Next Gen Exynos laughs at your Tegra 3

Bateluer

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Jun 23, 2001
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http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/30/new-samsung-chip-has-two-of-everything-two-cores-2ghz-2560-x/

Sammy's current Cortex A9-based chips are hardly slackers -- the Galaxy Note already proved that to any lingering doubters. Nevertheless, the next-gen Exynos 5250 SoC promises to double that sort of performance, by harnessing two Cortex-A15 chips clocked at 2GHz each, along with a GPU that can output resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 (WQXGA). It's like big.LITTLE computing, except without the LITTLE. Samsung reckons it'll start mass producing the 5250 for use in high-end tablets by the second quarter of next year, which should be just in time to stop NVIDIA from getting too cocky

But, allegedly, we will be seeing sub-300 dollar Tegra 3 tablets around the same time. So, Tegra 3 tab for under 300, or Exynos 5250 for over 500?
 

Mopetar

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Jan 31, 2011
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That date is so far off that we might as well say the Tegra 4 will laugh at whatever Samsung comes out with, even though it probably won't show up for at least half a year after the next Exynos is released.

Unless it's shipping in the same time frame, it's somewhat pointless to talk about how it's better than something else available now, or in the immediate future.

Unless we start getting tablets with retina displays, I don't see much of a need for more powerful chips. The kind of apps that can actually take advantage of these chips aren't here yet. It would be better to design more efficient SoCs that can extend the battery life of these devices, especially phones.
 

Bateluer

Lifer
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Unless we start getting tablets with retina displays, I don't see much of a need for more powerful chips. The kind of apps that can actually take advantage of these chips aren't here yet. It would be better to design more efficient SoCs that can extend the battery life of these devices, especially phones.

Retina displays are really the ultimate in checkbox features. Its more advantageous to use more powerful SoCs, add RAM, storage, etc than to increase the display resolution right now. Even at 1280x800, the Tegra 3 produce highly detailed games on the level of PC hardware. Ditty for the A5/SGX543 at 1024x768. When we see Witcher 2 level detail at 1280x800 from SoCs, then we can talk.
 

Medu

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http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/30/new-samsung-chip-has-two-of-everything-two-cores-2ghz-2560-x/



But, allegedly, we will be seeing sub-300 dollar Tegra 3 tablets around the same time. So, Tegra 3 tab for under 300, or Exynos 5250 for over 500?

The cost of a high end SoC is ~$20. So for there to be a $200 difference then the NV tablet would need to be of far lower quality all round. Of course a Exynos 5250 tablet will probably come with a ~2500*1600 display which will be a huge factor in the cost.
 

Mopetar

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Jan 31, 2011
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Retina displays are really the ultimate in checkbox features. Its more advantageous to use more powerful SoCs, add RAM, storage, etc than to increase the display resolution right now. Even at 1280x800, the Tegra 3 produce highly detailed games on the level of PC hardware. Ditty for the A5/SGX543 at 1024x768. When we see Witcher 2 level detail at 1280x800 from SoCs, then we can talk.

Sure there are a few games that can max out these chips, but they're fewer and vastly less popular than games like Angry Birds which run fine even on hardware from years ago.

I don't game on my tablet and would rather have a company focus on building an SoC that can give me an extra few hours of battery life than one that can theoretically pump out millions of pixels I'll never use.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
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Which products will be using this chip and when are they set to show up? It sounds like a nice chip but if we dont see products by the 3rd qtr we may as well see what Wayne has to offer.
 

poofyhairguy

Lifer
Nov 20, 2005
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which should be just in time to stop NVIDIA from getting too cocky

Not in the eyes of regular consumers, no.

