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I've been doing quite a bit of research on GPU's and CPU's in phone's/tablets lately. And I have a few unanswered questions that I can't seem to find an answer for.
1: What's the best chipset available for mobile phones and tablets right now? This link cleared quite a bit up for me, it does a fairly indepth comparison for both GPU and CPU performance between the Qualcomm S4, Tegra 3, OMAP 4470, and the Exynos 4212. And I dont want the 'Well this is better because it has more jiggahertz". Shut up, that's not what I need. I need something more indepth. If studies on individual GPU comparison can be provided, please drop a link. I'd like to know these things very well.
2: What individual GPU is currently the best? I realize the Ipad3 came out with with a graphics chip that's supposedly superior to the Xbox/PS3's. However I take anything Apple says with a grain of salt, they're notorious for shooting flaming BS out of their rear. However based on the little bit of searching I've done, the Adreno GPU's seem to be ahead of their time. I previously thought the Mali 400 GPU in the Exynos chipset was one of the best, but apparently it's outdated. Again, links to tests/studies/comparisons would be appreciated.
3: What's the deal with the ARM chips? Are the A5's, A6's, A11's, (and whatever other A chips out there are), some standard CPU developed by ARM and licensed out to all manufacturers to use in their chipsets?
4: What alternatives are there to the ARM CPU's? Most chipsets I research seem to be using a Cortex A9 chip.
5: What's the difference between the A5, A6, A9, etc. From what I've seen the higher numbers are the newer models, but I feel like that's a very shallow definition. If that is true, why does the newest iPad only use an A5x chip for it's quad core rather than an A9 or something of the sort.
6: Is the chipset in the iPad really the fastest out there? Personally, I can't really stand apple products; let alone the rabid fanboys and the obnoxious advertisements they put out. I can recognize that they very often gloat about their products and overexaggerate; like how they said the dual core in the iPhone 4s is the fastest out there, yet from what I've read the A5 is the worst performing dual core out there. Is the GPU in the tablet really superior to the Xbox? And is the processor really able to outdo the Tegra 3?
If you're able to answer any one of these, even exclusively, that would be appreciated. I just like knowledge
MultiLockOn said:
I've been doing quite a bit of research on GPU's and CPU's in phone's/tablets lately. And I have a few unanswered questions that I can't seem to find an answer for.
1: What's the best chipset available for mobile phones and tablets right now? This link cleared quite a bit up for me, it does a fairly indepth comparison for both GPU and CPU performance between the Qualcomm S4, Tegra 3, OMAP 4470, and the Exynos 4212. And I dont want the 'Well this is better because it has more jiggahertz". Shut up, that's not what I need. I need something more indepth. If studies on individual GPU comparison can be provided, please drop a link. I'd like to know these things very well.
2: What individual GPU is currently the best? I realize the Ipad3 came out with with a graphics chip that's supposedly superior to the Xbox/PS3's. However I take anything Apple says with a grain of salt, they're notorious for shooting flaming BS out of their rear. However based on the little bit of searching I've done, the Adreno GPU's seem to be ahead of their time. I previously thought the Mali 400 GPU in the Exynos chipset was one of the best, but apparently it's outdated. Again, links to tests/studies/comparisons would be appreciated.
3: What's the deal with the ARM chips? Are the A5's, A6's, A11's, (and whatever other A chips out there are), some standard CPU developed by ARM and licensed out to all manufacturers to use in their chipsets?
4: What alternatives are there to the ARM CPU's? Most chipsets I research seem to be using a Cortex A9 chip.
5: What's the difference between the A5, A6, A9, etc. From what I've seen the higher numbers are the newer models, but I feel like that's a very shallow definition. If that is true, why does the newest iPad only use an A5x chip for it's quad core rather than an A9 or something of the sort.
6: Is the chipset in the iPad really the fastest out there? Personally, I can't really stand apple products; let alone the rabid fanboys and the obnoxious advertisements they put out. I can recognize that they very often gloat about their products and overexaggerate; like how they said the dual core in the iPhone 4s is the fastest out there, yet from what I've read the A5 is the worst performing dual core out there. Is the GPU in the tablet really superior to the Xbox? And is the processor really able to outdo the Tegra 3?
If you're able to answer any one of these, even exclusively, that would be appreciated. I just like knowledge
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Click to collapse
1. Dunno right now, it's always changing. I hear the new Qualcomm processors with the new Andreno gpu are supposed to be the ****, but it's not out yet so who knows. The iPad 3 currently has not had any real world tests done yet, we need to wait for release. It is basically the same A5 chip as the iPad 2 but with the PSVita's gpu thrown in.
2. *sigh* The iPad 3 is not more powerful than an Xbox 360. It is better in I believe one aspect (more memory), but this has very little impact on performance/graphics quality. This is Apple shooting wads of **** out it's arse, or whoever made the claim. It's actually using the same GPU found in the PSVita, which we all know is not as powerful as a PS3/Xbox360. However, the PSVita is also using a quad core cpu, whereas the iPad 3 is using the same dual core A5 as the iPad 2, so technically the PSVita is superior. You also have to consider how many more pixels the gpu has to power on the iPad 3's display. While high res is nice, it takes more power to render it.
3. ARM creates a base chip for companies to slap their own GPU's and name on. The naming structure is pretty self explanatory.
4. All CPU's currently in tablets/cellphones are a variant of the ARM. A Cortex A9 is still an ARM chip. This will soon change when Intel releases their tablet/phone chips.
5. You're right, higher numbers do mean newer modeling. I don't know all the exacts, but with the newer ARM series you get higher and/or more efficient clocks, generally some battery savings, and in some series support for more cores. Apple's labeling of their chips has nothing to do with ARM's, it's their own naming scheme. The A5x is just what Apple calls their version of the ARM processor.
6. I believe atm the iPad 3 has the fastest chipset in a tablet..for now. It won't take long for it to be overtaken by other companies, there's so much in the works right now.
speedyink said:
1. Dunno right now, it's always changing. I hear the new Qualcomm processors with the new Andreno gpu are supposed to be the ****, but it's not out yet so who knows. The iPad 3 currently has not had any real world tests done yet, we need to wait for release. It is basically the same A5 chip as the iPad 2 but with the PSVita's gpu thrown in.
