Intel's Medfield SoC: Blazing!

[sciwizam]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones

Keep in mind, this is running Gingerbread.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5365/43533.png

 

[ilkhan]

Even better, more than competitive power consumption:

The actual values are pretty astonishing as well. Sub 20mW idle, sub 750mW during a call on 3G and although not pictured here, Intel's internal data suggests ~1W power consumption while browsing the web compared to ~1.3W on the iPhone 4S and Galaxy S 2. I've done my own measurements on 4S web browsing and came up with a very similar value.

Very nice.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Huh, so Intel made it finally. I always thought that Intel would eventually match ARM with their sheer ability, but I thought it wouldn't be this round.

 

[ponyo]

Interesting. But it says phones using it won't ship til end of the year. So it could be outdated before it's released.

 

[sciwizam]

Interesting. But it says phones using it won't ship til end of the year. So it could be outdated before it's released.

Lenovo said the K800 will go on sale in Q2 in China, hope someone imports one and tests it.

 

[pm]

Lenovo said the K800 will go on sale in Q2 in China, hope someone imports one and tests it.

I work for Intel and there's a pretty good chance that I'd go pretty far out of my way to get my hands on an Intel-powered phone. If it's not ludicrously expensive, and it works on AT&T and the reviews say it's a decent phone, I'll get one.

 

[kaerflog]

I like the reference phone.
I like the design and the resolution isn't too shabby either.
A step above qHD and just below HD.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Very impressive. I'm extremely glad to see another major player in the mobile SoC market.

 

[kaerflog]

With the resource that Intel have, ARM should be scare now.

 

[lothar]

Motorola is their new "special" partner.
I guess those on Verizon should expect a smorgasbord of Intel phones since Motorola releases a new DROID almost every month now.

Would love to see Intel have more partners, not just Motorola that way those who aren't on Verizon would be assured the chance of getting an Intel SoC phone without having to import.

 

[Nintendesert]

Nice, and in typical Intel fashion the GPU performance will suck.

 

[smartpatrol]

That is pretty damn impressive. Those benchmark scores are even better than the Transformer Prime's according to Anandtech's tests http://www.anandtech.com/show/5163/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-nvidia-tegra-3-review/2

Even better, it sounds like we will have a dual-core version of Medfield with a better GPU later this year.

 

[YoungGun21]

Damn I should have just bought the Galaxy Nexus. I know I'm going to end up waiting for the next big thing after seeing all of these cool things at CES

 

[runawayprisoner]

Nice. Good to see Intel finally got a solution.

Though it seems like it'll be quickly outpaced by upcoming 28nm ARM parts (especially quad-core chips with BIG.little designs). Release by end of 2012 is kind of risky in my opinions.

 

[ilkhan]

Damn I should have just bought the Galaxy Nexus. I know I'm going to end up waiting for the next big thing after seeing all of these cool things at CES

I haven't actually seen anything at CES that makes me go "wow". Its all snapdragon S3 and stuff from off brands or 6+ months out.

 

[theeedude]

Damn I should have just bought the Galaxy Nexus. I know I'm going to end up waiting for the next big thing after seeing all of these cool things at CES

At the end of the day, it's a phone. If it does what you want now, why wait?

 

[runawayprisoner]

At the end of the day, it's a phone. If it does what you want now, why wait?

I think he wants what the upcoming phone can do more.

 

[Soccerman06]

Nice. Good to see Intel finally got a solution.

Though it seems like it'll be quickly outpaced by upcoming 28nm ARM parts (especially quad-core chips with BIG.little designs). Release by end of 2012 is kind of risky in my opinions.

And then get demolished by the dual core medfield and 543mp2 thats gonna release by the end of the year.

 

[Fire&Blood]

"By the end of the year" means a Q3-Q4 launch and I sure hope partnerships expand past Motorola before the year is over, at least LG would be nice.

This chip's spanking of A9 is to be taken with a grain of salt in the power draw department, it's 32nm versus 40nm and 45nm parts. It fell short in 3G talk and video playback power draw and the lead in standby and browsing can easily be taken away with a die shrink alone as all competing platforms are due for one.

The sooner it hits the market, the better for consumers but a summer launch would have been great and it doesn't look like it will make it.

And then get demolished by the dual core medfield and 543mp2 thats gonna release by the end of the year.

Not sure that it will do any demolishing if it launches at the same time as SoC's with equal or better GPU on the next gen architecture as opposed to the A9 it's compared to now.
A 28nm quad core S4 with Adreno 320 is also scheduled to hit the market before the end of the year. Again, this is great for the consumer but it would have been ideal if both this and the dual core version could launch in summer to really shake up the market but it doesn't appear to be likely. And even if it doesn't prove to be the best solution when it launches it will be a good alternative at the very least.

 

[TuxDave]

I work for Intel and there's a pretty good chance that I'd go pretty far out of my way to get my hands on an Intel-powered phone. If it's not ludicrously expensive, and it works on AT&T and the reviews say it's a decent phone, I'll get one.

I have a coworker that feels the same way.

I'm pretty impressed with the Austin team. I don't think people realize how many teams are involved to win the smartphone/tablet/ultrabook market segments. It's kind of crazy when you count it up.

 

[IntelUser2000]

http://hothardware.com/printarticle.aspx?articleid=1788

Intel's other performance improvements to Saltwell include faster memory copy routines, "improved performance of certain microcode flows",and a reduction in instruction scheduling restrictions.

IPC improvements, no matter how little, are appreciated. I expect close to 10%, which includes more memory BW.

I think Motorola might wait for the dual core variant. So the single core variant is announced now(which is early Q1), with the product in Q2. Say dual core is announced middle of the year with products at Q4.

 

[zsdersw]

The bigger accomplishment, IMO, isn't in how it stacks up to future ARM-based SoCs, but that x86 can be competitive in terms of power consumption. Up until now, many believed x86 couldn't do it and that it wouldn't have a realistic place in smartphones/tablets... but Intel said and proved that it can.

 

[Fox5]

Impressive, but Javascript benchmarks don't benefit heavily from multiple cores, at least compared to some other benchmarks.

On the other hand, browsing is the only performance intensive thing most people do on phones.

 

[Dulanic]

Impressive and exciting news. The mobile device market is changing every day and it is damn exciting. However, the 2 year contracts suck when it's changing so fast!

 

[alent1234]

any word on the price? the numbers are useless if Intel charges too much or the design costs are too high of going with this CPU over ARM