4 cores > 2 cores

More is always better as a general consumer rule, and even people who don't understand tech know 4 is more than 2.
 

dguy6789

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Dec 9, 2002
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I'd take a 1.5Ghz quad core A9 based SOC over a dual core 2Ghz A15 setup any day of the week for exactly the same reason I'd take a 1Ghz dual core over a 1.5Ghz single core.
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
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I'd take a 1.5Ghz quad core A9 based SOC over a dual core 2Ghz A15 setup

Based on this, I'm betting the dual core(dual-dual core?) A15 will easily trounce today's A9 designs. But, by the time this A15 Exynos arrives, we'll also have OMAP5, Tegra 4, and whatever Qualcomm brings to the table. We can salivate over the power of these SoCs, but its all paper for another 6-8 months. :(

he ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore is a multicore ARM architecture processor providing an out-of-order superscalar pipeline ARM v7 instruction set running at up to 2.5 GHz.[6] ARM has confirmed that the Cortex A15 core is 40 percent faster than the Cortex-A9 core, all things equal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A15_MPCore
 

ChronoReverse

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Mar 4, 2004
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I'd take a 1.5Ghz quad core A9 based SOC over a dual core 2Ghz A15 setup any day of the week for exactly the same reason I'd take a 1Ghz dual core over a 1.5Ghz single core.

Erm, would you take a dual-core Pentium D over Core 2 Solo?

The A15's have better IPC compared to the A9's iirc.

Considering it has both a higher clock and higher IPC, why you'd take the quad is beyond me.
 

dguy6789

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Dec 9, 2002
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I seriously doubt it is a 40% clock per clock performance improvement. When speaking of a 40% performance improvement, they are almost certainly talking about a combination of clock speed increases and improvements to the work done per clock to achieve that.
 

dguy6789

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Erm, would you take a dual-core Pentium D over Core 2 Solo?

The A15's have better IPC compared to the A9's iirc.

Considering it has both a higher clock and higher IPC, why you'd take the quad is beyond me.

In today's world a Pentium D would destroy a Core 2 Solo. A single core is utterly unacceptable in a modern PC. I do not like my entire machine being locked up busy if I run one application. That is why I like multicore.
 

Medu

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I'd take a 1.5Ghz quad core A9 based SOC over a dual core 2Ghz A15 setup any day of the week for exactly the same reason I'd take a 1Ghz dual core over a 1.5Ghz single core.

A few issues.
Clock for clock A15 is far superior. It's also clocked higher. So unless all 4 cores on the Tegra 3 are been heavily stressed(something that doesn't even happen all that often on desktops) then it's going to be slower than the A15 and massively slower in lightly thread operations(i.e most of the time). On top of that the Samsung's chip will have a far better GPU and probably give better battery life.
 

dguy6789

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Android runs a very large number of threads at the same time. The idea is you are more likely to have an entire core idle and available for processing the task you just started(opening an app or something) than if you had less cores.

If you are running something that takes 100% of two threads on a dual core and you try to do something else, there will be significant slow downs. This is the same no matter how fast your dual core is. If you do the same on a quad core your next task will open as smoothly as if the whole platform was idle. The difference is the individual task will run anywhere from not noticeably better to somewhat better on a higher IPC lower core SOC.
 

poofyhairguy

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Nov 20, 2005
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Considering it has both a higher clock and higher IPC, why you'd take the quad is beyond me.

Because the quad will be out months, maybe even half a year, before its competitors.


A few issues.
Clock for clock A15 is far superior. It's also clocked higher. So unless all 4 cores on the Tegra 3 are been heavily stressed(something that doesn't even happen all that often on desktops) then it's going to be slower than the A15 and massively slower in lightly thread operations(i.e most of the time). On top of that the Samsung's chip will have a far better GPU and probably give better battery life.

Alright, now take those benefits and explain them in laymen terms with less than 25 words so it could fit in an ad.

Nvidia is going to kill the market this time around. 4>2 is much easier to explain than "in single threaded applications, this CPU will be 40% faster."

Honestly the only chance will be if the actual dual core A15 devices feel twice as fast as quad core Tegra 3s. Hence the need for 2+GHz.
 

