more powerful than the Adreno 220, just barely.
=Going by several guestimates the 4440 should do something close to 40-44fps on that benchmark.

I'm guessing the "appauling" results by the Optimus 3D maybe due to a smaller RAM, underclocking, a biased benchmark (not suprising given Qualcomm's involvement) and most likely dodgey drivers by LG (imminent).

Anybody else notice the iPhone 4's bad results, seems like a biased-benchmark considering the A4 SoC should be on par with the T-mobile G2. However the code is executed by C/C++ or Objective-C which is several layers closer to the cpu/gpu (hardware accelaration) on the A4 than Android's java-implementation. So Apple should have a boost/advantage over the Android competition but the effect seems to be opposite according to those figures.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

These benchmarks are not gospel. They indicate performance under very specific circumstances -- circumstances that are not real-world. It's also hard to make inferences about implementation based on them.

You're also making the mistake in thinking that Android's Java implementation is used in these benchmarks. It is likely not. Android has an NDK which allows Android programs to execute native compiled C/C++ code (though prior to v2.3 the ndk may be called from within a thin java app -- though I would guess that 99.9% of the time is spent native).

Another of thing that may not have been considered is that many of these tests (if not all) are restricted to running on the devices native res. So devices with a higher res are at a natural disadvantage (more pixels).

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Interesting benchmarks here:
http://www.gsmarena.com/five_dual_co...-news-2426.php
Looks that the OMAP 4 wins the round.
BTW Do the tags remind you with something?

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It seems that the Exynos 4210 (then Orion) indeed has 4 fragment processors in the Mali400 implementation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKPtnZxoWO8

This is very good news.

It seems that ARM is hear to stay in the mobile graphics space. Their GPUs look to compete with Imagination, the reigning champ, and NVidia's upcoming powerhouses.

Let the games begin!

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

So is the Mali 400 like an SGX543MP4 where it actually has 4 graphics cores working in tandem ... or is it just one core separated into four units to handle different types of graphics handling (shaders, tesellation etc etc).

I would prefer the first method, although it is less power efficient, you will see the performance increase instantly. And since things are already quite power efficient (durr ARM) I think that point is less important.
Whereas the latter may require a specific optimization on the software end to take advantage of its unique architecture ... (and you know how often things are done properly these days).

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

I would assume that the 4 fragment processors are for calculating shaders and are running simultaneously on different workloads (why else have separate cores?). But I will look into that more earnestly. I'm not sure if any of the current breed of SoC GPUs handle tesellation natively, though I suspect that a talented developer could shoehorn something that functions similar into an algorithm.

It also seems that ARMs drivers specifically take the complexity out of scaling to multiple fragment processors when programming, but I suspect that most SoC GPUs are similar in this regard.

I would love to see the power requirements of the chip overall. Unfortunately this information seems hard to come by!

The Exynos 4210 and Mali400 seems very, very fast, though. I'm looking forward to some proper benchmarks with mature drivers.

The next iteration of the Mali, the T604G, looks to boost this speed by another 4-5x! It may in fact start to rival current console games in graphics, and display this content at 1080p.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It seems as if the next Sammy SoC is getting the bump to 2GHz :eek:

Coming to a smartphone in you in 2012:
http://st.gsmarena.com/vv/newsimg/11...ng-cpu/big.jpg
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_read...-news-2528.php

I doubt this is simply a increased clock Exynos 4210, though rumors suggest that it may be an Exynos branded SoC.

At these speeds, I have little doubt that SoCs will have begun to converge with low-power laptops and netbooks in performance. Spry OSs like Android, iOS, PalmOS, MeeGo, WP7, etc, that have been written to perform very well given confined resources, should elevate the 'feeling of speed' of applications beyond that on the laptop.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It seems that Qualcomm is bringing the heat, and this time is targeting ARM with its latest SoC designs:
http://www.mobiletechworld.com/wordp...tgen_watts.jpg
http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2011/...ter-this-year/

The next generation Quad-core Snapdragon is claimed to be more powerful than ARMs upcoming Cortex A15 design, scales to 2.5GHz @ 28nm, lower power (half at max), and available at the end of this year :eek:!

The source link has a bunch of data visualizations to help put the chips performance in perspective.

My question: CPU speed is one thing, but can the next-gen Adreno GPU keep up with the onslaught of incredibly performing mobile GPUs?

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

The Next Adreno in the next-gen quad-core Qualcomm MSM89xx SoCs will indeed be the Adreno 320.

