x86 mobile SoC future

I haven't seen intel move this fast since they introduced the core series.
 
I sure wasn't expecting Clover Trail to already take the lead in power consumption within the same year Tegra 3 was released. This makes the next generation 22nm Atom Silvermont-based whatever Intel is going to call it already a killer SoC to buy in 2013. The last I checked the ARM OEMs at best are moving to 28nm with majority in 32nm.

Now, like Anandtech says, we need someone to actual make a quality device with it.

I remember posting an Intel roadmap before and got a ton of hate from people saying Intel will always suck at battery life. Here it is again:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/27/2828158/intel-mobile-atom-roadmap-14nm-2014

The dream is for Microsoft to declare RISC dead again and say sayonara to the RT nonsense and go completely to x86 with their WP9 devices as well. Wintel for the WIN?
 
CHANG3D said:
I sure wasn't expecting Clover Trail to already take the lead in power consumption within the same year Tegra 3 was released. This makes the next generation 22nm Atom Silvermont-based whatever Intel is going to call it already a killer SoC to buy in 2013. The last I checked the ARM OEMs at best are moving to 28nm with majority in 32nm.

Now, like Anandtech says, we need someone to actual make a quality device with it.

I remember posting an Intel roadmap before and got a ton of hate from people saying Intel will always suck at battery life. Here it is again:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/27/2828158/intel-mobile-atom-roadmap-14nm-2014

The dream is for Microsoft to declare RISC dead again and say sayonara to the RT nonsense and go completely to x86 with their WP9 devices as well. Wintel for the WIN?
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To be honestly I wasn't expecting it to beat Tegra either. I wasn't a big disbeliever in x86 matching ARM in power consumption though, I think people are just too jaded with legitimate x86 CPU's that include so much logic in them they suck power down. In SoC's like these you don't have very much logic to them and I never understood why people thought you couldn't get x86 power down.

Its funny when you look at it, intel slept on ARM thinking their little market segment was ever going to grow into something useful or profitable, now it looks like ARM slept on intel thinking they would never get their power consumption down.

IF (this is a big 'if') MS and Intel get together and make a segment of products to compete directly with apple it would steam role them. No other company has the software resources MS does and no other company on earth has the fab power of intel. That is literally a juggernaut combo.
 
Trimlock said:
I haven't seen intel move this fast since they introduced the core series.
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Heh... Yeah, it's fun to see Intel with an actual threat around. They may be old, but they're certainly not dinosaurs. Can't ever count out Intel.

Except in the GPU department. Their perennial Achilles' Heel.
 
Neurofreeze said:
Heh... Yeah, it's fun to see Intel with an actual threat around. They may be old, but they're certainly not dinosaurs. Can't ever count out Intel.

Except in the GPU department. Their perennial Achilles' Heel.
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Yea, but they proven that discrete GPU's won't get you sales. Too bad looked like they were putting a legit effort with Larrabee, wonder if they will pick up that old project again?

At least we aren't using GMA350's anymore :D
 
Part 2: Exynos 5 Dual and Krait
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showdown

Summary:
Exynos 5 Dual isn't ready for smartphone. Takes too much juice. This is why the big.Little design is needed on Cortex A15.
Atom Clover Trail bests the Krait in CPU performance and wins in most power consumption tests, but it's the other way around on the GPU side. So Anandtech is calling it even.

Clover Trail is based on a 3-year old design. This upcoming year's model is a brand new one. I really didn't expect this. Need this in more phones NOW! Come on Wintel!
 
Not surprising to me. I've been waiting for this article. There have been some people who trumpeted the A15 to trample all competition in both power and performance which was a bit laughable considering big.little and how Qualcomm made Krait instead.
 
CHANG3D said:
Part 2: Exynos 5 Dual and Krait
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showdown

Summary:
Exynos 5 Dual isn't ready for smartphone. Takes too much juice. This is why the big.Little design is needed on Cortex A15.
Atom Clover Trail bests the Krait in CPU performance and wins in most power consumption tests, but it's the other way around on the GPU side. So Anandtech is calling it even.

Clover Trail is based on a 3-year old design. This upcoming year's model is a brand new one. I really didn't expect this. Need this in more phones NOW! Come on Wintel!
Click to expand...

I understood the conclusion on the A15 as it actually uses less power due to it performing much better and going to idle faster, but the peak power (around 3-4W) is going to generate too much heat for a smart phone.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
I understood the conclusion on the A15 as it actually uses less power due to it performing much better and going to idle faster, but the peak power (around 3-4W) is going to generate too much heat for a smart phone.
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Anand does state in other articles how the A15 can be lowered in power usage by using less logic on the core or using better power states (giving each core their own voltage supply). But as it is right now its way too much.

