Discussion Samsung Exynos SoC thread

[FlameTail]

I never said that M cores are crappy, or there is anything wrong with them. The thing is I doubt you need 6 of them in the mobile SoC other than to boost benchmark scores. If all the background tasks can be handled by a cluster of 4 A520 cores, then 4 M cores will definitely be able to handle them sufficiently.

Ah, here's the thing:

Qualcomm is using the Oryon-M cores not only for efficiency but also for sustained MT throughput. That's why they are calling them "Performance Cores"

Essentially, the Oryon-M cores in Snapdragon 8 Elite take up the duties performed by both Cortex A7xx and Cortex A5xx in previous Snapdragon chips.

 

[MS_AT]

Ah, here's the thing:

Qualcomm is using the Oryon-M cores not only for efficiency but also for sustained MT throughput. That's why they are calling them "Performance Cores"
View attachment 110197
Essentially, the Oryon-M cores in Snapdragon 8 Elite take up the duties performed by both Cortex A7xx and Cortex A5xx in previous Snapdragon chips.

And what is the sustained MT throughput you need in mobile phone other than benchmarks?

I mean it's not that I am saying it's bad they added them. I doubt they would charge less for the SoC if there were fewer of them

All I am saying is that that could do well with 2+4 configuration matching what Apple is doing, but the decision to include 6 was motivated by the marketing as it would look bad if they had fewer than 8 cores next to android competition and they would not get the MT win in Geekbench vs Apple what looks good in the slides

 

[FlameTail]

All I am saying is that that could do well with 2+4 configuration matching what Apple is doing, but the decision to include 6 was motivated by the marketing as it would look bad if they had fewer than 8 cores next to android competition and they would not get the MT win in Geekbench vs Apple what looks good in the slides

I would argue that putting 6 Oryon-M cores is actually a sensible engineering decision.

//

Geekerwan review have shown that Oryon-M is not as efficient as A18-E.

It's close, but there is a gap nonetheless.

What this means is that in terms of efficiency;

[4 Oryon-M] < [4 A18-E]

By putting 2 more Oryon-M cores, they made it more efficency than Apple.

[6 Oryon-M] > [A18-E]

This is due to the nature of Voltage-Frequency curves. As frequency increases, voltage increases exponentially. So power consumption also increases exponentially.

By putting more cores, you can run then at a lower frequency (and thus at a lower power consumption) to match the same performance level.


That is exactly what you are seeing in this GB6 MT curve.

Qualcomm's cores are individually less efficient than Apple's, but Qualcomm put more of them. Hence why in this MT power curve, 8 Elite is more efficient than A18 Pro at the lower part of the curve.

//

 

[MS_AT]

I would argue that putting 6 Oryon-M cores is actually a sensible engineering decision.

//

Geekerwan review have shown that Oryon-M is not as efficient as A18-E.
View attachment 110198
It's close, but there is a gap nonetheless.

What this means is that in terms of efficiency;

[4 Oryon-M] < [4 A18-E]

By putting 2 more Oryon-M cores, they made it more efficency than Apple.

[6 Oryon-M] > [A18-E]

This is due to the nature of Voltage-Frequency curves. As frequency increases, voltage increases exponentially. So power consumption also increases exponentially.

By putting more cores, you can run then at a lower frequency (and thus at a lower power consumption) to match the same performance level.

View attachment 110200
That is exactly what you are seeing in this GB6 MT curve.

Qualcomm's cores are individually less efficient than Apple's, but Qualcomm put more of them. Hence why in this MT power curve, 8 Elite is more efficient than A18 Pro at the lower part of the curve.

//

Yes, this is the idea behind adding more weaker cores. Your analysis seems valid but is missing data, I mean we don't how power is being assigned to the individual cores. Are all 8 cores active or maybe it's just 2+2. And until somebody measures that we won't have definitive answer if one can be had Anyway I am afraid we went too far from the original topic of this thread. Maybe we should move further discussion back to the Qualcomm one?

 

[DZero]

If Apple puts 2 E cores more in their next phones, not only will help their IA functions, also would retake the MT crown.

 

[FlameTail]

If Apple puts 2 E cores more in their next phones, not only will help their IA functions, also would retake the MT crown.

That is not guaranteed, because Qualcomm's "E-cores" are much more performant than Apple's.


Oryon-M has 2x the peak performance of A18-E.

 

[adroc_thurston]

That is not guaranteed, because Qualcomm's "E-cores" are much more performant than Apple's.

Well, yeah, they're something closer to Skymont or Zen4c than any actual real LITTLEs like what Apple ships.

 

[FlameTail]

Well, yeah, they're something closer to Skymont or Zen4c than any actual real LITTLEs like what Apple ships.

Absolute performance wise yes.

But IPC, core area and scale of the architecture are similar between Oryon-M and A18-E.

Oryon-M is faster because it clocks higher (3.53 GHz vs 2.2 GHz).

 

[DZero]

Absolute performance wise yes.

But IPC, core area and scale of the architecture are similar between Oryon-M and A18-E.

Oryon-M is faster because it clocks higher (3.53 GHz vs 2.2 GHz).

But has higher consumption and that would hurt battery life.

Meanwhile, return to Exynos, why they announced that chip early? That would mean that they will use the chip on the S10 FE tabs instead of 1480?

 

[adroc_thurston]

But has higher consumption and that would hurt battery life.

Sort of. For BL numbers in LITTLE your main factor is joules spent per workload.
That's why all the good LITTLEs are pretty beefy OoO machines with sizeable 'nuff power floors.