There is speculation that samples will ship in early 2012, so we will not see devices until late 2012 at the, uh, earliest. Around that time, the MSM will have to compete with Cortex A15s and Mali T604s, as well as whatever Imagination is cooking up with the PowerVR lineup.

While the on-paper specs look mighty impressive juxtaposed against today's array of SoCs, I'm betting that they will look all the more dull when contending against tomorrow's.

http://www.qualcomm.com/news/release...chipset-family

Here is the press-release:

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Pretender to the throne: OMAP5 roadmap hints at raw power:

http://processorbenchmark.com/wp-con...f5db6dbe40.png
http://processorbenchmark.com/tag/ar...chmarks-intel/

Will it be enough to contend with the MSM8960? Qualcomm is claiming more performance at lower power.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

if intel uses their new nano wires, i think they'll have the advantage

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

What are these nano wires you speak of?

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Sweet ... A15 is the Cortex A9 shifted to the next level.

And the OMAP5xxx brings dual-A15's (Quadcores are a waste of power, dualcores are extremely effecient, tri-cores are medium), a powerful multi-core GPU (PowerVr is class-leading), as well as TI's other inherant strengths (various modules). I expect it to be one-of-the-best (if not The Best) ARM implementations in 2011/12.

Something like that would make Ubuntu/MeeGo/Windows NEXT just fly on a convertible tablet (ASUS Transformer).

But Qualcomm are making bold claims against the A15 ...I really would like to see if Qc's bluffing or bringing out their trump card!

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Quad-core power efficiency depends in no small part on how readily the cores can sleep. I wouldn't be so quick to claim that quad-cores are a waste of power. ARM is not a silly company, and this is a huge initiative and part of the A15 feature set.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Yeah, but like the old saying goes:
"I'll believe it when I see it, muchacho."

I think in the nearby future it will happen because it "needs" to happen, as software optimization (or tools for it) catch up to the processor innovation.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

The next version of the Exynos will be pushing 2GHz for phones next year.
http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/...ung_exynos.jpg
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/18/s...-by-next-year/

This is a direct response to Qualcomms announced snapdragon's and is promised to operate at (assumed low end) desktop speeds.
Exciting indeed! I can't wait to jump ship from these large power-draining intel chips. A tablet/laptop combo with 16-hour battery life, low-power mode (but still active), instant wake, would suit me just fine.

The only problem I see is that Ubuntu isn't optimized for mobile chips, and the CPU is woken far to often to be good for battery life. I'll be running Ubuntu in Android, in all accounts.

Next year is very significant in the entire industry. It's when ARM challenges the gods (intel), and the monoculture computing industry is opened up to a slew of new competitors.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

MeeGo could fill in the blanks! Man I'm still pissed off at NOKIA and Elop. If they had bought Palm and catalyzed their development we would've seen a better ecosystem open for that exciting next-gen!

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It's true, it's true.. Meego on hardware like this would have been extremely compelling.

Of course, some legacy apps that I would have wanted to use, would probably not played very nice with the battery life of such a device....

I'm still hoping for closer Android/Traditional-Linux tie-in. A low-latency X client is all I need.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It seems that rumors are hinting that Apple may capitalize on the new desktop-grade cortex A15 chips for use in their macbook lines.
http://static.arstechnica.net/assets...auto-21679.png
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...y-would-it.ars

I would expect insanely thin, insanely light (insanely expensive? :D) computers that have outstanding battery life. I would also gander that these fabled computers would also feature a variant of iOS, better suited to the desktop as well as API integration for things like the touchpad and keyboard.

History may again repeat itself: I predict that computer manufacturers will be scrambling to unleash similar offerings. I bet that Windows 8 will be going toe-to-toe with Android, which will end up being the OS of choice on these new systems.

Oh, and expect intel to take a beating. Their Atom line of CPUs looks like they will get left in the dust by the upcoming ARMada on a number of fronts. Serves them right for clinging to x86.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

if intel uses their new 3d transistor, i think they'll have the advantage

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

This is a very interesting technology Zii Labs zms20.
http://www.ziilabs.com/content_image..._web_small.png
http://www.ziilabs.com/products/processors/zms20.aspx
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvZwSdQHGZQ

What's most interesting about this chip is that it's the first mobile chip (so far as I can tell) that's fully programmable by Open CL. This should enable developers to offload much work onto the GPU for computation for lower power and faster computation.

