The Intel Atom Thread

[mikk]

A couple of more tests:


http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-at...sting_123335/3
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Process...vermont-Arrive
http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/4792...tition-for-arm
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Betti...Tested/?page=1

Multithreaded performance puts Bay Trail and AMD's Kabini at similar performance levels. Once again, looking at SoC power however the Atom Z3770 pulls around 2.5W in this test.

For what its worth, Bay Trail SoC power during the multithreaded 7-Zip benchmark was between 1.9W - 2.5W.

Measuring power at the battery we found that both BT (Bay Trail) and CT (Clover Trail) systems were using approximately 2.6 watts at idle in Windows 8. That is not the SoC power draw, but the entire system including display and accessories. When we fired up a web browser and loaded up CNN’s website, BT used 2.9 watts while CT drew a bit more at 3.2 watts.

Video playback was tested both streaming and with 1080p local content and Bay Trail used about half of a watt less power consistently.

While gaming or running other tasks we continued to find that BT and CT were using very similar levels of power though performance varied pretty dramatically. Take a typical run of SunSpider where the Bay Trail platform SoC pulled about 1.4 watts (CPU + GPU) while the Clover Trail SoC was slightly lower at 1.25 watts (CPU + GPU).

Looks like under Singlecore load the SoC consumes 1.x W and under multithread load it consumes in the 2.xW range. This is extemely good. Other ARM high-end SoC like the A15 need more than 5W while performing worse.

 

[monstercameron]

I'll wait for the tock on 14nm, might upgrade my desktop then and finally get the windows x64 tablet I always dreamed about :thumbsup:

Honestly at this point what's the point of ARM?

Inferior design with an inferior OS... Whats to stop Intel? The complaints about Windows 8 are from desktop users, tablet isn't nearly as poorly received it's just the hardware performance hasn't been there but it's quite obviously coming quite quickly.

this posts seem like throwup, inferior design? like the low power draw that intel has just started targeting? inferior os? you do know that linux and windows run on arm too?

 

[krumme]

Now Intel can beat AMD in windows tablet market and comming 2014 mobile variants will beat the s600 in android for cpu performance.
Asus, acer and dell will soon give multiple design wins
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/intc

 

[Khato]

Looks like under Singlecore load the SoC consumes 1.x W and under multithread load it consumes in the 2.xW range. This is extemely good. Other ARM high-end SoC like the A15 need more than 5W while performing worse.

Thanks for the further links - yay for more reading material with a few more interesting tidbits. And you're quite correct about the above - not many realize just how much power the current generation of ARM SoCs draw under load because reviews don't test battery life for that scenario. They just do typical usage battery life tests which is primarily idle time.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

this posts seem like throwup, inferior design? like the low power draw that intel has just started targeting? inferior os? you do know that linux and windows run on arm too?

Yes I would say ARM is inferior in scale and scope to x86.

Perhaps you would disagree, which is fine by me.

All of which are inferior to their x86 counterparts.

Feel free to disagree with me though, of course.

 

[sontin]

Now Intel can beat AMD in windows tablet market and comming 2014 mobile variants will beat the s600 in android for cpu performance.
Asus, acer and dell will soon give multiple design wins
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/intc

Intel will go against Tegra 4i (1W TDP) and the successor of S600.

 

[monstercameron]

Yes I would say ARM is inferior in scale and scope to x86.

Perhaps you would disagree, which is fine by me.

All of which are inferior to their x86 counterparts.

Feel free to disagree with me though, of course.

how is it "inferior," it is good, don't get me wrong but how is x86 better than arm save for legacy reasons?

 

[Sweepr]

Intel says Bay Trail-M and -D have combined for over 140 design wins already. Looks like the new "Silvermont" Atom architecture will be everywhere this holiday season.

www.theverge.com/2012/7/17/3165828/intel-20-atom-based-windows-8-tablets-in-the-pipeline-and-140

 

[bullzz]

@SiliconWars
yes, baytrail is not in a nexus/galaxy/ipad. but it doesnt have to be. we are talking abt $300 win8 tablets. at the height of its sale, they are possibly going to be sold at $250. now tell me, $230 n7 vs $330 ipad mini vs $250 win8 tablets. people with the right mind would pick the win8 one

 

[monstercameron]

Intel will go against Tegra 4i (1W TDP) and the successor of S600.

i have only glimpsed a single reference to t4i, do you know of any of its design wins?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

how is it "inferior," it is good, don't get me wrong but how is x86 better than arm save for legacy reasons?

Well to start go run an ARM os for your desktop and let me know how you feel about it

 

[sontin]

i have only glimpsed a single reference to t4i, do you know of any of its design wins?

How many design wins has Merrifield?

 

[Khato]

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Betti...Tested/?page=1

Still don't have information on screen brightness, but according to this one 1080p video playback on the Baytrail tablet was only 2.67W. Definitely a good indication.

 

[Blandge]

With AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm all competing for our business... This will be very good for us consumers.

 

[monstercameron]

How many design wins has Merrifield?

dunno? you tell me...

 

[SlimFan]

No need of BTs numbers , laws of physics are the same
for everybody , power draw increase linearly/frequency
and as a power law/voltage and there s no way to increase
frequency without increasing VDD to keep on acceptable
stability margin.

Edit : the 60% number is arbitrary in that it s very optimistic ,
actualy it s way more than 60% for , as said , 40%
faster execution......

The laws of physics are absolutely the same, but the physical implementations are different.

If I can scale perfectly with frequency (challenging, but it makes the math easier), then without changing the voltage, it's a 1:1 tradeoff. 40% more performance for exactly 40% more power.

