Qualcomm moves Cortex A72 to the mid-range

[kpkp]

Arstechnica: Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon chips bring high-end features to midrange SoCs
Anandtech: Qualcomm Announces New SoC Lineup, Modems

What I find surprising is the usage of ARM A72 cores in the 6xx series SoC and build on 28nm. To be honest I checked the date, when reading that (1 april).

Quick summary:
S415
8x A53 up to 1.4GHz, Adreno 405
x5 LTE, 150Mbps DL 50Mbps UL

S425
8x A53 up to 1.7GHz, Adreno 405
x8 LTE, 300Mbps DL 100Mbps UL

S618
64-bit Dual-core 1.8GHz ARM® Cortex™ A72 and quad-core 1.2GHz A53 CPU,
Next generation Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU
x8 LTE, 300Mbps DL 100Mbps UL

S620
64-bit quad-core 1.8GHz ARM® Cortex™ A72 and quad-core 1.2GHz A53 CPU
Next generation Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU
x8 LTE, 300Mbps DL 100Mbps UL

 

[witeken]

Something that Qualcomm is stressing with all of today's announcements is that high-end features are trickling down the product stack. For starters, both the new Snapdragon 415 and 425 will be moving to eight-core Cortex A53-based designs, rather than the quad-core designs the 400 and 410 used. Like the 410, both new 400-series chips are 64-bit and support the ARMv8 instruction set, and they're both built on a 28nm manufacturing process.

What an innovation! Octacores in 3W devices, while history has shown that they're not even successful in 120W TDPs.

Just like I thought, the use of 28nm isn't going to be a very big deal in 2015 in lower-end tiers. A72 appears to come earlier than I expect, though. Actually looks more exciting to me than A57.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Nice design point...2 core A72 + 4 core A53. big.LITTLE for phones done right.

 

[Arachnotronic]

What an innovation! Octacores in 3W devices, while history has shown that they're not even successful in 120W TDPs.

It's big.LITTLE so, relax, the main CPU performance will come from the two A72 cores

These chips also have some pretty sweet non-CPU blocks such as H.265 4K support.

 

[dahorns]

It's big.LITTLE so, relax, the main CPU performance will come from the two A72 cores

These chips also have some pretty sweet non-CPU blocks such as H.265 4K support.

If these truly come out this year, where does that leave the 810?

 

[Mondozei]

I'm guessing they are going for 28 to push the chips out as soon as possible. Samsung has just begun with 14 nm and its probably not something that they want to share with Qualcomm, their prime competitor as they are starting to do their own SoCs.

That leaves GloFo, which is sharing info with Samsung but because of this, it will be behind a few quarters in actual mass production. That this is for the 600-series also makes sense in this context.

If we will see the A-72 in the 800 series it will be on 14 nm. But so far ARM is on fire, and Qualcomm's long-lost Krait seems to be further out in the distance.

If these truly come out this year, where does that leave the 810?

The S810 will be shipping in H1 of this year. I wouldn't be surprised to see them go for A72 on 14 nm around the holiday season if they can. Qualcomm can't afford to be as complacent as before, more and more big players are going their own way, they now have to update much more frequently as they do not have their own custom core ready, and as such, anyone can use ARM's A72.

Qualcomm's integrated strength remains, and that's their primary weapon for now.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Nice design point...2 core A72 + 4 core A53. big.LITTLE for phones done right.

Thats my view on it as well. Tho I may even cut a couple of the smaller cores too.

Faster cores vs moar cores.

 

[witeken]

If these truly come out this year, where does that leave the 810?

A72 will be released in 2016.

The octacore I was talking about is 415/425.

At least the new 618/620 is less pathetic than the 610/615 downgrade.

Edit: If those A72 cores are designed well (which I'm skeptical about), then those 4 useless A53s are unnecessary. I guess SoFIA and Broxton will prove my point.

 

[kpkp]

It's big.LITTLE so, relax, the main CPU performance will come from the two A72 cores

These chips also have some pretty sweet non-CPU blocks such as H.265 4K support.

His quote is about the S415 and S425. But according to arstechnica, all newly announced SoCs will be build on 28nm. Still a bit shocking, but maybe that's the price for being in the mid-range.

Another interesting question is what will Qualcomm use in their next 800 series SoC, are they that confident that they can significantly outperform the A72 with the custom design (the manufacturing process shall help).

 

[Arachnotronic]

A72 will be released in 2016.

The octacore I was talking about is 415/425.

At least the new 618/620 is less pathetic than the 610/615 downgrade.

Edit: If those A72 cores are designed well (which I'm skeptical about), then those 4 useless A53s are unnecessary. I guess SoFIA and Broxton will prove my point.

618/620 look great. Nice fast CPU, good GPU, great modem, solid video encode/decode...everything you'd want from a mid-range SoC.

Intel's SoFIA on 28nm probably won't be competitive with these parts.

 

[kpkp]

A72 will be released in 2016.

Not sure that is true.

Both 600-series chips include Qualcomm's Snapdragon X8 LTE modems, capable of 300Mbps download and 100Mbps upload speeds. The chips, both of which will use a 28nm manufacturing process, will begin shipping in consumer devices in the second half of this year.

 

[dahorns]

A72 will be released in 2016.

From the article:

Both 600-series chips include Qualcomm's Snapdragon X8 LTE modems, capable of 300Mbps download and 100Mbps upload speeds. The chips, both of which will use a 28nm manufacturing process, will begin shipping in consumer devices in the second half of this year.