I would be interested in seeing some benchmarks of this SoC.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Intel is not going down without a fight! The new ATOM detailed:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...ackage2_sm.jpg
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4333/i...m-architecture

It seems that Intel is looking to matching the performance of the upcoming A15, and with a GPU to boot.

It's heating up!

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

If there's one rule of thumb, it's don't count intel out of the game early:

Intel is shrinking it's process to an anorexic 14nm, and heavily targeting Atom:
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/434...eieldPhone.jpg
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4345/i...t-atom-in-2014

What they're expecting is

I have an idea, why not drop x86 for something more space efficient before it's too late? Even if only a contingency, a more efficient instruction set would put serious heat on ARM. I expect the trick would be to fill in the software gap by providing compilers for linux.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Is this you saying as much, or a broken quote?

The problem with dropping x86 and moving on to something else is scaring the hell out of all the vendors suddenly faced with an entirely new ISA. Even for Intel that would be so extremely risky they'd probably be better off (ROI wise) just re-licensing ARM.

Not that I don't think it'd be cool to see Intel charge out of the gate with a new ISA designed around their newer processes (though they might at the lower levels of x86 these days,) but I think that even Intel would be crazy to try.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

It's me, and I completely agree. For Intel to push a new architecture would be extremely nerve racking, unless positioned it in a way that didn't make vendors nervous. This is less a computer science/engineering problem and more a marketing problem.

However, I feel that they're resisting change at the peril of a swath of their contracts. Now that the market is paying more attention to ARM SoCs in the mobile space, the laptop market is taking a hit, and will increasingly do so when cortex A15 launches. Apple, is rumored to switch its macbook line to ARM SoCs in light of their performance/power characteristics.

Some (probably terrible) ideas:
- include an x86 translator in code on an instruction set that will run it well
- strip x86 down to a 'fundamental' subset of instructions
- support the new arch as part of an augmented instruction set for upcoming high-power CPUs.
- leave x86, but focus more on GPGPU hardware, and more importantly software, as a means of evening the playing field.

The market is in flux right now with the proliferation of new devices, and as such there is a window to be creative. It could be that intel sees the futility of a new instruction set with the shrinking of dies from a performance-to-power standpoint. Of course, ARM is about to put serious pressure on intel for the low-end market next year and if intel isn't ready, they will lose a bunch of the market.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Interesting read. But what really makes me feel bad is the speed at which this innovation is coming. Back in sometime like 2004, there were many limits to the processor architecture which were bypassed and allowed us to come this far.

But it is true when I tell you 14nm processors are available today, its just waiting in the labs for Microsoft to make Windows NEXT/8 and the market to adopt the 'Tablet' as the new personal computer. And then there's the investors who want slow progression so they can squeeze out each dime.

What really will be interesting is when they hit 10nm and 6nm, when the laws of physics will take a huge toll on the microprocessor. In fact, 6nm would be really unstable and hard to manufacture. I'm guessing Intel is looking into new methods, probably laser-based, to target the same energy consumption but speed up the process.

But let's brainstorm what such technology could be used for?
qHD-3D in your pocket with 48hours playback? or perhaps they're building the xPhone (just youtube it, heh).

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Very, very interesting.

It seems that Windows 8 ARM will not be backwards compatible with non-ARM variants.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget....011-05-18.jpeg
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/18/i...ffer-no-compat

In the meantime Intel is ramping up to flood the market with some 35 tablets in the coming year!
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/...the-works/5488

It's a crowded market, and it's under flux. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Hey my article got approved in engdaget, yay!
Thanks CC, your the one who pointed it out to me.
I'm not really reading engadget as often since it's jumped the shark. The old crew of engadget got sacked by AOL, so they made their own new gadget-blog its called thisismynext.com ... its quite good.

Back on topic:
ARM-based Windows 8 will support Windows 8 programs.
x86-based Windows 8 will support Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 programs.
I expect the "Ultimate" version of x86-based Windows 8 to also support Windows XP for legacy code, as history shows us.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

Looks like Microsoft will be pushing .NET based languages and the CLR very, very hard. I wonder if they'll eliminate Visual C++ and the public face of their Intel and ARM compilers entirely.

Re: Mobile System on Chip Thread
 

That would certainly be an interesting strategy, and a solution.

I wonder what the metrics are like on C# vs Visual C++ proliferation?

I bet that MS is going to open up an 'App Store' in the same vane as Apple's OSX App Store, or the Chrome Web store, to draw attention to apps that can run on the new system.

I also forsee them pushing Silverlight to high levels of performance and using this as a vehicle to push new titles to the platform and to port existing ones.

All speculation.