If I have to raise the voltage (which is highly likely), the question becomes "how much." If I have to go from 0.8V to 1.0V, then it's squared so 1/.64 = 56% more CPU active energy. If I only go from 0.9V to 1.0V, then it's 1/.81 = 1.23x more active energy.

The early reports say a single core burns peak power of about 1 watt. The screen seems to burn 2. Plus DRAM. Plus graphics. So really the question is, is it worth 25-50% more active CPU power in order to have the entire system run faster. To say it the other way, would I "save" 200mW in order to make everything take 50% longer?

My answer would be "go faster!"

 

[SiliconWars]

@SiliconWars
yes, baytrail is not in a nexus/galaxy/ipad. but it doesnt have to be. we are talking abt $300 win8 tablets. at the height of its sale, they are possibly going to be sold at $250. now tell me, $230 n7 vs $330 ipad mini vs $250 win8 tablets. people with the right mind would pick the win8 one

I agree. Problem is so far all we've seen is a $330 Toshiba with a crap screen.

 

[krumme]

Intel will go against Tegra 4i (1W TDP) and the successor of S600.

Intel in the phone market will go against the successor to s800. How is that going to work?

The bt phone variant is going to have worse gpu performance than s600.

Its just not, not enough. Its worse. There is absolutely no insentive to move from arm for the important players. It needed to be huge step all over.

Armv8 is here and a57 a53 derivatives from qualcomm and others is comming h1.

This fine cpu would have worked beeing launched perhaps one year or half ago. Had s800 not existed and especially windows for tablets been welcomed by consumers. But the situation turned out different and it has nothing to do with the bt itself.

There is no need to talk about next version. Look at arm progress its going freaking fast. It needed to be now.

 

[blackened23]

Intel in the phone market will go against the successor to s800. How is that going to work?

The snapdragon 800 is primarily a tablet chip - there are no phones in the US using the snapdragon 800. LG is rumored to be working on a snapdragon 800 phone, so that makes a grand total of ONE PHONE for the snapdragon 800. And I don't think that one is being released in the US although I could be wrong.

Kudos to you for enlightening us with that bit of information. Intel is competing against a phone that has one design win. Intel is well poised for the phone market, the biggest hindrance right now is LTE integration. Intel will have LTE advanced early next year, so it is a work in progress but they will get there.

The 800 is for tablets, primarily.

 

[VengenceIsMine]

Yeah the CPU numbers are downright incredible for that power. Remember that Jaguar has PCI-E etc so power draw was always going to be much better on Silvermont, but the performance is something else.

Gee, if only someone had told you this over a week ago.... Oh wait, I did but you were too full of yourself to listen....

 

[VengenceIsMine]

The snapdragon 800 is primarily a tablet chip - there are no phones in the US using the snapdragon 800. LG is rumored to be working on a snapdragon 800 phone, so that makes a grand total of ONE PHONE for the snapdragon 800. And I don't think that one is being released in the US although I could be wrong.

Kudos to you for enlightening us with that bit of information. Intel is competing against a phone that has one design win. Intel is well poised for the phone market, the biggest hindrance right now is LTE integration. Intel will have LTE advanced early next year, so it is a work in progress but they will get there.

The 800 is for tablets, primarily.

The snapdragon 800 phones will be here in the next 30-60 days, LG, Nokia and others.

 

[SiliconWars]

Gee, if only someone had told you this over a week ago.... Oh wait, I did but you were too full of yourself to listen....

I already knew what the performance was going to be like months ago, the only question was power.

But feel free to tell me how close to 70%? faster than S800 it was, by your own single Windows benchmark.

 

[krumme]

The snapdragon 800 is primarily a tablet chip - there are no phones in the US using the snapdragon 800. LG is rumored to be working on a snapdragon 800 phone, so that makes a grand total of ONE PHONE for the snapdragon 800. And I don't think that one is being released in the US although I could be wrong.

Kudos to you for enlightening us with that bit of information. Intel is competing against a phone that has one design win. Intel is well poised for the phone market, the biggest hindrance right now is LTE integration. Intel will have LTE advanced early next year, so it is a work in progress but they will get there.

The 800 is for tablets, primarily.

Wellcome to fall 2013 and the big world with +6b humans
What about doing some fact checking yourself here at anandtech
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7251/lg-g2-and-msm8974-snapdragon-800-a-quick-look
S800 is a very lean and power efficient soc. More so than s600. But 30-50% higher performing.
Stop dreaming. S800 is going into phones all over the world and s600 is middle segment now.

 

[monstercameron]

The snapdragon 800 is primarily a tablet chip - there are no phones in the US using the snapdragon 800. LG is rumored to be working on a snapdragon 800 phone, so that makes a grand total of ONE PHONE for the snapdragon 800. And I don't think that one is being released in the US although I could be wrong.

Kudos to you for enlightening us with that bit of information. Intel is competing against a phone that has one design win. Intel is well poised for the phone market, the biggest hindrance right now is LTE integration. Intel will have LTE advanced early next year, so it is a work in progress but they will get there.

The 800 is for tablets, primarily.

read a little http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/09/lg-g2-review/

 

[sawtx]

The snapdragon 800 is primarily a tablet chip - there are no phones in the US using the snapdragon 800. LG is rumored to be working on a snapdragon 800 phone, so that makes a grand total of ONE PHONE for the snapdragon 800. And I don't think that one is being released in the US although I could be wrong.

You are talking about the LG G2, which launches tomorrow on Verizon and then the rest of the major carriers by the end of the month. Officially there are 2 Snapdragon 800 phones, the G2 and the Xperia Z Ultra.