The first Silvermont phone is rumored to be the 5" Lenovo Vibe X2-TO, with a Merrifield SoC at 2.2GHz. Unfortunately, this won't be the main version of the phone; the regular X2 has a MediaTek SoC.
The phone portion of the ASUS Transformer Book V, that was announced at Computex 2014, will use Intel's Moorefield SoC.The first Silvermont phone is rumored to be the 5" Lenovo Vibe X2-TO, with a Merrifield SoC at 2.2GHz. Unfortunately, this won't be the main version of the phone; the regular X2 has a MediaTek SoC.
The first Silvermont phone is rumored to be the 5" Lenovo Vibe X2-TO, with a Merrifield SoC at 2.2GHz. Unfortunately, this won't be the main version of the phone; the regular X2 has a MediaTek SoC.
Why Merrifield and not Moorefield? 2 SLM cores is no match for 4x A17s...
Silvermont probably has a higher IPC frequency, and lower power consumption. 4 cores is mostly important in benchmarks, so let's wait for reviews.
The phone portion of the ASUS Transformer Book V, that was announced at Computex 2014, will use Intel's Moorefield SoC.
The ASUS FonePad 7 (FE375CG) with Moorefield is launching in China later today.
4x A17 @ 2GHz should theoretically be faster than 2x Silvermont @ 2.13GHz. But yes, you're right, let's wait on the reviews.
You place the phone in the tablet, you place the tablet in the laptop.So is that phone a totally separate device, or does it detach from the tablet/laptop somehow?
Cortex-A17 should have an IPC close to Cortex-A15, so I wouldn't be surprised if it came very close or even beat Silvermont. OTOH the GPU in the Merrifield version of the phone is much better and we all know how much the GPU matters.From memory, Silvermont has about the same IPC as A15 (Source: AT SLM), and A17 should be slower because it's a re branded A12. I haven't looked at benchmarks in quite some time, so maybe I am wrong.
Cortex-A17 should have an IPC close to Cortex-A15, so I wouldn't be surprised if it came very close or even beat Silvermont. OTOH the GPU in the Merrifield version of the phone is much better and we all know how much the GPU matters.
BTW I'm not sure any public Cortex-A12 benchmark is available.
Issue width is not the whole story Anand wrote this:I have to read the A12 coverage of AT, but I'd be surprised if the A12 comes quite close. Although Silvermont is dual-issue, it has some CISC tricks to make it wider than it appears to be.
ABI Research also claims that A17 has 0.9 performance of A15 while consuming about half as much.The Cortex A17 name was deliberately chosen as ARM expects to be able to deliver similar performance to the Cortex A15 (in mobile apps/benchmarks, likely not in absolute performance), but in a much smaller area and at a lower power. I can't help but wonder if this is what the Cortex A15 should have been from the very beginning, at least for mobile applications.
Issue width is not the whole story Anand wrote this:
ABI Research also claims that A17 has 0.9 performance of A15 while consuming about half as much.
I hope we'll soon see some real benchmarks rather than such claims, but if this is correct then CPU-wise the Merrifield phone and the A17 phone should be close. But again it looks like the Merrifield GPU is beefier (and IMHO 2 cores is a better fit for phones).
Indeed. Too bad it comes one year too late...It's pretty impressive what ARM was able to do with the A17.
Indeed. Too bad it comes one year too late...
It's pretty impressive what ARM was able to do with the A17.
Probably as long as ARM can't deliver compelling, efficient cores (A15, anyone) in time. I doubt A57 will be such a core, but its TTM is better than Qualcomm's own core, so that helps.Quite honestly, I wonder how long companies like Qualcomm will continue doing custom cores when ARM's continue to get better and better?
Why?
And do you have benchmarks with performance, power consumption and efficiency?
And the fact that it's so late to market makes it a lot less impressive. If AMD or Apple delivers Sandy Bridge performance when Skylake it out, no one will find that impressive either.
Probably as long as ARM can't deliver compelling, efficient cores (A15, anyone) in time. I doubt A57 will be such a core, but its TTM is better than Qualcomm's own core, so that helps.
You place the phone in the tablet, you place the tablet in the laptop.
http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-transformer-book-v/
Moorefield SoC for phone and tablet, and there's probably Core M in the laptop (and 2 more GB of RAM).
The A17 sounds like a great core for normal smartphones (i.e. not overpriced phablet flagships). A big.LITTLE with 2 A17s and 2 A7s sounds about right.
Interesting, but it doesn't seem like A12/17 will be used much, since Qualcomm will go straight to A57. A17 probably wasn't a big upgrade compared to Krait anyway. Since Qualcomm has 100% market share in flagship phones, A12 probably won't harm Intel too much.
Here is a Geekbench comparison of Cortex-A12 @1.8GHz vs Z3745 @1.86GHz. I guess it's Cortex-A12 because the part number is 3085 while it should be 3087 for Cortex-A17.
It looks like my previous claim of C-A1[27] IPC being close to Silvermont IPC was correct.
What impresses me about ARM more than anything else is how quickly they can spin new cores/revisions with meaningful changes/improvements.