2. *sigh* The iPad 3 gpu is not more powerful than an Xbox 360. It is better in I believe one aspect (more memory), but this has very little impact on performance/graphics quality. This is Apple shooting wads of **** out it's arse, or whoever made the claim. It's actually using the same GPU found in the PSVita, which we all know is not as powerful as a PS3/Xbox360. However, the PSVita is also using a quad core cpu, whereas the iPad 3 is using the same dual core A5 as the iPad 2, so technically the PSVita is superior.
3. ARM creates a base chip for companies to slap their own GPU's and name on. The naming structure is pretty self explanatory.
4. All CPU's currently in tablets/cellphones are a variant of the ARM. A Cortex A9 is still an ARM chip. This will soon change when Intel releases their tablet/phone chips.
5. You're right, higher numbers do mean newer modeling. I don't know all the exacts, but with the newer ARM series you get higher and/or more efficient clocks, generally some battery savings, and in some series support for more cores. Apple's labeling of their chips has nothing to do with ARM's, it's their own naming scheme. The A5x is just what Apple calls their version of the ARM processor.
6. I believe atm the iPad 3 has the fastest chipset in a tablet..for now. It won't take long for it to be overtaken by other companies, there's so much in the works right now.
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Thanks for the reply. It seems weird to me that Apple would rename a CPU to something as similar to one that would already exist, A5x as to A5.
MultiLockOn said:
Thanks for the reply. It seems weird to me that Apple would rename a CPU to something as similar to one that would already exist, A5x as to A5.
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Because Apple is the type of company to step on someones feet like that, and then sue them later on for copyright infringement. Damn the confusion, Apple starts with A, so will their processors.
speedyink said:
Because Apple is the type of company to step on someones feet like that, and then sue them later on for copyright infringement. Damn the confusion, Apple starts with A, so will their processors.
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yeah, apple just simply buy a technology and re-label them, make patent and troll others. so for comparison, apple doesn't count. Also these handheld chipset can't be compared with consoles, consoles have more proccessing power like more RAM bandwidth and polygons.
Anyway.. based on my experience, mali400 exynos has a butterly smooth performance for both UI and 3D graphics. I've tried both Gingerbread GNote and my SGS2.
on the other hand, Google did a great job with TI OMAP for it's Galaxy Nexus, pure HW accelerated 4.0.3.. with very little glitch, but I believe it's software issue.
IMO if you wanna buy a fast and smooth device, follow the current Nexus spec (at least similar) like GNexus, Motorola RAZR, etc. I've seen Tegra 3 4+1 Transformer Prime but never hands-on it. as far as i seen, UI and 3D performance are stunning. 1 extra core advantage is for low power mode when doing light proccessing and standby mode. Today hardwares are fast enough, drivers and OS optimisation are very important thing if you want everything run smoothly.
cmiiw, sorry for bad english
lesp4ul said:
yeah, apple just simply buy a technology and re-label them, make patent and troll others. so for comparison, apple doesn't count. Also these handheld chipset can't be compared with consoles, consoles have more proccessing power like more RAM bandwidth and polygons.
Anyway.. based on my experience, mali400 exynos has a butterly smooth performance for both UI and 3D graphics. I've tried both Gingerbread GNote and my SGS2.
on the other hand, Google did a great job with TI OMAP for it's Galaxy Nexus, pure HW accelerated 4.0.3.. with very little glitch, but I believe it's software issue.
IMO if you wanna buy a fast and smooth device, follow the current Nexus spec (at least similar) like GNexus, Motorola RAZR, etc. I've seen Tegra 3 4+1 Transformer Prime but never hands-on it. as far as i seen, UI and 3D performance are stunning. 1 extra core advantage is for low power mode when doing light proccessing and standby mode. Today hardwares are fast enough, drivers and OS optimisation are very important thing if you want everything run smoothly.
cmiiw, sorry for bad english
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I kmow what you mean. Im extremely happy with my galaxy s2, I cant say I ever recall it lagging on me in any way whatsoever. Im not sure what makes the droid razr and galaxy nexus comparable to the s2. From what Ive read Omap processors tend to lag and consume battery, and the mali 400 is better than what either of those phones have. Id say its ICS but the razr still
Runs gingerbread
I was hoping for some more attention in here :/
I agree, omaps are battery hungry beast. Like my previous Optimus Black, man... i only got 12-14 hours with edge (1ghz UV smartass v2, also ****ty LG kernel haha). Same issue as my friend's Galaxy SL. I dunno if newer soc has a better behaviour.
Sent from my Nokia 6510 using PaperPlane™
When do you think phone processor tech will stabilize with software? Moore's laws?
It's apparent SoC, GPU development and technology will continue, but processors, just like desktops and notebooks do, are bound to start seeing that point where gains are insignificant to the average user.
From 2008 to 2012, we've seen a lot happen. My recollection of it starting from:
2008: G1 was released, 528mhz MSM7201A
2009: Nothing major until the Hero, under MSM7200A, even then was major/minor depending on how you look at it
2010: S1 QSD8250 / OG Desire released, was a reigning champion GSM wise as well as the Nexus One. That was until S2 MSM7x30's came out. CDMA Evo 4G, G2, Desire HD, a lot of which are the "basic smartphones" that still function very adequately today. Samsung just got their gears started somewhere in this time.
2011: In Q3 2011, we start seeing dual-cores becoming the market standard. Samsung's taken a lead in the market penetration with the Exynos SoC's, GNexus, SGS2, are all flagship phones.
2012: So far it seems the S4 (One series) chipsets had the lead for the first half, and we start seeing quad cores. That is until Exynos 4 just entered the fray. We are already seeing 1.5ghz this year
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It's not a doubt we will see more penta/hexa or some other maximizations (maybe even octas) just sometime the next year or two, but at that point is that even needed to browse the web, check email and run some general apps? A good chunk of cellphone users probably do not play games or processor-intensive tasks, just as a good majority of users in reality are still using core2duo's or core2quads without much problems in daily use seeing no need to upgrade to i7 architectures - games and other major multimedia applications aside.
