Discussion Future ARM Cortex + Neoverse µArchs Discussion

[SarahKerrigan]

Someone fixed the Windows Subsystem for Android because Microsoft refuses to — here's how you can do it

The Surface Pro 11 is finally good as a tablet

www.xda-developers.com

Will the same issues pop up when the CPUs get upgraded to ARMv9? I guess not- since ARMv9 and ARMv8 aren't too dissimilar.

No.

I suspect the original article should have said "AArch32" and "AArch64" instead of "ARMv7" and "ARMv8." The latter is kind of nonsensical. AArch32 is still specified under the umbrella of ARMv8 - it's just optional.

 

[FlameTail]

Is BlackHawk a clean-sheet design?

 

[Nothingness]

Phoronix did a Graviton 1 to Graviton 4 comparison: https://www.phoronix.com/review/aws-graviton-graviton4

 

[adroc_thurston]

Is BlackHawk a clean-sheet design?

Yes.

 

[FlameTail]

Huawei is cooking an ARM chip for their PCs.

Following in Hamoa's footsteps?

 

[soresu]

Huawei is cooking an ARM chip for their PCs.
View attachment 104004
Following in Hamoa's footsteps?

This isn't new though.

Huawei have been at the ARM PC hammer for a few years now.

SMT is interesting though, not sure how many Chinese designed CPU µArchs had that to date.

 

[SarahKerrigan]

This isn't new though.

Huawei have been at the ARM PC hammer for a few years now.

SMT is interesting though, not sure how many Chinese designed CPU µArchs had that to date.

Existing Huawei phone chips already do.

 

[DZero]

Wait... as for Android isn't Intel the first to introduce Hyperthreading on phones?
And yeah is x86

 

[soresu]

Wait... as for Android isn't Intel the first to introduce Hyperthreading on phones?
And yeah is x86

Huh, TIL Atom originally had hyperthreading with Saltwell.

It went out the window pretty quickly with Silvermont µArch tho.

 

[Doug S]

Huh, TIL Atom originally had hyperthreading woth Saltwell.

It went out the window pretty quickly with Silvermont µArch tho.

More examples of how Intel really had no clue what mobile needed. HT in mobile is stupid now, it was objectively insane back then.

 

[jpiniero]

More examples of how Intel really had no clue what mobile needed. HT in mobile is stupid now, it was objectively insane back then.

IIRC, that wasn't a mobile product but an HPC product with AVX-512.

Edit: Guess there was a desktop/notebook product too apparently as mentioned.

 

[naukkis]

More examples of how Intel really had no clue what mobile needed. HT in mobile is stupid now, it was objectively insane back then.

Intel original Atom was simple in-order core. With HT it was actually pretty competitive against small out-of-order cores back then. And most importantly, those were times when cpus used still were mainly 1-core. With one core HT actually improves system responsiveness - a lot - compared to same core without HT as there is two hardware threads without need to switch out primary task for backround tasks.

 

[Gideon]

FINALLY some more info on AmpereOne. Aurora will be a 512 Core CPU:

Ampere AmpereOne Aurora 512 Core AI CPU Announced

Ampere AmpereOne Aurora will have 512 cores, integrated AI acceleration, and even HBM memory integrated for a monster future chip

www.servethehome.com

But still ways away, not sure they can really survive given that Amazon and Google use their own design (and Microsoft is 100% following suit) and the heated up competiton from AMD and Intel's small cores, the market seems really competitive.

 

[Nothingness]

Phoronix posted more slides: https://www.phoronix.com/review/ampereone-skus-pricing

As I expected given the icache size, this is targetting performance per socket/rack and performance per watt. Raw performance will likely be rather low.

Odd design I think.

 

[Hitman928]

FINALLY some more info on AmpereOne. Aurora will be a 512 Core CPU:

Ampere AmpereOne Aurora 512 Core AI CPU Announced

Ampere AmpereOne Aurora will have 512 cores, integrated AI acceleration, and even HBM memory integrated for a monster future chip

www.servethehome.com

But still ways away, not sure they can really survive given that Amazon and Google use their own design (and Microsoft is 100% following suit) and the heated up competiton from AMD and Intel's small cores, the market seems really competitive.

Is the initial AmpereOne available yet? They announced it in 2022 and said it would be available later that year but it went MIA. They re-announced it with official specs in May 2023 and said again it would be available by the end of the year in Oracle Cloud, but no one seems to know where it is, lol. At this point, they're running into Turin (D) and have lost their core count advantage. How long will it be before MX actually makes it to market? Don't get me wrong, I am actually pulling for them, but with their major delays thus far, competition increasing, and big cloud vendors rolling their own ARM chips, I just don't know if we will actually see them get to 512 core products. I hope I'm wrong, though.

