Samsung Exynos Thread (big.LITTLE Octa-core)

[Arachnotronic]

i dont know why samsung is trying to get at any cost an s820 on the upcoming s7?!

is qualcomm giving them for free?

the s810 was a complete failure and even watercooled it still performs worse then an exynos 7420 as showed by linustechtips.

Easy. If Snapdragon 820 is a success, then Samsung not only gets a good part for its phones, but since it's fabbed on Samsung 14LPP, Samsung will basically sneak its way into basically every flagship phone.

 

[Andrei.]

Easy. If Snapdragon 820 is a success, then Samsung not only gets a good part for its phones, but since it's fabbed on Samsung 14LPP, Samsung will basically sneak its way into basically every flagship phone.

The mobile division doesn't care if the semiconductor division gets more sales or not (The S7 it'll be 100% Samsung silicon anyway).

I think it's more about weird mobile division contracts with Qualcomm and maybe again modem related stuff.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The mobile division doesn't care if the semiconductor division gets more sales or not (The S7 it'll be 100% Samsung silicon anyway).

In theory, but in practice I doubt that Samsung Mobile is truly impartial.

I think it's more about weird mobile division contracts with Qualcomm and maybe again modem related stuff.

Can you elaborate?

 

[StrangerGuy]

In theory, but in practice I doubt that Samsung Mobile is truly impartial.

Well, their foundry business certainly can't be picky to reject Qualcomm's business anymore. Demand for premium Android devices and associated SoCs are already dying for some time now, growth in shipments of Android phones are screeching to a halt due to saturation (and I bet will easily go into negative territory next year) and Apple is dumping them for TSMC at A10.

The real world usability gap between a $150 device and a flagship will dwindle to virtually nothing next year, and the Android ecosystem is much worse in leveraging the potential of bleeding edge SoCs than iOS. No doubt spec nerds will be salivating over Geekbench scores when the reality is these chips are very nice bridges to nowhere.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Well, their foundry business certainly can't be picky to reject Qualcomm's business anymore. Demand for premium Android devices and associated SoCs are already dying for some time now, growth in shipments of Android phones are screeching to a halt due to saturation (and I bet will easily go into negative territory next year) and Apple is dumping them for TSMC at A10.

I agree. iPhone 6/6 Plus wrought havoc on the "premium" (I dislike this word to describe phones...) Android phone market and unless Apple really screws up ($53B in NET PROFIT last fiscal year says they've got this), this is going to be the Mac all over again -- Apple has all of the profits and continues to gain share at the high end of the market.

The real world usability gap between a $150 device and a flagship will dwindle to virtually nothing next year, and the Android ecosystem is much worse in leveraging the potential of bleeding edge SoCs than iOS. No doubt spec nerds will be salivating over Geekbench scores when the reality is these chips are very nice bridges to nowhere.

If I were to use an Android phone as my daily driver (I am an iPhone user), I'd probably use a Nexus 5X -- and even that is probably on the edge of what I would want to spend on an Android phone for personal use. I just hate the skins that most of these Android vendors try to put on top of Android -- these companies need to face that their UI design teams really suck.

 

[kpkp]

Apple has all of the profits and continues to gain share at the high end of the market.

It's not about Apple gaining share, it's more about Android phones showing that "premium" price tier is becoming more and more pointless.

If I were to use an Android phone as my daily driver (I am an iPhone user), I'd probably use a Nexus 5X -- and even that is probably on the edge of what I would want to spend on an Android phone for personal use.

That's fascinating to me, how does an iPhone provide you 2X the value?

 

[Arachnotronic]

That's fascinating to me, how does an iPhone provide you 2X the value?

iOS is much more pleasant to use than Android to me as it's more intuitive and frankly smoother. I also just like iPhones. They are very well crafted, well engineered devices that I probably enjoy using more than any other computing device for basic tasks.

I have never owned an Android phone that I actually enjoyed using -- just ones that I've tolerated.