Personally if I had to venture a guess, once SoCs reach 2.0+ dual or quad cores, this is the breaking point to where upgrading can only benefit for hardcore enthusiasts or app/game fanatics. That doesn't seem too long in the future, as this could possibly by the end of this year.
I think that this year will be the year of the S4 processor in the United States.
Next year will probably be Quad-core Krait and Higher clocked Tegras/Exynos processors (1.7ghz maybe?)
I don't think that stock clock speed will increase beyond 1.8ghz due to heat. Rather, I think efficiency, much like what the S4 is doing for dual core will become the focal point.
I agree with some previous posts.. We are almost at the plateau.. Software is our major downfall in the smartphone segment.. All of these newer phones could be running windows XP(example only) with the specs they are listing..
Drivers and software are holding us back now
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda premium
After Galaxy Nexus and Razr I don´t see any company announcing that they are going to use their chips.
Thats true that OMAP 4430/4460 (1.0 / 1.5Ghz respectively) with SGX540 are behind, especially behind Qualcomm S4 and quad-core Exynos. They were also supposed to release OMAP 4470 (1.8GHz) with SGX544 but I haven't seen it used in any device.
I'm not sure here, but I think that OMAP's don't feature wireless radio technologies, so phone manufacturesrs have to add additional chips what raises the cost.
TI annonced OMAP 5 long time ago, but I don't know what is the progress. OMAP 5 is suppsoed to have dualcore A15 ("Up to 2GHz") + dualcore M4 and SGX544-MPx.
Well TI is going to release the OMAP 5 soon. One of the pros of this processor is that it is easily customizable, and thats why it's used in the Galaxy Nexus. So who knows? OMAP 5 may appear in the next series of Nexus phones.
Yeah idk, this year has been dominated by qualcomm (i hope thats right) and exynos (in the GS3 international) but that is true, Ti seems unusually absent this year.
They are making the Omap 5. 28nm tech has loads of problems,especially high spoilt counts at the factory. Qualcomm are actually switching factories cause of this. TI have stable chips at relatively lower cost. When it's ready you'll see it everywhere.
Sent from my U8150 using XDA
Texas Instruments withdraws from smartphones
Texas Instruments is dropping from the system-on-chip for smartphones and tablets manufacturing and will give up on its OMAP lineup.
The company’s OMAP boards are less and less popular among mobile manufacturers – most of them bet on Qualcomm, while Samsung and Apple are developing their own solutions (Exynos, A6). The major disadvantage of the OMAP chipset is the lack of on-board 3G/4G modem.
That forces manufacturers who rely on OMAP chipsets to use additional radio chips, which increases battery consumption and production costs. Now you understand why smartphone manufacturers prefer Qualcomm’s complete solutions, rather than this expensive process.
TI says its focus will shift on “to a broader market including industrial clients like carmakers”, though it did not announce specifics and the investors were left wondering.
Anyway, TI will continue to support its current clients, but will significantly reduce efforts on developing new OMAP chipsets.
The news might come shocking for some, as the TI OMAP 5 was expected to be the first chipset with dual Cortex-A15 CPU, and now it's fate is uncertain. Nonetheless, TI OMAP's presence was barely felt on the market, so the company's exit won't create too much of a disturbance.
http://www.gsmarena.com/texas_instruments_backtracks_from_smartphones_goodbye_omap-news-4861.php
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/25/texasinstruments-wireless-idUSL1E8KP5FN20120925?irpc=932
They had great power management on their chips. Too bad.
Sent from my U8150 using XDA
about exynos octa and future of exynos and exynos based mobile devices.
Over the past few months there have been a lot of talks going on about the system on a chip (SoC) choices that Samsung’s Mobile division has made for their recent and upcoming products; now new information has shed more light as to how these choices came to be, their reasoning, and what the repercussions for both the company and their users are.
Back in January, during the official announcement CES 2013, and as early as several weeks earlier as the internet rumour-mill and Korean analysts predicted that the Galaxy S4 would come with the company’s own Exynos Octa SoC, most people were not be aware what is going on behind the scenes at Samsung.
Samsung’s System LSI Business, a business unit of the company’s Semiconductor division, has had several SoC projects in their pipeline. We know for certain of the 5410 (Octa), the 5450 and 5440, both quad-core A15 chips that seem to never have been released. Other rumoured projects were the 5210, a supposed big.LITTLE chip in a 2 + 2 configuration.
Something went on during last winter that panicked the mobile division to change SoC provider for many variants of the S4. Mounting evidence of this can be found in the overlapping local-specific variants in the official source code of both Qualcomm and Exynos platforms. JF based variants, which are based on the Snapdragon chips, overlapped JA based variants, based on the Exynos platform. Korean (jf_ktt, jf_lgt, jf_skt <> jaltektt, jaltelgt, jalteskt), European (jf_eur <> jalte), and Japanese (jf_dcm <> jaltedcm) variants were developed for both platforms. The Korean variants ended up being the sole ones to actually hit the market with the Exynos platform, other than the global 3G version of which there’s no evident Qualcomm counterpart.
Chaotic development for the whole phone seems to have been the norm: Many parts changed supplier in prototype revisions, such as the Amtel touchscreen controller which gave way to a Synaptics counterpart, a MagnaChip AMOLED controller which is missing in action, and Philips LED controller which was shelved for a Texas Instruments IC. All of the prior seem like last-minute changes simply for the fact that their drivers and firmwares are delivered in the shipping product, even if they’re not used. A well-planned product is certainly something you would not call the S4.
One of the early reported reasons for the processor change was the unexpected power consumption of the Exynos. While this remains partly true and undoubtedly had an impact, the other reasons are far more sinister.
As a reminder, the Exynos 5410, as a big.LITTLE chip by design, is supposed to have different kinds of operating modes, mostly something that is defined and limited only by software:
- Cluster-migration; where only either one or the other quad-core clusters works at any one time.
- Core-migration; where both clusters can work in tandem but only have up to 4 physical CPUs online, but any mix of A7 and A15 cores can be achieved.
- Heterogeneous multiprocessing: All 8 cores are online at once.