 

[Saylick]

C&C wrote an article on Nvidia's Grace CPU. They benchmark the CPU and also how the NVLink interconnect performs. It's really insightful.

Grace Hopper, Nvidia’s Halfway APU

Nvidia and AMD are the biggest players in the high performance GPU space. But while Nvidia has a huge GPU market share advantage over AMD, the latter’s CPU prowess makes it a strong competito…

chipsandcheese.com

 

[mikegg]

FINALLY some more info on AmpereOne. Aurora will be a 512 Core CPU:

Ampere AmpereOne Aurora 512 Core AI CPU Announced

Ampere AmpereOne Aurora will have 512 cores, integrated AI acceleration, and even HBM memory integrated for a monster future chip

www.servethehome.com

But still ways away, not sure they can really survive given that Amazon and Google use their own design (and Microsoft is 100% following suit) and the heated up competiton from AMD and Intel's small cores, the market seems really competitive.

That may be why they shelved their IPO plans. They’re the primary ARM cpu supplier for Oracle Cloud and smaller clouds like Hetzner.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Oracle eventually buys Ampere altogether.

I still expect them to IPO though. I’ll buy a few shares.

 

[FlameTail]

Apple A13 : 2.65 GHz
Apple A17 : 3.78 GHz

Snapdragon 865 (Cortex A77) : 2.84 GHz
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (Cortex X4) : 3.4 GHz

There is a 4-year gap between both. Within that same timespan, Qualcomm/ARM increased their clock speed by 0.46 GHz, while Apple increased it by 1.13 GHz. More than 2x the amount!

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 with custom Oryon core is rumoured to clock at 4.37 GHz! The Apple A18 Pro will also certainly clock north of 4 GHz.

Some people are calling for ARM to do the same and increase the Fmax of their Cortex X cores. I disagree. I think ARM should stick to what they have been doing best for the past few years: Steady YoY IPC gains.

Increasing clock speed drastically like that comes with a drastic power increase too. It's the Netburst ideology. Apple is embarked on a dark path. For the first time, they used HP libraries for the CPU in M4, and the ST power increased by 50% compared to M3 (according to Geekerwan). Apple can get away with it, only because they are starting from a very good baseline.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Some people are calling for ARM to do the same and increase the Fmax of their Cortex X cores. I disagree. I think ARM should stick to what they have been doing best for the past few years: Steady YoY IPC gains.

Means to an end.
All that matters is end product PPA.

It's the Netburst ideology

?
Netburst means skinny heavily pipelined core with trace cache.
None of the modern OoO machines are that.

 

[Doug S]

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 with custom Oryon core is rumoured to clock at 4.37 GHz! The Apple A18 Pro will also certainly clock north of 4 GHz.

I don't know if we can assume that. Maybe they don't use HP cells for the P cores in A18? Even if they do I'd say 4 GHz is the absolute max we're likely to see, it won't be north of that.

 

[SpudLobby]

I don't know if we can assume that. Maybe they don't use HP cells for the P cores in A18? Even if they do I'd say 4 GHz is the absolute max we're likely to see, it won't be north of that.

Yep.

 

[FlameTail]

Intel/AMD are not stagnating, but their improvements have slowed to a crawl.

If ARM can deliver 10% CAGR IPC gains every year, their future in the PC world is secured.

 

[FlameTail]

Good point by @gdansk

It's good news for ARM's future.

 

[moinmoin]

@FlameTail why did you start posting screenshots of people's posts on this very forum instead just quoting them using the forum's functionality? That's honestly annoying.

 

[FlameTail]

It's not only AMD, but also Intel.

Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake debuts their "new" core- Lion Cove. The next new core is supposedly for Nova Lake in late 2026/early 2027.

Cougar Cove in Panther Lake is supposedly just Lion Cove ported to 18A (a repeat of the situation in Raptor Lake -> Meteor Lake).

So if ARM can put out new cores with decent IPC gains every year, they will surpass x86.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/arm-aims-capture-50-pc-market-five-years-ceo-says-2024-06-03/

Is 50% back on the table?

@FlameTail why did you start posting screenshots of people's posts on this very forum instead just quoting them using the forum's functionality? That's honestly annoying.

My apologies.