Additionally, resale value on the iPhones is great. Once you make the initial plunge, the cost to upgrade to the latest iPhone each year after selling the old one is just a couple hundred dollars. For a device that I use as much as the iPhone, a couple hundred bucks a year to have the best is not all that painful.

Resale value on Android phones is very poor.

 

[dawheat]

The mobile division doesn't care if the semiconductor division gets more sales or not (The S7 it'll be 100% Samsung silicon anyway).

I think it's more about weird mobile division contracts with Qualcomm and maybe again modem related stuff.

I know the divisions are supposed to work independently and certainly Samsung mobile has used other components if they are better, but this does feel like both groups helping out each other.

The foundry business is printing money right now and they want to keep their 14nm node on high ASP items. The Exynos M1 has the potential to be a differentiator vs everyone else so Samsung Mobile probably doesn't want all OEMs using it in their flagship devices next year. So to keep the rest of the foundry business full with high margin items, the Mobile group agrees to use the S820 in some markets (which is critical for Qualcomm as Samsung sells more Android flagships than everyone else combined) as long as it's built by their foundries.

So Samsung mobile gets a potentially "better" SOC in many markets and a very good one in the US and other LTE markets where Qualcomm's modems are better. The foundary business stays full another year with high ASP items.

 

[imported_ats]

It's not about Apple gaining share, it's more about Android phones showing that "premium" price tier is becoming more and more pointless.


That's fascinating to me, how does an iPhone provide you 2X the value?

Now? It largely doesn't need to. Apple has a decided first mover advantage here. They were able to lock up most of the high value customers early on and many just don't want the hassle of changing ecosystems just to save a little bit of money or generally don't care about the cost. And Apple still tends to sell fairly cutting edge devices with customer facing features and integration that in large part is still ahead of everyone else.

At the other end, the android devices with comparable features/performance/ID cost almost as much and don't really save you anything, and the majority of the Android installed based is of the second mover variety who are often more cost conscious.

And some is just Fashion. Apple is a high Fashion brand at this point in the phone market. That makes the iPhone somewhat of an aspirational purchase.

 

[krumme]

M1 rumored to enter mass production december. S7 unveil jan.
http://www.gsmarena.com/exynos_8890...nuary_unveil_for_the_galaxy_s7-news-14937.php

 

[Arachnotronic]

M1 rumored to enter mass production december. S7 unveil jan.
http://www.gsmarena.com/exynos_8890...nuary_unveil_for_the_galaxy_s7-news-14937.php

If it's using a Snap 820, then unlikely to be true. Qualcomm has said that 820 doesn't start impacting the co's financials until 2H of its fiscal 2016 which begins in late March/early April.

 

[Sweepr]

Current rumour says 50/50 split between Mongoose and S820 units. M1 35% better performance than 7420.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Current rumour says 50/50 split between Mongoose and S820 units. M1 35% better performance than 7420.

This is pretty believable; back to the usual way of things pre-7420

 

[DeathReborn]

Current rumour says 50/50 split between Mongoose and S820 units. M1 35% better performance than 7420.

The good news for the UK (and rest of EU I believe) is that we get the Mongoose variant.

 

[Sweepr]

The good news for the UK (and rest of EU I believe) is that we get the Mongoose variant.

We usually get Exynos here too.
I'm confident Exynos 8890 will outperform S820 and it will be interesting to see how it compares to A9.
Particularly A9's PowerVR GT7600 is not going to be easy to beat. Assuming they will use Mali again and not PowerVR or the long-promised custom iGPU I think Samsung might be able to match/surpass Apple with a high-clocked Mali T880MP8 implementation.

Here's Mali T880MP4 @ Kirin 950:

 

[AtenRa]

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/engl...-ranks-first-smartphone-sales-5-world-regions

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
9 November 2015 - 11:15am
Marie Kim

Samsung Electronics ranked first in terms of smartphone sales in the third quarter in five regions in the world, except for North America.