The problem is that to achieve any of the latter two operating modes, a specific piece of hardware is needed that allows efficient and useful use of those models: the Cache-Coherrent-Interconect (CCI). As per ARM’s own claims: “Hardware coherency with CoreLink CCI-400 is a fundamental part of ARM big.LITTLE processing.”
While it has been obvious for several months that the person behind the SamsungExynos twitter account is nothing but a clueless PR representative, the above claim is nothing short of a lie.
We have information from several sources that Exynos’s CCI is inherently crippled in silicon. It is not functional or even powered on in the shipping product (i9500). In fact, this has been such of an issue, that as a result, the chip was almost cancelled. It was reportedly only salvaged by having it work in the cluster migration policy and bypass the CCI entirely. While contradicting, it questions the validity of ARM’s own videos while demonstrating the Octa.
Internally at SLSI, as many as three projects were cancelled late last year. We don’t know the reasons for their cancellation, however it is said that the issues are related, and unacceptable power consumption also plays a big role.
One can argue that ARM’s Cortex A15 is partly to blame here: The inherent architecture is to power consuming to be implemented in a smart-phone. big.LITTLE provides major breathing-room, but only in scenarios where continuous load is not an issue. HD gaming is a major Achilles heel where power consumption can run rampant. Nvidia is having it much worse with their Tegra 4: With only a single tablet design win besides their own Shield gaming console, it’s a chip that needs to, and will be, quickly forgotten.
Plagued by delays, hardware bugs, and high power consumption, one could view the Exynos 5410 as nothing short of a failure. In fact, Samsung’s Mobile division was so dismayed at the whole situation that their next major products will completely forego the company’s own Exynos chips and go straight with Qualcomm’s offerings.
Reports that the Note 3 would come with the S800 match with this information, and are probably very correct.
With confirmed designs such as the Galaxy Tab 3 coming with an Intel processor, and the rest of the new Galaxy line-up shipping with various variants of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S-series, the mobile division should be lauded for providing the user with the best possible experience – even if that involves skipping the Exynos. They have proven that they have no qualms to use a wide array of third-party suppliers (ST-Ericsson, Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm) to base their products on, and this strategy is proven to be successful.
As for SLSI, things look very bleak for Samsung’s in-house processors. The business is failing to cater, not only in terms of support, like providing proper hardware documentation and source code to the public, but the current line-up is in shambles also in terms of hardware.
Lackluster graphics performance and outdated GPUs have become sort of a habit for the company. This reportedly is due to an unwillingness to spend the money on IP licenses from third-party companies, and the use of Mali GPUs in their SoCs is due to a free licensing agreement they receive from ARM as a lead partner. The surprise use of the SGX 544MP3 in the Exynos 5410 is due to panic caused by Mali’s own T6xx GPUs: again an issue of extremely excessive power consumption. The first generation Midgard lineup was quickly scrapped, leaving the Exynos 5250 and its T604 as something of an orphan. Products like the T658 never saw the light of day and are not even mentioned anymore on ARM’s website.
Meanwhile, while their shipping products are failing to properly compete, Samsung is spending a lot of money on developing their own GPU IP from scratch. Not much information is available as to when we will see this in actual products, but it will eventually come, if not cancelled or delayed due to its unorthodox implementation of an FPGA-like re-programmable design which might be hit-or-miss. Imagination’s Rogue architecture and years of experience as a leading GPU IP provider will be tough competition.
CPU wise, things look just as bleak. Qualcomm currently dominates the performance per Watt scale for the high-end with the newest Krait architectures. With no custom design in the works, as done by Apple or Qualcomm, and no A57 or A53 as architectural refreshes from ARM, nor a new 20nm manufacturing process coming until 2014, the Exynos A15 line-up looks incapable of competing in the near-future.
(Disclaimer- sammobile)
the most shocking thing about this article is it comes from one of the most reliable site about anything and everything related to Samsun mobile division!!!
So you did not write this yourself (from the sounds of the last line you wrote), but you don't provide a link to the original source or credit beyond a veiled reference to sammobile?
Let me guess, so Exynos Octa is a fail product? :laugh:
windozeanti said:
Let me guess, so Exynos Octa is a fail product? :laugh:
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well its not exactly a fail product, cause as the article and research said, the final product has not got enough homework as it deserved.
im pretty sure samsung would fix this in Note 3 and i highly doubt that samsung would introduce Note 3 without Exynos processor. it will have Snapdragon 800 (i wish) but it will also have exynos version. samsung would not leave its own chip just like that!
windozeanti said:
Let me guess, so Exynos Octa is a fail product? :laugh:
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It runs the fastest mobile phone ever, it just never reached it's full potential, you know topping out round 2.3GHz, proper core migration for efficiency and total smoothness, stronger GPU. Then again, it's still the industry leader, but not without issues, so I guess Sammy will work on it, possibly bringing it over 20nm.
OMG !! after reading i want to sell my i9500
this device is 50-50 ... 50% updates 50% legacy !
if this will be considered a fail project i will break this into two !!!! rawr ~~~ im so dammnn dead !
gdonanthony said:
OMG !! after reading i want to sell my i9500
this device is 50-50 ... 50% updates 50% legacy !
if this will be considered a fail project i will break this into two !!!! rawr ~~~ im so dammnn dead !
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come on guys dont be like this! u should be really proud of ur S4! blunder from samsung aside, why dont u feel pride on ur S4 that being a bit not what it should have been it still is the fastest smartphone on the market right now and that will remain until Note 3 comes out...!
after reading what uve posted i feel my S4 i9500 suxxx bigtime
Wow,
I'm happy i got the I9505
This post is in compliance with the national potato safety regulation.
[Galaxy S 4 LTE]
but still i think andrie will not give up on this big.LITTLE arch though,,i hope so XD
Why is this thread 60% of whining while only 40% of problem solving? I'll quote what I said in another thread.
