Qualcomm's overheating 810 chips?

[jhu]

In the words of Rick Perry: oops!

Back to the issues, sources from Korea and analysts with US investment firm J.P. Morgan are convinced that the Snapdragon 810 is suffering from crippling overheating issues. Apparently, this problem is caused by the high-performance Cortex-A57 cores overheating when clock speeds reach 1.2 to 1.4GHz, which is a surprising problem for a core designed to run at speeds approaching 2GHz. This then causes the chip to throttle back on performance, to prevent the whole system from overheating. Separate issues with the SoC’s memory controller have also been reported and instances of GPU throttling have also apparently cropped up during benchmarks, although this could be part of the same CPU overheating issue.

I'm sure they'll fix it eventually.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Might explain the surprisingly low LG G Flex 2 Geekbench 3 singlethread results...

 

[ShintaiDK]

Not surprised. Most smartphones already throttle.

But it seems Qualcomm really got a bad set of cards this round. Both 810 and 615 are something to avoid.

 

[postmortemIA]

ahhh so they perform like my 400 series unless you're gaming in freezing weather or in fridge.

 

[crashtech]

Not all A57's, it seems.

However, Samsung’s Cortex-A57 powered Exynos 5433 does not suffer from overheating issues, suggesting that this is a problem specific to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon design rather than a problem with the Cortex-A57 itself. This leaves the finger pointed at Qualcomm and TSMC’s 20nm chip design, with several analysts suggesting that a “redesign of a few metal layers” may be needed to fix the issue.

 

[RussianSensation]

2015 was long shaping up to be a meh year for smartphone upgrades. With major redesign on the iPhone, Note 4 packing high HD screen and arguably top 2 camera of any smartphone, already fast enough CPU/GPU for both, 50% charging in 30-50 min on a lot of smartphones, 2015 should bring minor performance and feature increases.

I think Adreno 430 is only 30% or so faster than the 420. Smartphones aren't going to evolve as fast as before as they will also keep running into node shrink bottlenecks and power constraints. Imo, the biggest areas of improvement should come in the battery life department but with the focus on thinner smartphones and lack of new affordable battery technologies, I don't anticipate major innovations here.

More or less the more exciting trends are now happening in the budget space with Asus Zenphone 2 and Moto X. Fundamentally the smartphone almost peaked at Note 4/iPhone 6 level. Going beyond that is putting a marketing gimmick 4K screen, 40 megapixel camera, etc. Performance in smartphones is good enough for 95% of people. Even my aging iPhone 5S is still silky smooth and fast, minus Safari reloading web pages due to lack of RAM.

Even 2 years ago when roadmaps were laid out 2014/2015 looked like a meh year for smartphones. iPhone 6's CPU is barely 25% faster than iPhone 5S, a far cry from nearly 2X the increase 5S got over the 5. Since iPhone 6's CPU is arguably the fastest now, we are hitting node bottlenecks / it's harder and harder to get more low hanging IPC / software doesn't scale well to 4-8 cores on smartphones.

The contract business model will make it 'cheap' for a lot of people to upgrade their smartphone every 2 years but honestly now it's all bragging rights or boredom or being embarrassed that you have an ancient phone that causes upgrades. It's just not the same as going from an outdated Nokia E72/Blackberry to say an iPhone/Note. Even the revolution of going from a Motorola V60 to a smartphone was huge. Now, it's just a spec game but the overall smartphone experience has not changed much since Samsung S2/Note 2/iPhone 4S days. It's now a safe bet to easily skip a generation of phone line upgrades and not feel like you are missing out much.

Honestly I can't get excited about smartphones in 2015 - we are basically going to get just slightly upgraded iPhone 6S/6S+ and most phones just catching up to the metal design, screen quality/pixel count and camera quality of the Note 4. It'll still take years before 64-bit software goes mainstream by which point we are talking iPhone 7S/Note 6, or even beyond that.

If a smartphone of the future could stream 4K BluRay quality movies, lossless audio and PS4 level video games directly to your home theater/4K smartTV combo, I would be excited. Personally, to me the excitement in smartphones right now has diminished significantly until we see some serious innovations beyond iPhone 6/6+/Note 4.

I want to plug a smartphone into a dock at work and power a 4K monitor and run a keyboard. Next step is to do all of that wirelessly with multiple displays and speakers. When is that revolution happening?

 

[jhu]

The next big thing is going to be wearables and implantables.

 

[III-V]

2015 was long shaping up to be a meh year for smartphone upgrades.

If we get anything widely available with FinFETs under the hood by year's end, I'll be very excited.

 

[escrow4]

I use a Lumia 635 daily now since switching to Windows Phone exclusively after an old Android. I buy phones unlocked and just can't justify a $900-$1K+ phone, which is what the Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus cost here. Apart from comment heavy websites crashing IE 11 mobile (its the 512MB RAM) its pretty good for a cheapo smartphone. Thinking of getting a Lumia 930 when it hits closer to $500 maybe.

 

[Arachnotronic]

If we get anything widely available with FinFETs under the hood by year's end, I'll be very excited.

You mean non-Intel FinFETs, right?

 

[jhu]

I use a Lumia 635 daily now since switching to Windows Phone exclusively after an old Android. I buy phones unlocked and just can't justify a $900-$1K+ phone, which is what the Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus cost here. Apart from comment heavy websites crashing IE 11 mobile (its the 512MB RAM) its pretty good for a cheapo smartphone. Thinking of getting a Lumia 930 when it hits closer to $500 maybe.

