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Qualcomm presents the 845

And on top of that, you will be able to get Win10 notebooks running these. I think?

I will have to retract my statement that the ARMy passed over the "desktop" market and went straight for server.

Qualcomm wants it all, right now.
 
This took me by surprise, those modified A75s at 2.8ghz? With L3?...system cache?..4k 10bit hdr 60fps recording and playback?....yikes!

Also interestingly the A75s have some modifications to run non native ARM code better....hello windows.
This bodes well for Qualcomm Snapdragon custom windows tablet chip that they have said is coming at some point...just imagine if done on tsmc 7nm or Samsung 8nm?...very interesting.

I have to say though the prices of those windows on arm are far too expensive for what they are imo, I was expecting prices around 399-499$...why would you buy one when you can have a raven ridge notebook for near same money?
 
Anandtech had nice coverage on the subject.

While most specs are impressing, it seems to me the most interesting novelty is ARM's DynamiQ CPU cluster organization:
Quickly explained, DynamIQ enables the various different CPU cores within an SoC to be hosted within the same cluster and cache hierarchy, as opposed to having separate discrete clusters with no shared cache between them (with coherency instead happening over an interconnect such as ARM's CCI). This major transition is probably the largest to date that we've seen in modern mobile smartphone ARM consumer SoCs.
Click to expand...

Also this:
Related to the caches but not part of the CPU, there's also a new inclusion of a 3MB system cache. This is likely a SoC interconnect cache and serves all SoC blocks - likely in similar fashion the "L3" cache on Apple A-series SoCs works. This would help reduce external memory transactions and thus also reduce power to the memory controllers and DRAM. Qualcomm claims it's able to reduce memory access bandwidth by up to 40-75%, a significant figure.
Click to expand...
 
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I have to say though the prices of those windows on arm are far too expensive for what they are imo, I was expecting prices around 399-499$...why would you buy one when you can have a raven ridge notebook for near same money?
Click to expand...

The HP Envy X2 Tablet with Snapdragon 835 is always connected with LTE - 12 inch, 680 grams, 6.9mm thick - yet it supports 20hours of video playback and several weeks! of connected standby. Raven ridge will not come even close to this.
 
Related to the caches but not part of the CPU, there's also a new inclusion of a 3MB system cache. This is likely a SoC interconnect cache and serves all SoC blocks - likely in similar fashion the "L3" cache on Apple A-series SoCs works. This would help reduce external memory transactions and thus also reduce power to the memory controllers and DRAM. Qualcomm claims it's able to reduce memory access bandwidth by up to 40-75%, a significant figure.
Click to expand...

Technically the L3$ is part of what ARM calls the DynamIQ SharedUnit (DSU). L3$ is strictly exclusive and can be updated from external master by either the AMBA CHI or ACE interfaces or over ACP port.
DSU support up to 8 cores, from which 4 can be large cores. Only supported cores at the moment are A55 and A75...so you cannot put say an A53 inside.
 
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I am waiting for the day when arm finally break through the 3.0 ghz barrier. 4 watt chip at 3.0+ ghz, isn’t that amazing?
 
I read this yesterday :
Lot of details here :
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332695


The SoC sports redesigned CPU and GPU blocks and a new layer of cache to boost performance 25-30 percent and support features such as Ultra HD Premium video encoding. The advance is impressive given the SoC is built in the Samsung 10nm node and fits in the same 12mm2 package as the 835.

The Snapdragon 845, expected in handsets before June, will reduce power or increase performance in graphics and video by 30 percent. Its eight-core ARM-based CPU should boost performance on other apps 25 percent.

The increases come in part from a new 3-Mbyte cache shared dynamically across SoC blocks, in addition to a 2-Mbyte L3 on the CPU block. The move to a three-issue KRyo CPU is a larger factor, said Travis Lanier, product manager for the block, which uses four semi-custom Cortex-A75s running at up to 2.8 GHz and four A55s at 1.8 GHz.


Rather than create a dedicated block to handle the emerging inference jobs in deep neural networks, Qualcomm opted to enhance its existing programmable DSP. It added or enhanced in various blocks support for 8-bit integer and 16- and 32-bit floating point math, claiming a net 300 percent boost for AI jobs.
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Thala said:
The HP Envy X2 Tablet with Snapdragon 835 is always connected with LTE - 12 inch, 680 grams, 6.9mm thick - yet it supports 20hours of video playback and several weeks! of connected standby. Raven ridge will not come even close to this.
Click to expand...
It has some advantages yes I agree, but although I love the whole idea of windows on ARM and have been a staunch proponent of it, I was expecting these lightweight smartphone chips that retail for around 70$ (I think) would enable a far cheaper windows experience, as the emulation seems to be taking a larger chunk of the cycles than I thought, plus almost no modern games can be played due to no 64bit support.