Tears for Fears said:
Why are you guys whining? I9500 is *THE* fastest smartphone in business. This flaw only means lesser battery but the battery is still very sufficient. GSMArena rated it 65h. To put this in perspective, Sony Xperia Z and HTC One got 48h. Galaxy S III got 50h, iPhone 5 got 51h, LG Optimus G Pro got 50h and Nokia Lumia 920 got 44h. Why are you whining when you get 65h? That's A LOT more than the flagships of other major manufacturers! Yes, if big.LITTLE would be implemented correctly, you'd get maybe 70-75h rating but in my opinion, 65h is HUGE compared to others' 45-50h.
Really, stop complaining and enjoy having the most powerful smartphone on Earth with an amazing battery life!
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Now can we please stop whining? It does no good to this thread.
Tears for Fears said:
Why is this thread 60% of whining while only 40% of problem solving? I'll quote what I said in another thread.
Now can we please stop whining? It does no good to this thread.
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I see your intentions
But would you let these companies screw your hard earned money?
At least let corporations work hard at providing us a product worth every cent.
Samsung did a terrible job at rushing things with the device. They have sacrificed a huge margin of time trying to implement protocols which they knew in the first place would have a risk of being feasible for the entire market.
So now they defray their failures to us by selling a partially finished product with huge non-uniform variants of the same device name then make all these crazy impulsive changes then run away with our money then denying most of the issues that are clearly present.
They even don't document their own chip pretty well neither.
So we just got screwed by samsung.
Better rick roll ourselves at most.
This post is in compliance with the national potato safety regulation.
[Galaxy S 4 LTE]
aami.aami said:
Something went on during last winter that panicked the mobile division to change SoC provider for many variants of the S4. Mounting evidence of this can be found in the overlapping local-specific variants in the official source code of both Qualcomm and Exynos platforms.
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Or, as is typical in the development stage of many products, the s/w coding got ahead of the decisions on h/w so they coded for both eventualities. Since none of us work for Samsung any assumption of "panic" is a wild ass guess. Both Octa and S-600 don't come with an in-built baseband. S-600 already has the necessary interfaces and drivers while they'd have to be written for Octa. Maybe that work couldn't have been done in time considering all the different LTE markets that would need to be coded for. That, or it was just simpler and easier to use S-600 in LTE markets. They used Octa/LTE in Korea, their home town market, so I highly doubt they did that if it wasn't considered their "premium" offering. Last year for the SGS3, shipments were 1/3 LTE and 2/3 HSPA. This year it's the reverse. So favoring S-600 over Octa could be purely a market driven decision based on the larger availability of LTE this year. I agree something could have gone wrong that caused a last minute shift to S-600 and away from Octa but some stray code found in the kernel isn't a smoking gun.
Chaotic development for the whole phone seems to have been the norm: Many parts changed supplier in prototype revisions, such as the Amtel touchscreen controller which gave way to a Synaptics counterpart, a MagnaChip AMOLED controller which is missing in action, and Philips LED controller which was shelved for a Texas Instruments IC. All of the prior seem like last-minute changes simply for the fact that their drivers and firmwares are delivered in the shipping product, even if they’re not used. A well-planned product is certainly something you would not call the S4.
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Has anyone here run a large-scale product development group? Or worked on a h/w or s/w project that's the scope of launching a major electronic device? It's always chaos. Especially the last mile. The SGS4 could have been more chaotic than other devices Samsung's released but since none of us were on the project teams we're just guessing that last minute decisions were made because of crisis and error.
The problem is that to achieve any of the latter two operating modes, a specific piece of hardware is needed that allows efficient and useful use of those models: the Cache-Coherrent-Interconect (CCI). As per ARM’s own claims: “Hardware coherency with CoreLink CCI-400 is a fundamental part of ARM big.LITTLE processing.”
We have information from several sources that Exynos’s CCI is inherently crippled in silicon. It is not functional or even powered on in the shipping product (i9500). In fact, this has been such of an issue, that as a result, the chip was almost cancelled. It was reportedly only salvaged by having it work in the cluster migration policy and bypass the CCI entirely. While contradicting, it questions the validity of ARM’s own videos while demonstrating the Octa.
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This is the way big.LITTLE is supposed to work. I'd like to understand what's missing and what replaced it.
As a reminder, the Exynos 5410, as a big.LITTLE chip by design, is supposed to have different kinds of operating modes, mostly something that is defined and limited only by software:
- Cluster-migration; where only either one or the other quad-core clusters works at any one time.
- Core-migration; where both clusters can work in tandem but only have up to 4 physical CPUs online, but any mix of A7 and A15 cores can be achieved.
- Heterogeneous multiprocessing: All 8 cores are online at once.
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There are only two operating models. Why is Samsung choosing to implement one over the other "screwing" anyone? The dev community not having a toy to play with doesn't mean Octa's a commercial failure because 99.9% of i9500 owners don't give a crap that it could be operating in two modes but instead is only operating in one.
Plagued by delays, hardware bugs, and high power consumption, one could view the Exynos 5410 as nothing short of a failure. In fact, Samsung’s Mobile division was so dismayed at the whole situation that their next major products will completely forego the company’s own Exynos chips and go straight with Qualcomm’s offerings. Reports that the Note 3 would come with the S800 match with this information, and are probably very correct. With confirmed designs such as the Galaxy Tab 3 coming with an Intel processor, and the rest of the new Galaxy line-up shipping with various variants of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S-series, the mobile division should be lauded for providing the user with the best possible experience – even if that involves skipping the Exynos. They have proven that they have no qualms to use a wide array of third-party suppliers (ST-Ericsson, Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm) to base their products on, and this strategy is proven to be successful.
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Does anyone here know what the production goals are for Octa? And over what time frame? Without knowing that how could 1/3 of SGS4's shipping with Octa be considered a failure? Qualcomm licenses ARM technology as the basis for all their designs. So the chip after S-800 will be big.LITTLE also as ARM's spent two years developing it and spent several billion dollars to do so. Exynos 5410 is the first and only commercial implementation of big.LITTLE. I highly doubt it's perfect as V1 of anything rarely is. But all this speculation of failure and use of adjectives like "chaos" is based on a very narrow and shortsighted view of what's basically a long view game.