According to market research firm Strategy Analytics (SA) on Nov. 8, Samsung Electronics showed the highest smartphone sales in five regions – Western Europe, the Asia Pacific, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa – in the third quarter.

By region, Samsung sold 15.3 million smartphones in Western Europe, 23.2 million in the Asia Pacific, 11.8 million in Central and South America, 6.9 million in Eastern Europe and 16.1 million in Middle East and Africa. In particular, the company saw a sales increase of 3 million units from the previous quarter in the Middle East and Africa, accounting for a 52.1 percent market share.

In contrast, Samsung failed to dominate the North American market this year again. In the third quarter, the company had a 26 percent share in the North American market, falling short of Apple with 33 percent by 7 percentage points. The company sold 10.5 million units in the market.

 

[Arachnotronic]

We usually get Exynos here too.
I'm confident Exynos 8890 will outperform S820 and it will be interesting to see how it compares to A9.

I'm curious, what gives you this confidence?

 

[Sweepr]

I'm curious, what gives you this confidence?

The fact that they did a great job with Exynos 7420 and want to surpass Apple in benchmarks again.
Also traditionally Exynos offers better CPU performance than its Snapdragon contemporaries, and starting with Exynos 5433 a year ago and then Exynos 7420 graphics performance (long time disadvantage) was basically equal or better.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The fact that they did a great job with Exynos 7420 and want to surpass Apple in benchmarks again.
Also traditionally Exynos offers better CPU performance than its Snapdragon contemporaries, and starting with Exynos 5433 a year ago and then Exynos 7420 graphics performance (long time disadvantage) was basically equal or better.

There is quite a world of difference between Apple and Samsung in terms of quality/aggressiveness of their CPU design teams, and the delta favors Apple based on everything I know. Although given Samsung's corporate ethics (http://english.cw.com.tw/article.do?action=show&id=14895), who knows if they may have taken a "peek" at what Apple was doing with the A9 to spec out Mongoose

I don't think Mongoose will be all that competitive with A9 in terms of perf/watt. Against Kryo, however, Mongoose may have a chance since Qualcomm's CPU division seems to have really dropped the ball lately and the lack of benchmarks at the Snapdragon 820 "launch" is kind of a red flag.

 

[Sweepr]

There is quite a world of difference between Apple and Samsung in terms of quality/aggressiveness of their CPU design teams, and the delta favors Apple.

I don't think Mongoose will be all that competitive with A9. Against Kryo, however, Mongoose may have a chance.

As great as A9 is, an early Cortex-A72 Geekbench ST score (up to 2.3GHz) is already >1700 points. I don't think Mongoose will be slower than Cortex A72 cores, so if they break the 2000 barrier while offering more cores than Apple in their phones they will have a winner in my book. Lower power consumption than earlier Exynos would be a plus too. Ideally I would like something like Qualcomm is doing, 2 high-clocked + 2 low-clocked Mongoose cores, but there's that Geekbench leak pointing to another 8-core design.

 

[lopri]

New Snapdragon 820 scores

ST: 2140
MT: 4762

https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/4157755

 

[Andrei.]

Exynos 8890 is official (Damn their Korean news releases while I'm sleeping)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9781/samsung-announces-exynos-8890

Mali T880MP12, that's massive. Expecting it to match or surpass the A9.

 

[Nothingness]

Exynos 8890 is official (Damn their Korean news releases while I'm sleeping)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9781/samsung-announces-exynos-8890

Mali T880MP12, that's massive. Expecting it to match or surpass the A9.

I guess you mean GPU-wise.

 

[Andrei.]

I guess you mean GPU-wise.

Yes. Although CPU is supposed to be quite something as well. Their PR team isn't that great so those 30% perf/ 10% efficiency numbers can mean anything. They vastly undersold the 7420 last time.

 

[vissarix]

The exynos 7420 is already faster in multithread benchmarks by quite a margin compared to apple a9...5400 vs 4500

A9 is faster on st and graphics performance...and im sure the next exynos would at last catch up on graphics and will still be slower in st but wider the margin on mt by quite a bit...