 

[Sweepr]

I really like the idea of 2+4 big.LITTLE. Sammy did it with the Exynos 5260 and now Qualcomm is doing it with the S808 and S618/S620. A 4+4 A72/A53 design would probably be way overkill @ 28nm anyway. I bet Qualcomm is going to ditch A72 for the high-end S820 and use their custom ARMv8-A cores instead. It will be interesting to see if A72's improved IPC will provide better single-thread performance at 1.8GHz than the 2.1GHz Exynos 7420.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I bet Qualcomm is going to ditch A72 for the high-end S820 and use their custom ARMv8-A cores instead.

They already said as much on their last conference call

 

[altairauditore]

2+4 big.LITTLE is nice;

4+4 A53&A72 on 28nm? NOT going to work, unless the figures we've seen from the Anandtech coverage on the new cores are waay off the mark (which I doubt).

Either the A72's will rarely come online, throttle to 900Mhz, or melt the device.

 

[witeken]

Intel's SoFIA on 28nm probably won't be competitive with these parts.

Because SoFIA isn't a midrange SoC.

From the article:

From ARM:

The improved performance and power-efficiency of the Cortex-A72 processor will redefine the rich connected and context-aware experiences delivered to consumers by premium devices in 2016, scaling from premium smartphones to large and mid-size tablets, clamshell, and convertible form factors.

On another note, I wonder how 28 and 20 compare in terms of cost per transistor at the moment. Also not sure how people get so excited about big.little. If you have 1 or 2 small cores, that makes sense, but why bother with 4 little cores? How's that going to save battery life?

 

[Nothingness]

A72 will be released in 2016.

Cortex-A72 RTL has most likely already been released to ARM customers, and I guess using 28nm will speed up implementation.

Edit: If those A72 cores are designed well (which I'm skeptical about), then those 4 useless A53s are unnecessary.

And you're skeptical because of?

I guess SoFIA and Broxton will prove my point.

And here you're not skeptical despite repeated delays and badly targeted Intel SoC/CPU?

 

[witeken]

Cortex-A72 RTL has most likely already been released to ARM customers, and I guess using 28nm will speed up implementation.

And you think that why?

And you're skeptical because of?

Because I've neither been impressed by the first release of both A15 and A57.

And here you're not skeptical despite repeated delays and badly targeted Intel SoC/CPU?

I don't know why you think 4 Silvermont cores are badly targeted for the low-end, while all other companies get away with in-order cores even in the mid-end. Broxton, we'll see. In any case it won't use big.little and Intel has never used or had the need to use it with Core, nor Core m.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I don't know why you think 4 Silvermont cores are badly targeted for the low-end, while all other companies get away with in-order cores even in the mid-end. Broxton, we'll see. In any case it won't use big.little and Intel has never used or had the need to use it with Core, nor Core m.

Silvermont is in-order with respect to the FPU

 

[Gunbuster]

Will these have Snapdragon Voice Activation or is that still going to be only for the 8XX series? Would be nice if mid-range phones weren't crippled artificially...

 

[Nothingness]

And you think that why?

Because I have been working in the semiconductor industry for 20 years and I know how ARM works.

Because I've neither been impressed by the first release of both A15 and A57.

A57 looks good in Exynos 7 where it seems to be correctly implemented. So history always repeats? If so Intel would still be doing bad chips such as P4 or early Atoms.

I don't know why you think 4 Silvermont cores are badly targeted for the low-end, while all other companies get away with in-order cores even in the mid-end. Broxton, we'll see. In any case it won't use big.little and Intel has never used or had the need to use it with Core, nor Core m.

Silvermont is outdated now, though I concede that for the low end it will certainly be good enough if Intel prices it correctly. Airmont doesn't look that good either (but I guess what might be important here is the capacity of the SoC to maintain turbo frequency for extended periods of time).

In any case it won't use big.little and Intel has never used or had the need to use it with Core, nor Core m.

You seem to think having big.LITTLE is a handicap. Why do you think so? I think having very low power cores along high perf cores is good to have as long as the big core is power efficient enough, which A72 might be if we are to believe ARM (though only time will tell of course).

 

[kpkp]

Will these have Snapdragon Voice Activation or is that still going to be only for the 8XX series? Would be nice if mid-range phones weren't crippled artificially...

It is present in both new 600 series SoCs.

 

[oobydoobydoo]

big.LITTLE on one hand seems much better for low power.... but for maximum sustained speed at a certain load two or three big cores appear to be a better solution. These A53 cores are basically vestigal while the A72 cores operate... that is a lot of wasted die space.


I think Apple's solution of two or three big cores, along with superb software power management, is a more elegant solution than big.LITTLE. In theory big.LITTLE will always be more power efficient, but if the core switching isn't done perfectly it becomes more marketing than a real advantage.


I think the main thing big.LITTLE gives Qualcomm and Samsung, is the ability to claim they have 8 cores in their phones vs apple's "measly" 2 cores. That's where they will see the benefit monetarily - in marketing.

 

[witeken]

A57 looks good in Exynos 7 where it seems to be correctly implemented. So history always repeats? If so Intel would still be doing bad chips such as P4 or early Atoms.

I'm just skeptical. I'd be happy to be proven wrong by an independent site like AT.

You seem to think having big.LITTLE is a handicap. Why do you think so?

Well, I guess it doesn't matter.

 

[Ruiner1]

ARM doesn't make public announcements for IP designs nowadays until the IP is in a state where a customer can download it. If you are able to cope with multiple deliveries and the increased validation requirements, you can be a lead partner and get much earlier access as the design matures. You do need to know what you're getting into though - it always carries some risk to go first, especially if you're using 'final-n' designs.

It is nice to see Qualcomm announcing such a powerful CPU in mid-range chipsets. I hope this is an indication that their custom ARMv8 cores are going to have something to justify the new high-end tag. I guess we'll see when they announce them.