Here are the white papers on big.LITTLE; three from ARM and one from Samsung. The Samsung paper's been authored by their Principal Engineer who has a PhD. When someone here who's got a PhD that’s being paid $500K+ a year and responsible for the s/w running hundreds of millions of devices writes a similar paper with as much fact and detail in it showing why big.LITTLE's a failure I'll be all ears. Until them I'm hoping the N3 has Octa because (at least to me) the long term benefit of having a big.LITTLE equipped device outweighs the short-term gains of going with Qualcomm's interpretation of a five-year old ARM design. For a site that's supposed to be technical you guys sure have a sour view on new and emerging technologies.
http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/big_LITTLE_Final_Final.pdf
http://www.arm.com/files/pdf/Advances_in_big.LITTLE_Technology_for_Power_and_Energy_Savings.pdf
http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/Software_Techniques_for_ARM_big.LITTLE_Systems.pdf
http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/Benefits_of_the_big.LITTLE_architecture.pdf
How would we feel barry with our 9500s without you barry.
Seriously, as a consumer, all i want is to know that i have the best and fastest smartphone when i traded my hard earned cash for it. As long as i know that i can run my desired apps faster than any other device out there, i know that i have gotten my money's worth. I couldnt care less if samsung hasnt done enough homework to utilize the big little technology at its fullest.
So please lets stop with the whining and complaining about the 9500 because its not helping out those who have gotten it. All of this to me feels like all bitterness. No punn intended. Just my thoughts. Thanks!
I knew that something little will be wrong with the octa, since it is the first time release, I think that all of these issues will be corrected by Samsung surely. I will stick with my GT-I9100G (beast-of-a-smartphone BTW is giving fight nowadays) until a new octa-core with those issues fixed comes up, may be the note 3
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So i need to sell my octa one
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What's the big deal guys? So big.LITTLE isn't working as expected. We're still using the A15 processor which is a beast. The only benefit of big.LITTLE is enhanced battery life and even that is on par with the other flagship devices.
crzr said:
I think that all of these issues will be corrected by Samsung surely.
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One of the points OP made that's spot on is how competitive the mobile SoC business is. Unless Samsung's planning to exit the business which nothing points to, they'll have to keep innovating and providing cost effective, powerful, and energy efficient solutions to power not only future Samsung devices but other manufacturer's devices as well. Designing, engineering, and producing a SoC costs several hundred million dollars. Committing to big.LITTLE wasn't a "throw it against the wall and see if it'll stick" decision.
Samsung's supposed to sell 80MM SGS4's this year which means 24MM (1/3) of them will be Octa. HTC's projecting 20MM One's. That means there will be more Octa devices produced than all of HTC's flagship S-600 device. So I'd hardly call it a failure. And it’s great that Samsung’s experimenting with Intel. The 10.1” G-Tab 3 that’s supposed to have an Intel chip will probably sell 10MM units; if it’s the only SoC used which some are speculating it’ll only be for certain markets.
Here are some excerpts from Samsung’s Q1 earning’s release talking about their semi-conductor business. It certainly doesn’t sound like the division is in trouble or Samsung’s walking away from it any time soon.
As for this year's capital expenditure, Samsung Electronics executed a combined total of 3.9 trillion won for the quarter. The Semiconductor and Display Panel segments were each accountable for 1.5 trillion won ($1.3B USD) in capex spending. Samsung is poised to increase investment beginning from the second half of the fiscal year to preempt rising demand for differentiated products and to harness its competitiveness in the high-tech industry.
Samsung's Semiconductor businesses - including Memory and System LSI - posted consolidated 8.58 trillion won in revenue ($2.8B USD), a 11-percent drop from a quarter earlier. The Memory chip unit logged 5.12 trillion won in earnings but, compared with the previous period, quarter-on-quarter revenue retreated 4 percent.Profitability for the System LSI Business was hampered by seasonally slow demand in set products that use logic chips.Considering Octa is "V1" and that it out-benchmarks S-600 and gets very close to the same battery life the way it was shipped I'd very much call it a success. S-600 is nothing more than an evolution of previous Snapdragon chips. So that Samsung/ARM's first use of big.LITTLE is so competitive against a years old architecture that OEM’s are comfortable with implementing says a lot about what Samsung/ARM have done and what the upside potential is.
AnandTech talking about S4 - At present, this is the same Krait CPU as what we've seen in MSM8960 in phones like the USA versions of the Galaxy S 3 and HTC One X. Later on, Krait v3 will emerge with higher IPC and shorter critical paths (and clocks up to 1.7 or 2 GHz) and a resulting 10-15% boost in performance. For now however we're looking at 1.5 GHz APQ8064 with a Krait v2 inside and Qualcomm's newest scalar GPU architecture with Adreno 320.AnandTech talking about S-600 - Also being announced today is the Snapdragon 600. This part integrates four Krait 300 cores running at up to 1.9GHz. Adreno 320 handles GPU duties, although with an increased clock speed. Compared to the current Snapdragon S4, the 600 is expected to improve performance by up to 40% if you combine IPC and frequency increases.
I love this phone. ( I wish they'd fix this M****R F*****G Camera Reboot issue.) But I bought it because of the lies they told me.
hoezay said:
I love this phone. ( I wish they'd fix this M****R F*****G Camera Reboot issue.) But I bought it because of the lies they told me.
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What lies? When did they tell anything about how the CPU will work? Can you provide a link please?
New processors come out everyday and you are like oh my god which one do I buy which one??
Well here the answer to all your processor related queries!!
Qualcomm Snapdragon
Qualcomm continues to do what Qualcomm does best – produce a range of high quality chips with everything that handset manufactures need already built in. This time last quarter, we were taking our first look at the upcoming Snapdragon 600 processors which would be replacing the older S4 Pro, another incredibly popular Qualcomm processor.
Qualcomm doesn’t use the exact specification for the Cortex A15, it licenses the architecture from ARM which it then implements into its own Krait CPU cores, the newest version of which, the Krait 300, has shown up in the new Snapdragon 600 SoC...
Since then, a range of handsets powered by Qualcomm’s newest chips have appeared on the market, the flagship Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One being the two most notable models which are both some of the best performing smartphones on the market. Performance wise, the Snapdragon 600 has proven to be a decent enough jump up from the previous generation, performing well in most benchmark tests.