One thing that is suprising is how the Atom is winning all CPU benchmarks and keeping the power down. Hows that for the x86 myth? When they cut down on the size and maybe increase GPU production next gen they may have an absolute lead over anything ARM related. All they have to do is get some MS love, pay some developers to make programs to show case it and maybe come up with their own phone themselves.
 
Trimlock said:
Anand does state in other articles how the A15 can be lowered in power usage by using less logic on the core or using better power states (giving each core their own voltage supply). But as it is right now its way too much.

One thing that is suprising is how the Atom is winning all CPU benchmarks and keeping the power down. Hows that for the x86 myth? When they cut down on the size and maybe increase GPU production next gen they may have an absolute lead over anything ARM related. All they have to do is get some MS love, pay some developers to make programs to show case it and maybe come up with their own phone themselves.
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Android runs just fine on the x86 processor as the Razr i has shown and is compatible with any app that doesn't directly use a feature that is ARM specific(few apps do).

The X86 processor will catch on in mobile once its performance is on par or better than ARM's.
Intel doesn't have to pay anyone anything or make their own phone(lol at his).
 
Grazehell said:
The X86 processor will catch on in mobile once its performance is on par or better than ARM's.
Intel doesn't have to pay anyone anything or make their own phone(lol at his).
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these articles just proved that the clover trail is on par of not totally better in every which way compared to the two leading ARM SoCs for smartphones in 2012, Tegra 3 and the Krait. It even beats the Krait in most cpu power consumption tests, and the only reason anandtech is calling it even is because of the gpu.

Tracing the time line, these atoms were being mass produced in August 2012. Yet no OEM wanted to put them in smartphones most likely due to the reputation of the x86 processors sucking battery life.

Someone needs to get on this bandwagon for the 2013 atom fast while everyone else is waiting. I suppose Samsung is with Tizen. I would rather use WP9...
 
CHANG3D said:
these articles just proved that the clover trail is on par of not totally better in every which way compared to the two leading ARM SoCs for smartphones in 2012, Tegra 3 and the Krait. It even beats the Krait in most cpu power consumption tests, and the only reason anandtech is calling it even is because of the gpu.
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It would happen. Manufacturers are not just going to jump head first into this. I think we may see more Android devices embrace X86.
I don't anticipated WP8(8.x) but maybe 9 as you pointed out.
 
Read some of the posts. It's becoming very competitive power wise, with better performance. If Intel can come up with a 'Tick - Tock' style schedule with their mobile chips in another year or two you won't be able to ignore them.
 
CHANG3D said:
these articles just proved that the clover trail is on par of not totally better in every which way compared to the two leading ARM SoCs for smartphones in 2012, Tegra 3 and the Krait. It even beats the Krait in most cpu power consumption tests, and the only reason anandtech is calling it even is because of the gpu.

Tracing the time line, these atoms were being mass produced in August 2012. Yet no OEM wanted to put them in smartphones most likely due to the reputation of the x86 processors sucking battery life.

Someone needs to get on this bandwagon for the 2013 atom fast while everyone else is waiting. I suppose Samsung is with Tizen. I would rather use WP9...
Click to expand...
which is why I think intel really needs to look into making their own phone. Or at least a test phone to show case it better. Also intel will need a platform/program to really show it off to show the world (outside of benchmarks) to show the competitive nature if haswell.
 
Looks like the successor to the Clover Trail is called the Bay Trail. Roadmap points to Holiday 2013.

But on the roadmap, there is only talks about tablets. No word on smartphones... :'(

onto another related topic:
Tegra 4's GPU cores are not kepler yet. The old rumors point to Tegra 5, and look like they are still right.
 
Cheetoz said:
And why do I want x86 on mobile devices?
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wrong question

question is why did you want an ARM processor in the first place? answer is power consumption.

If x86 can match ARMs power consumption, then why do you care which one is in your device? performance, and x86 seems to have that in the bag already, with ARM needing to catch up.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
If x86 can match ARMs power consumption, then why do you care which one is in your device? performance, and x86 seems to have that in the bag already, with ARM needing to catch up.
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x86 would just bring the monopoly from PC to mobile. No competition is bad
 
Cheetoz said:
x86 would just bring the monopoly from PC to mobile. No competition is bad
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I agree that monopoly is bad, but one thing I am looking forward to is Intel bringing its own graphics tech to the mobile space....

If they continue their excellent history of fully open sourcing their graphics drivers, we will have a suitable replacement for the OMAP series of chips that are now sadly discontinued
 
[H] readers should be better than this. As I mentioned in the comments of the AnandTech articles, you can't accurately benchmark any hardware if the software (OS + middleware + app) isn't identical / consistent across the platforms. We can't really draw any firm conclusions here [about the hardware itself] since the software and compiler toolchains are quite different. All we have is a total system benchmark.

And then Anand ran SunSpider benchmarks on the Nexus 10 vs. Windows 8 to get performance and power numbers.
facepalm.gif


(I mean I've got no words for that.)