Puddle Jumper

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Samsung has a much better track record than nvidia so I would not be surprised if they have the best SoC yet again. Tegra was awful and a complete failure while Tegra 2 is the slowest dual core SoC on the market. In contrast Hummingbird was clearly the best SoC of its generation and now Exynos is in a class of it's own when it comes to Android gpu performance.
 

poofyhairguy

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Nov 20, 2005
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Samsung has a much better track record than nvidia so I would not be surprised if they have the best SoC yet again. Tegra was awful and a complete failure while Tegra 2 is the slowest dual core SoC on the market. In contrast Hummingbird was clearly the best SoC of its generation and now Exynos is in a class of it's own when it comes to Android gpu performance.

And yet, all but one of Samsung's tablets use that Tegra SoC.
 

ChronoReverse

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In today's world a Pentium D would destroy a Core 2 Solo. A single core is utterly unacceptable in a modern PC. I do not like my entire machine being locked up busy if I run one application. That is why I like multicore.

That isn't true. A Core 2 is so much faster that even as a single core it would destroy the Pentium D in everything, I owned a Pentium D and I should know.

And just in case you go "But multithreaded apps!", those can run on single cores too thanks to something called Pre-emptive Multitasking that was invented in the 80s. The penalty of running on a single core is high but not so high that it overcomes both a much higher clock speed combined with a much higher IPC.

For the Pentium D vs Core 2 Solo that is. Since we don't have benchmarks and completely hard numbers for A15 yet.



Because the quad will be out months, maybe even half a year, before its competitors.
Sure, but that isn't the question I was addressing. Obviously a bird in the hand now is better than two birds in the bush.
 
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MarkLuvsCS

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Nvidia seems to be hitting the mobile sector pretty hard though. If they can beat competitors to the punch, nvidias solution will go into most of the earliest devices spreading their brand that much further. Their companion core idea may not be unique but if it works as well as they claim, I can see it really helping battery life for basic usage. I think it'd be nice to have a device to work ~10 hrs hard or having days of very light usage.
 

poofyhairguy

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Nov 20, 2005
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Sure, but that isn't the question I was addressing. Obviously a bird in the hand now is better than two birds in the bush.

On purely technical merits, whatever Samsung puts out will be better. Nvidia isn't even playing that game- they are playing a first to market game, and the easier to market game.

What would I rather have? Well both are probably good enough unless you do go with a retina display then Samsung is a clear winner.
 

ChronoReverse

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On purely technical merits, whatever Samsung puts out will be better. Nvidia isn't even playing that game- they are playing a first to market game, and the easier to market game.

What would I rather have? Well both are probably good enough unless you do go with a retina display then Samsung is a clear winner.

And on that point I 100% agree. I was only pointing out that the A15 being slower would be extremely unlikely.
 

dguy6789

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That isn't true. A Core 2 Solo is so much faster that even as a single core it would destroy the Pentium D in everything, I owned a Pentium D and I should know.

And just in case you go "But multithreaded apps!", those can run on single cores too thanks to something called Pre-emptive Multitasking that was invented in the 80s.

I too owned a Pentium D, and something from just about every processor line in the last decade from both AMD and Intel.

Core 2 is significantly faster but it isn't faster by enough to make up for being a single core. I could just run a virus scan and poof, the Core 2 Solo no longer has the resources left to handle a game at a playable frame rate. A Pentium D could do both. It's all about multitasking.
 

ChronoReverse

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I too owned a Pentium D, and something from just about every processor line in the last decade from both AMD and Intel.

Core 2 is significantly faster but it isn't faster by enough to make up for being a single core. I could just run a virus scan and poof, the Core 2 Solo no longer has the resources left to handle a game at a playable frame rate. A Pentium D could do both. It's all about multitasking.

Again, pre-emptive multitasking.

Plus what kind of useless virus scanner would max out your CPU so easily? It's a disk limited task; a full scan using MSE on my old Pentium 4 right now doesn't even average over 50%.

Whatever way you were testing, it's really suspect.