We’ve also started to hear about a few devices featuring the lower end Snapdragon 400 and 200 chips, with a range of entry level processors using various ARM architectures heading to the market in the near future. So far this year high end smartphones have received the biggest performance improvements, but these new chips should give the midrange a much needed boost later in the year.
So whilst Snapdragon 600 is certainly the most popular high-end chip on the market right now, we’ve already started to see our first snippets at Qualcomm’s next big thing, the Snapdragon 800.
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There’s been lots of official and unofficial data floating around over the past few months regarding this new chip, and from, what we can tell, it looks to be one powerful piece of tech. Qualcomm demoed some of the new chip’s improved 3D performance earlier in the year, and more recently we’ve seen a few benchmarks popping up for new devices, which place the Snapdragon 800 at the top of the benchmark scores come it’s release.
First, there was the Pantech IM-A880 smartphone, which scored an impressive 30133 in the popular Antutu benchmark, followed by the rumoured beefed up version of the Galaxy S4, and most recently the new Xperia Z Ultra which pulled in the most impressive score yet, a whopping 32173. We’ve also seen some more official looking benchmarks from AnandTech and Engadget which confirm the Antutu scores of above and around 30,000, and also gives us a good look at how the chip performs in a range of other tests. The conclusion — it’s a bit of a beast.
These notable benchmarks scores are no doubt down to the new higher clocked Krait 400 CPU cores and the new Adreno 330 GPU, which is supposed to offer around a 50% performance improvement over the already quick Adreno 320. The test results we’ve seen have shown that the Snapdragon 800s CPU is fine compared with the current crop of processors, but the chip really shines through when it comes to GPU performance, which has proven to be even quicker than the Tegra 4 and iPad 4 chips.
We’ve already seen that Qualcomm is taking graphics extra seriously with its latest chip, as the Snapdragon 800 became the first processor to receive OpenGL ES 3 certification and is compliant with all the big graphics APIs.
Quite a few upcoming top of the line handsets are rumored to be utilizing Qualcomm’s latest processor, including the Galaxy S4 LTE-A, Oppo Find 7, and an Xperia Z refresh as well, so the Snapdragon 800 is perhaps the biggest chip to look out for in the coming months
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Exynos 5 Octa
Moving away from Qualcomm, there was certainly a lot of hype surrounding Samsung’s octo-core monster of a processor. Upon release, the chip mostly lived up to expectations — the Exynos version of the Galaxy S4 topped our performance charts and is currently the fastest handset on the market. The SoC is the first to utilize the new big.LITTLE architecture, with four new Cortex A15 cores to provide top of the line peak performance, and four older low power Cortex A7s to keep idle and low performance power consumption to a minimum.
The chip is certainly one of the best when it comes to peak performance, but it has had its share of troubled when it comes to balancing power consumption and performance. If you’re in the market for the fastest smartphone currently around, then the Galaxy S4 is the one to pick right now, providing that it’s available in your region. It has the fastest CPU currently on the market, and its PowerVR SGX544 tri-core GPU matches that of the latest iPad. But with the Snapdragon 800 just around the corner, there could soon be a new processor sitting on the performance throne.
Looking forward, it’s difficult to see the Exynos retaining its top spot for much longer. Other companies are starting to look beyond the power-hungry Cortex A15 architecture, but Samsung hasn’t yet unveiled any new plans.
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Intel Clover Trail+ and Baytrail
Speaking of which, perhaps the biggest mover this year has been Intel, and although the company still isn’t competing with ARM in terms of the number of design wins, Intel has finally show off some products which will pose a threat to ARM’s market dominance.
Although we’ve been hearing about Clover Trail+ since last year, the chip is now moving into full swing, with a few handsets arriving which are running the chip, and some of the benchmarks we’ve seen are really quite impressive. Clover Trail+ has managed to find the right balance between performance and power consumption, unlike previous Atom chips which been far too slow to keep up with the top of the line ARM-based processors.
Then there’s Baytrail. Back at Mobile World Congress earlier in the year, Intel laid out its plans for its Clover Trail+, but we’ve already heard information about the processor’s successor. Intel claims that its new Silvermont cores will further improve on both energy efficiency and peak performance. It sounds great on paper, but we always have to take these unveilings with a pinch of salt. What we are most likely looking at with Baytrail is a decent performance improvement, which should keep the processor ahead of the current Cortex A15 powered handsets in the benchmarks, but energy improvements are likely to come in the form of idle power consumption and low power states, rather than saving energy at the peak performance levels
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But Intel isn’t just interested in breaking into the smartphone and tablet markets with its new line-up of processors. The company is still very much focused on producing chips for laptops. One particularly interesting prospect is the confirmed new generation of Android based netbooks and laptops powered by more robust Intel processors, which could give Microsoft a real run for their money.
Intel has clarified that it will also be assigning the additional Pentium and Celeron titles to its upcoming Silvermont architecture as well as using it in the new BayTrail mobile chips. What this potentially means is a further blurring of the line between tablets and laptops, where the same processor technology will be powering a range of Intel based products. I’m expecting the performance rankings to go from Baytrail for phones and tablets, to Celeron for notebooks, and Pentium chips for small laptops, but this naming strategy hasn’t been confirmed yet. It’s also interesting to see where this will stack up with Intel’s newly released Haswell architecture, which is also aimed at providing power efficient solutions to laptops.
Taking all that into consideration, Baytrail has the potential to be a big game changer for Intel, as it could stand out well ahead of Samsung’s top of the line Exynos chips and will certainly rival the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. But we’ll be waiting until the end of the year before we can finally see what the chip can do. In the meantime, we’ll look forward to seeing if Clover Trail+ can finally win over some market share.
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Nvidia Tegra 4 and 4i
Nvidia, on the other hand, has had a much more subdued second quarter of the year. We already had many of the unveilings for its new Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i designs by the start of the year, and so far, no products have launched which are making use of Nvidia’s latest chips.