Not to mention the Nexus 10 is running at twice the resolution which is being hammered 60 times a second.

Another benchmark was cold boot power usage when the two systems are bringing up completely different devices with probably very different code paths.
facepalm.gif


What we can conclude is that Atom and ARMv7 are definitely in the same ballpark. (Which I think is all that really matters from the user experience anyway.) But that isn't particularly surprising either... Intel chopped off the 64-bit instructions and brought the performance way down to get into the same power envelope.

But Intel still has big headwinds here. Apple is now rolling their own SoCs, so why would they put x86 into their mobile devices? Samsung fabs their own chips, so I think they're still going to prefer Exynos where possible (except maybe for joint ventures, e.g. Tizen). The rest of the OEMs might be open to x86 but here Intel is going to face serious price competition from Qualcomm and NVIDIA (with TI out), but also those cheap Chinese chips that are becoming more common. All of this is good for consumers of course.

The other issue is the existing software that's natively compiled to ARM. (Like games on Android, etc.) Now I know Intel includes an emulation layer, but it would be impossible for that layer to not impact performance and power efficiency to some degree. So you have to figure that into the benchmarks.

All that said however, I am a bit underwhelmed by Cortex-A15 so far... at least in terms of power usage. But in my use cases the big offenders are typically display and WiFi / cell radios, so hopefully that tech sees some improvements.
 
jwcalla said:
[H]

The other issue is the existing software that's natively compiled to ARM. (Like games on Android, etc.) Now I know Intel includes an emulation layer, but it would be impossible for that layer to not impact performance and power efficiency to some degree. So you have to figure that into the benchmarks.
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What games are built specifically for ARM on Android? Doesn't seem like many!
 
jwcalla said:
yyyyyyyyeah those aren't written in java.

they're either using the intel emulation layer or are compiled versions for x86.
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x86 recompile is the only plausible explanation, emulating ARM instruction on x86 mobile at this speed? Really?
Care to link to anything you say to add maybe a sliver of credibility though?
 
jwcalla - the only thing we care about in this thread is that x86 beat the power myth by hacking off a ton of unecessary logic and is still competitive in performance. I'd rather have x86 vs ARM if they can keep this performance/watt up.
 
Grazehell said:
x86 recompile is the only plausible explanation, emulating ARM instruction on x86 mobile at this speed? Really?
Care to link to anything you say to add maybe a sliver of credibility though?
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Like I said, they could be compiled direct to x86. I think the big gaming houses would do that if Intel made inroads.

But in the meantime Intel will be relying on their ARM compatibility layer, which should add some overhead (and I say this only from the point of those benchmarks): http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones/5

Trimlock said:
jwcalla - the only thing we care about in this thread is that x86 beat the power myth by hacking off a ton of unecessary logic and is still competitive in performance. I'd rather have x86 vs ARM if they can keep this performance/watt up.
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Yup, it's competitive.
 
Look, no benchmark is perfect unless it is done on the same device. But with enough imperfect benchmarks, what we have are trends. And what we are comparing here are the trends. Statistics and mathematics.

Clover trail's power consumption in a variety of tests vs Tegra 3, Snapdragon S4, and Exynos 5 is competitive if not lower. That's the trend.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
There is still AMD, if they can produce a low enough power chip, their graphics tech is years ahead of intels, (i know, pipe dream at this point)
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They are not that much ahead actually, especially when Intel launches Haswell.
 
Haswell should close the gap with Trinity's GPU. However, Trinity's successor will be out around that time as well. Intel is a generation behind in that respect. Also, their drivers leave a lot to be desired.

I'm impressed with Intel's progress on the mobile front, but they aren't there yet. I see myself going quad-A15 this year, and either Intel or A57 in 2-3 years. I will consider Qualcomm then as well if they switch to synchronous.
 
I'll never touch a Tegra. Even Tegra 4 made me yawn.

As for hardware in my phone...I don't give a shit. I just want a fast CPU/GPU SoC and good battery life. If x86 is the way the mobile market goes that's fine. Android will move with it. The SDK will be updated to compile and run on x86 natively and everything will be fine.
 
Vermillion said:
I'll never touch a Tegra. Even Tegra 4 made me yawn.

As for hardware in my phone...I don't give a shit. I just want a fast CPU/GPU SoC and good battery life. If x86 is the way the mobile market goes that's fine. Android will move with it. The SDK will be updated to compile and run on x86 natively and everything will be fine.
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I think you mean the NDK. The SDK is mostly java.

The Tegra 3 was not as bad as the tegra 2. In fact it was bloody good. I dont other chipsets being much better if any than the Tegra 4.

of course I dont think you would see it that way since if I remember correctly you seem to have a personal vendetta again Nvidia and the Tegra
 
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