Qualcomm said they will be building a bespoke SOC for the job at some point and these kryo 385 have some modifications to help emulation I'm led to believe so things will get better.
The real winner may be an incentive for Devs to start making apps and games universal apps...now that would be very interesting indeed.

As it is personally I wouldn't pay those prices for that performance, despite some of the advantages.
 
french toast said:
I have to say though the prices of those windows on arm are far too expensive for what they are imo, I was expecting prices around 399-499$...why would you buy one when you can have a raven ridge notebook for near same money?
Click to expand...

Battery life would be my guess. Performance and price won't be there on this generation of products. Qualcomm is through testing the waters, though, and wants to get product on shelves to establish some mindshare (if nothing else, at least among OEMs).

You also have to ask yourself, "What software ecosystem does MS want for themselves in the future?" Do they want Wintel or Qualdows? Remember that Win10-on-ARM, at least at the present, is almost exclusively consumer-facing with the Win10 app store being central to the experience. Wintel users have broadly rejected the app store along with most of the "universal" app experience. Mobile users have behaved the same way.

To me, it looks like MS would want Qualcomm to lead the charge into the low-end notebook sector, pushing universal apps as the main feature of Windows devices. That might let MS build a base for mobile products in the future.

AMDisTheBEST said:
I am waiting for the day when arm finally break through the 3.0 ghz barrier. 4 watt chip at 3.0+ ghz, isn’t that amazing?
Click to expand...

I dunno how I feel about that. Having a Linux box running something like that would be hella cool. Watching Qualcomm and MS try to wipe out the Wintel platform does not sit so well with me.

french toast said:
Qualcomm said they will be building a bespoke SOC for the job at some point and these kryo 385 have some modifications to help emulation I'm led to believe so things will get better.
The real winner may be an incentive for Devs to start making apps and games universal apps...now that would be very interesting indeed.
Click to expand...

I see emulation as being less of an issue. I'm not 100% sure where all the growth potential is right now but over the last ten years, it has been among those who really don't care as much about x86 compatibility as in days past. People who adopted Google Play and iOS App Store are probably not going to try and run traditional PC software on their notebooks and such. I mean hell look at how many Chromebooks are selling out there.

Folks are more ready than ever to step off Wintel, and MS knows it. They want that universal app thing to be the standard for all Windows software development since it improves their control and their bottom line. It hasn't worked out for them yet, but with Qualcomm on their side . . .
 
french toast said:
It has some advantages yes I agree, but although I love the whole idea of windows on ARM and have been a staunch proponent of it, I was expecting these lightweight smartphone chips that retail for around 70$ (I think) would enable a far cheaper windows experience
Click to expand...

Potentially they could enable cheaper devices, but a rather prefer an high quality device will all the features like LTE, Digitizer etc. along with a high quality screen.
People who prefer to be always connected and do not want to worry about battery and standby duration not necessarily want a cheaply built device.

as the emulation seems to be taking a larger chunk of the cycles than I thought, plus almost no modern games can be played due to no 64bit support
Click to expand...

Emulation works surprisingly well to the point im completely impressed. From the early benchmarks it looks that performance takes only a 50% hit, which for emulation is quite impressive. And honestly i would not want to play AAA game on any laptop. I have a high performance desktop for this. I am just looking for a high quality mobile device with LTE and long battery duration - so these ARM devices fit that requirement rather well. Keep in mind we are looking at 2x native CPU performance and 3-4x GPU performance compared to the Atom crowd.

The real winner may be an incentive for Devs to start making apps and games universal apps...now that would be very interesting indeed.
Click to expand...

I am hoping much more for ARM64 Win32 bit native or .Net/CLI desktop apps. You can compile Win32 native apps for ARM64 with Visual Studio.
 
DrMrLordX said:
Battery life would be my guess. Performance and price won't be there on this generation of products. Qualcomm is through testing the waters, though, and wants to get product on shelves to establish some mindshare (if nothing else, at least among OEMs).

You also have to ask yourself, "What software ecosystem does MS want for themselves in the future?" Do they want Wintel or Qualdows? Remember that Win10-on-ARM, at least at the present, is almost exclusively consumer-facing with the Win10 app store being central to the experience. Wintel users have broadly rejected the app store along with most of the "universal" app experience. Mobile users have behaved the same way.

To me, it looks like MS would want Qualcomm to lead the charge into the low-end notebook sector, pushing universal apps as the main feature of Windows devices. That might let MS build a base for mobile products in the future.

I dunno how I feel about that. Having a Linux box running something like that would be hella cool. Watching Qualcomm and MS try to wipe out the Wintel platform does not sit so well with me.

I see emulation as being less of an issue. I'm not 100% sure where all the growth potential is right now but over the last ten years, it has been among those who really don't care as much about x86 compatibility as in days past. People who adopted Google Play and iOS App Store are probably not going to try and run traditional PC software on their notebooks and such. I mean hell look at how many Chromebooks are selling out there.