But we have seen quite a bit about Nvidia Shield, which will be powered by the new Tegra 4 chip, and it certainly looks to be a decent piece of hardware. There have also been some benchmarks floating around suggesting that the Tegra 4 is going to significantly outpace other Cortex A15 powered chips, but, without a significant boost in clock speeds, I doubt that the chip will be much faster regarding most applications.
Nvidia’s real strength obviously lies in its graphics technology, and the Tegra 4 certainly has that in spades. Nvidia, much like Qualcomm, has focused on making its new graphics chip compatible with all the new APIs, like OpenGL ES 3.0 and DirectX 11, which will allow the chip to make use of improved graphical features when gaming. But it’s unclear as to whether that will be enough to win over manufactures or consumers.
The Tegra 4i has been similarly muted, without any handsets yet confirmed to be using the chip and we haven’t really heard much about performance either. We already know that the Tegra 4i certainly isn’t aiming to compete with top of the line chips, as it’s only the older Cortex A9s in its quad-core, but with other processors already offering LTE integration, it’s tough to see smartphone manufactures leaping at Nvidia’s chip.
The Tegra 4 is set for release at the end of this quarter, with the Tegra 4i following later in the year. But such a delayed launch may see Nvidia risk missing the boat on this generation of processors as well, which may have something to do with Nvidia’s biggest announcement so far this year – its plan to license its GPU architecture.
This change in direction has the potential to turn Nvidia into the ARM of the mobile GPU market, allowing competing SoC manufacturers, like Samsung and Qualcomm, to use Nvidia’s graphics technology in their own SoCs. However, this will place the company in direct competition with the Mali GPUs from ARM and PowerVR GPUs from Imagination, so Nvidia’s Kepler GPUs will have shine through the competition. But considering the problems that the company had persuading handset manufacturers to adopt its Tegra 3 SoCs, this seems like a more flexible and potentially very lucrative backup plan rather than spending more time and money producing its own chips.
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MediaTek Quad-cores
But it’s not just the big powerhouse chip manufactures that have been introducing some new tech. MediaTek, known for its cheap lower performance processors, has recently announced a new quad-core chip named the MT8125, which will be targeted for use in tablets.
The new processor is built from four in-order ARM Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.5Ghz, meaning that it’s not going to be an absolute powerhouse when it comes to processing capabilities. The SoC will also be making use of a PowerVR 5ZT series graphics chip, which will give it sufficient grunt when it comes to media applications as well, with support for full HD 1080p video playback and recording, as well as some power when it comes to games.
MediaTek chip
A fair bit has changed in the mobile processor space since we last took a look at the market earlier in the year. Here’s a round-up of all the mobile processor news for the second quarter of the year.
MediaTek is also taking a leaf out of Qualcomm’s book by designing the SoC to be an all in one solution. It will come with built in WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and FM ratio units, and will also be available in three versions, for built-in HSPA+, 2G, or WiFi only variants. This should make the chip an ideal candidate for emerging market devices, as well as budget products in the higher-end markets.
Despite the quad-core CPU and modern graphics chip, the MT8125 is still aimed at being a power efficient solution for midrange and more budget oriented products. But thanks to improvements in mobile technologies and the falling costs of older components, this chip will still have enough juice to power through the most commonly used applications.
Early last month, MediaTek also announced that it has been working on its own big.LITTLE architecture, similar to that found in the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa. But rather than being an eight core powerhouse, MediaTek’s chip will just be making use of four cores in total.
The chip will be known as the MT8135 and will be slightly more powerful that the budget quad-core MT8125, as it will be using two faster Cortex A15 cores. These power hungry units will be backed up by two low power Cortex A7 cores, so it’s virtually the same configuration as the Exynos 5 Octa but in a 2-by-2 layout (2 A15s and 2 A7s) rather than 4-by-4 (4 A15s and 4 A7s).
But in typical MediaTek fashion, the company has opted to down clock the processor in order to make the chip more energy efficient, which is probably a good thing considering that budget devices tend to ship with smaller batteries. The processor will peak at just 1Ghz, which isn’t super slow, but it is nearly half the speed of the A15s found in the Galaxy S4. But performance isn’t everything, and I’m more than happy to see a company pursue energy efficiency over clock speed and number of cores for once, especially if it brings big.LITTLE to some cheaper products.
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Looking to the future
ARM Cortex A57
If you fancy a look even further ahead into the future, then we have also received a little bit of news regarding ARM’s successor to the A15, the all new Cortex A57. This new top of the line chip recently reached the “tape out” stage of development, but it’s still a way off from being released in any mobile products.
Cortex A50 performance chart
The Cortex A50 series is set to offer a significant performance improvement. Hopefully the big.LITTLE architecture will help balance out the power consumption.
ARM has hinted that its new chip can offer up to triple the performance of the current top of the line Cortex-A15 for the same amount of battery consumption. The new Cortex-A57 will also supposedly offer five times the amount of battery life when running at the same speed as its current chips, which sounds ridiculously impressive.
We heard a while back that AMD was working on a Cortex A57/A53 big.LITTLE processor chip as well, which should offer an even better balance of performance and energy efficiency than the current Exynos 5 Octa. But we’ll probably be waiting until sometime in 2014 before we can get our hands on these chips.
The age of x64
Speaking of ARM’s next line-up of processors, another important feature to pay attention to will be the inclusion of 64 bit processing technology and the new ARMv8 architecture. ARM’s new Cortex-A50 processor series will take advantage of 64 bit processing in order to improve the performance in more demanding scenarios, reduce power consumption, and take advantage of larger memory addresses for improved performance.
We’ve already seen a few mobile memory manufactures talk about production of high speed 4GB RAM chips, which can only be made use of with larger 64 bit memory addresses. With tablets and smartphones both in pursuit of ever higher levels of performance, x64 supported processors seem like a logical step.
So there you have it, I think that’s pretty much all of the big processor news over the past 3 months. Is there anything in particularly which has caught your eye, are you holding out for a device with a brand new SoC, or are the current crop of processors already plenty good enough for your mobile needs?
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Reserved
Great thread, Again.:good:
This is better suited for the general General forum. But good job anyway.
Good job, mate!
Nicely written. I enjoyed reading that.
Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Well done. Good read :thumbup:
TEAM MiK
MikROMs Since 3/13/11