How abot Moto G or HTC Desire 510? Those should be pretty cheap.

 

[RussianSensation]

I use a Lumia 635 daily now since switching to Windows Phone exclusively after an old Android. I buy phones unlocked and just can't justify a $900-$1K+ phone, which is what the Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus cost here. Apart from comment heavy websites crashing IE 11 mobile (its the 512MB RAM) its pretty good for a cheapo smartphone. Thinking of getting a Lumia 930 when it hits closer to $500 maybe.

Can't you buy an unlocked model on eBay? If you have to buy unlocked phones, you can wait until the price drop once something newer/cooler but barely better comes out. For example, here in Asia the Note 4 came out at $800 USD ($960 CDN/Australian) but it's now $670 and in 3-4 months I expect it to drop to just $550. After selling my old phone for $300, it'll be a cheap upgrade to tie me over for 2 years in hopes something much better is out in 2017, not just a 25% bump in CPU and 30% bump in GPU speed.

 

[Idontcare]

You mean non-Intel FinFETs, right?

Does Intel have anything with Finfets that are competing with Qualcomm's 810 chips? Serious question, my assumption was they aren't there yet.

 

[FX2000]

My LG G2 never throttles during normal usage (Facebook, browsing, image boards etc.).
Time to stop making 1.3mm thick phone, and start making them a little thicker, and using small heatsinks.

 

[NTMBK]

Does Intel have anything with Finfets that are competing with Qualcomm's 810 chips? Serious question, my assumption was they aren't there yet.

Well at least one phone has a Moorefield chip in it: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7490143/lenovo-ces-2015-p90-vibe-x2-pro-vb10-intel-atom Uses the 22nm Z3560.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Does Intel have anything with Finfets that are competing with Qualcomm's 810 chips? Serious question, my assumption was they aren't there yet.

Intel's Atom Z3560/Z3580 chips are shipping and have actually found a couple of design wins. The chips have weaknesses on the architectural side that keep them from being competitive with a very high end mobile part like the Snapdragon 810.

However, Intel is shipping FinFET based phone chips and a couple of phones using them will be on the market.

 

[witeken]

Does Intel have anything with Finfets that are competing with Qualcomm's 810 chips? Serious question, my assumption was they aren't there yet.

Moorefield. Speculation has it that is has some noncompetitive features that are not CPU related.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Moorefield. Speculation has it that is has some noncompetitive features that are not CPU related.

No integrated baseband, inferior imaging capabilities, far lower memory bandwidth, no HEVC decode/encode, etc. It doesn't look competitive with the S810, but it competes in the smartphone market.

 

[CakeMonster]

This is quite disappointing. I figured that 20nm for phones was on track since it was the HP that had problems, not the LP. Also, the 810 seemed so promising for 64bit, faster memory support, and hardware h265 which could enable 4K video recording, possibly in 60fps+. And not to speak of the expected improved IPC and clock speed, or at least one of them.

So... what will we get now in the flagships of 2015? Same CPU performance as last year because of lower clockspeeds and possibly a little bit more ram? Everyone bumping to 1440p just to be able to claim some advance?

 

[Arachnotronic]

This is quite disappointing. I figured that 20nm for phones was on track since it was the HP that had problems, not the LP. Also, the 810 seemed so promising for 64bit, faster memory support, and hardware h265 which could enable 4K video recording, possibly in 60fps+. And not to speak of the expected improved IPC and clock speed, or at least one of them.

So... what will we get now in the flagships of 2015? Same CPU performance as last year because of lower clockspeeds and possibly a little bit more ram? Everyone bumping to 1440p just to be able to claim some advance?

It's called a "maturing market." Happened in PCs, happening in tabs and phones.

 

[tviceman]

It's too bad that Qualcomm has essentially become the only choice. It's also a shame that Nvidia doesn't seem to be swooping in and offering their Tegra K1 or X1 chips at a high-volume discount. I realize that the Tegra chips would need a discrete modem, but at least we'd have some renewed competition in the smartphone space.

Oh well. I guess this is what happens when no one is willing to think outside the box.

 

[TuxDave]

Not all A57's, it seems.

This leaves the finger pointed at Qualcomm and TSMC’s 20nm chip design, with several analysts suggesting that a “redesign of a few metal layers” may be needed to fix the issue.

Interesting. It sounds like the TSMC 20nm design rules for wiring that Qualcomm used is making wires so slow that the resulting design is exceeding too much power due to over-sized transistors to make up the loss in speed. The second characteristic of an over constrained design dominated by RC delay is that the voltage vs frequency curve becomes excessively steep which makes power even worse at higher frequency.

I'm guessing they will renegotiate new routing rules which may increase the total process cost but allow Qualcomm to do a redesign and realize the power saving. There are several options to do that but it follows the "if you want it faster, you won't get as much back". Resize and reroute (faster to complete but not the best) --> complete re-synthesis (much slower but you get the best results)

 

[Eeqmcsq]

It's called a "maturing market." Happened in PCs, happening in tabs and phones.

Yep. We've had good enough computers, good enough tablets, and now we have good enough smartphones.

Where do we go from here???

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yep. We've had good enough computers, good enough tablets, and now we have good enough smartphones.

Where do we go from here???

Wearables it seems.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Wearables it seems.

Wearables are silly, IMO. Just a desperate attempt from the mobile industry to find the "next big goldmine."