Folks are more ready than ever to step off Wintel, and MS knows it. They want that universal app thing to be the standard for all Windows software development since it improves their control and their bottom line. It hasn't worked out for them yet, but with Qualcomm on their side . . .
Click to expand...

Trying anything and everything to increase the number and quality of UWP apps is the only angle that makes sense to me from a MS perspective. I don't believe for a second that MS is content to concede the mobile/phone market for eternity and/or wait for the next bit thing. Whether that's delusional or not, is a different question, but they have effectively infinite resources and plenty of engineering talent. I don't believe for a second that they will ever give up internally.

From Qualcomm's perspective, they don't really have anything to lose and it probably didn't require much effort on their part. Although if the market reception is really poor it could hurt them long term. So they need to make sure they think the performance is good enough.

That said, the designs that I've seen don't make a lot of sense to me. They seem too expensive, too big (although this is probably easily remedied given the battery life), and probably too slow. If you want a LTE connected Windows device and don't mind paying the extra $10 a month or whatever, is a few hundred extra upfront for an Intel machine really a deal breaker? It seems like a far more compelling option for a Chromebook at a Chromebook like prices.
 
If you want a LTE connected Windows device and don't mind paying the extra $10 a month or whatever, is a few hundred extra upfront for an Intel machine really a deal breaker?
Click to expand...

Thing is if you really want a truly mobile Windows device, there are no options at all. Its like paying more for getting less when you go for an x86 machine. I would not mind paying a few hundred more for such a mobile device - but certainly not for an Intel machine. Performance should be excellent if you mostly looking at office/mail/browsing with the occasional x86 Win32 app thrown into the mix - we are talking Silvermont Atom times 2 CPU performance wise and much more GPU performance wise. All the pre-reviews as far describing the Snapdragon Windows 10 devices as very snappy in particular compared to something like Core-M.
 
Thala said:
Thing is if you really want a truly mobile Windows device, there are no options at all. Its like paying more for getting less when you go for an x86 machine. I would not mind paying a few hundred more for such a mobile device - but certainly not for an Intel machine. Performance should be excellent if you mostly looking at office/mail/browsing with the occasional x86 Win32 app thrown into the mix - we are talking Silvermont Atom times 2 CPU performance wise and much more GPU performance wise. All the pre-reviews as far describing the Snapdragon Windows 10 devices as very snappy in particular compared to something like Core-M.
Click to expand...

According to every benchmark an 835 still gets smashed by an Intel Y-series. Completely different price point, but my point was someone that wants cellular probably isn't or shouldn't be that price sensitive.

If you ignore the cellular aspect and compare to Pentium N4200 or the new N5000, it's a little more interesting and there are pros and cons but it seems like the current 835 offerings are more expensive by a decent amount. Maybe that will change when there are more choices.
 
Why is it so difficult to find pricing on Qualcomms chips?
I see an average of ~$20, but that seems really low.
 
Elixer said:
Why is it so difficult to find pricing on Qualcomms chips?
I see an average of ~$20, but that seems really low.
Click to expand...
no, that is close. Arm chip is usually dirt cheap. Meditek sells its lowly mtk 68xx 32bit quadcore SoCs for like 1$ per pop. I am pretty sure even lower dual core sells for just a quater. Apple's A11 bionic costs Apple just $40 to manufacture per chip/per phone.

Compare that to intel i5 Us, selling usually between 200 and 300 USD to the oems

That makes us wonder.... what causes apple to charge $1000 for a bloody phone???
 
We see 2x a73 plus 4x a55 or is it a53 entering samsung midrange next year in the a series.
Those a73 is only 2 wide. So probably very small? Smaller than apple little cores perhaps?
Makes performance gain from the high end cores kind of moot in a phone imo.
But hey about time midrange gets a huge lift.

It seems to me arm have selected to the smaller side with the a73 design to protect their turf.
 
If you ignore the cellular aspect and compare to Pentium N4200 or the new N5000, it's a little more interesting and there are pros and cons but it seems like the current 835 offerings are more expensive by a decent amount. Maybe that will change when there are more choices.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the Gemini Lake Series (Goldmont+) would be a match to Snapdragon 835 CPU performance wise. They should still lack GPU performance though, but i guess we have to wait and see how good Qualcomms DirectX driver is.
In addition i do not see any x86 CPU achieve even close to 30 days connected standby time or 20 hours video playback time - with other words i do not expect a miracle from Intel or from anyone designing x86 CPUs for that matter.

CB 11.5 ST score is the same as a 2GHz Kabini but only 1.5GHz for the MT score, dunno what is the Snapdragon TDP but FTR a 14nm shrinked Beema@2GHz would be barely at 5W.
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TDP is a very bad measure when you want to reason about actual power usage. A device is very rarely running at the thermal boundaries (TDP) and if it does it typically throttles if you throw more work at it. With other words 2 device both rated at 5W TDP may show a significantly different power draw in actual use.
 
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