Discussion Qualcomm Snapdragon Thread

[Glo.]

In the words of a well known IT technician:

View attachment 91945

😂🤣😆

Precisely.

 

[soresu]

ChromeOS volume got huge during the rona, and tanked immediately after - declined 48% in 2022.

That's 2023 figures though - an impressive increase even after tanking.

 

[soresu]

• Passive cooling (fanless/airjet)

AirJet is still an active cooling device, it consumes power to function like a fan does.

MEMS jet impingement arrays mounted directly above the heat exchange surface are just a more efficient way of doing active air cooling apparently.

 

[soresu]

For now Frore are creating separate devices designed to sit on top of a flat surface of a vapor chamber, but the sensible thing to do further down the line would be to get in to the practice of building the 'housing' of the AirJet right onto a vapor chamber to eliminate the bottleneck of TIM and copper base.

AirJet - Direct Edition 😁

 

[ikjadoon]

True - but when it comes down to brass tacks a lot of it is the grift of the sales person at the store for most people that just walk in and buy one, and what their supervisors have told them to push in any given day, week or month.

Sales person grift / supervisors: that's all true, but I think that would've stayed same throughout the transition from Intel → Apple Silicon, no?

According to Jamf's quote of IDC, enterprise use of Macs has also increased from 19% in 2019 to 23% in 2021.

The vendor assessment report states, “The Adoption of Mac usage in the enterprise (1,000+ employees) is growing by many measures. In the United States, average penetration of macOS devices is around 23%, compared with 17% in 2019.” The report continues, “Macs, of course, are not the entire story around Apple devices in the enterprise. According to IDC's 2020 enterprise survey, iPhones account for 49% of the smartphone installed base among U.S. enterprises, and iPads make up the majority of tablets used in business. The proliferation of Apple devices — macOS devices, as well as iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV — in business is causing many organizations to rethink their approach to overall endpoint provisioning, management, and security.”

//

True - but when it comes down to brass tacks a lot of it is the grift of the sales person at the store for most people that just walk in and buy one, and what their supervisors have told them to push in any given day, week or month.

Eh wah wussat nau?!

Plenty of TVs still use fans - I'm sure other consumer electronics do also.

All current major brand game consoles including the ARM based Switch have fans, as does the Steam Deck - and don't some of the wall powered Mac SKUs have a fan too?

Even some STB devices like digital terrestrial and digital satellite DVRs have fans.

From what I know, most TVs stopped using fans with the transition to LED backlights, away from CCFL & plasma.

A few quick teardowns all show passive heatsinks: 65" Vizio MQ8 QLED, TCL QLED 5 series, 65" Sony 900-series LED, some generic FALD LED TV I can't identify (German vid), etc.

//

Ah, game consoles, I did forget those: that's a good point, thank you, and the larger Macs, too, though—still need to find that source again—but I believe desktop Macs are quite very low volume relatively (like single-digit % of all macOS shipments).

Some STBs, yes: the Apple TV ironically does use a fan, too.

So fair enough: an overreach with just Windows laptops and desktops as the remaining actively-cooled electronics: thank you for the correction. Maybe more accurately, the most visible / loud fans in consumer usage seem to be Windows laptops & desktops. In that sense, Windows OEMs share the blame with their selection of 1) too-hot CPUs in too-thin chassis and 2) the lower efficiency of Intel CPUs anyways in consumer workloads.

I've rarely seen a console or Apple device, though, that has bad fans; these mass-market, few-SKU devices usually have really excellent thermal design.

//

Doing Chrome OS a dirty there.

They grew by almost 2.84x, almost half as much as MacOS did in global total %.

Which makes me surprised that Google switched back to pursuing Android tablets, and downgraded Chrome OS development 😕🙃

Unfortunately, IDC includes Chromebooks in the same shipments as "laptops & desktops", but it would have been good to see another reference.

 

[moinmoin]

Global usage share
2019 | Windows: 77.8% vs macOS: 14.2% vs Chrome OS: 1.2%
2023 | Windows: 68.3% vs macOS: 18.7% vs Chrome OS: 3.4%

ChromeOS volume got huge during the rona, and tanked immediately after - declined 48% in 2022.

I think stats during the pandemic where a one time thing in general, deviating from the trends before and after it. So while Chrome OS seems most affected, Mac OS appears to be affected as well. And (on topic) QC with its exclusivity on WoA missed a good chance to make it big quickly and has to take the slow road now.

 

[soresu]

Now, most TVs stopped using fans with the transition to LED backlights

My dads old Panasonic 50 inch 4K LCD TV he bought in 2015 had an LED BLU and it used a fan - which is odd as it had a metal back cover which should have been designed into the thermal solution as a radiator 😕

OTOH my plastic framed Samsung 40 inch LCD TV with LED BLU had no fan - though it was just 1080p.

The difference might have just been early 4K TVs, his didn't even have HDR or 10 bit per channel color.

I've rarely seen a console or Apple device, though, that has bad fans; these mass-market, few-SKU devices usually have really excellent thermal design.

There's a really good reason for that on the console side.

Namely that they seek to find the cheapest possible way to build the console while still having a quiet and effective cooling solution - because software licensing is the true profit maker for them.

That means reducing the amount of cooler metal and PCB as much as they possibly can.

It's really quite interesting to see the internal parts evolution of the PS5 SKUs from OG to Slim.

OTOH the Switch used older gen hardware, so it was already dirt cheap (relatively speaking) to design and build vs the big players on the market.

 

[FlameTail]

AirJet is still an active cooling device, it consumes power to function like a fan does.

Oh yes.

MEMS jet impingement arrays mounted directly above the heat exchange surface are just a more efficient way of doing active air cooling apparently.

What is "heat exchange surface"?

 

[FlameTail]

It seems going forward, ultrabooks will adopt more qualities of smartphones.

• Non-upgradeable RAM/storage
• Cellular connectivity (4G/5G)
• Gorilla Glass
• IP67/IP68 rating
• Punch-hole/notch displays
• Passive cooling (fanless/airjet)
• OLED screens

I wonder how much cost will IP68 rating add to the PC.

First up, they need to get rid of the fans instead install AirJets with vents that are waterproof/dustproof.

Then make all the ports, speakers, microphones, keyboard waterproof/dustproof.

As for the backplane of the laptop which needs to be opened up for repairs and such, they gotta insert a rubber strip- like in the sim slot of IP68 phones.

And boom-

IP68 rated PC!.

Waterproof, dustproof and Coffee-proof!

 

[FlameTail]

And boom-

IP68 rated PC!.

Waterproof, dustproof and Coffee-proof!

*small text*: Now starting at +$500 msrp... /s

 

[FlameTail]

I believe the Surface Laptop 6 will be available in similar configurations to the Surface Laptop 5, including 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB RAM options, and 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage options. I understand that Microsoft is also internally testing a 64GB variant too, but it's unclear if this will ship publicly.

Surface Laptop 6: Specs, Arm, new features, updated design, and everything we know so far

Everything you need to know about the next Surface Laptop.

www.windowscentral.com

SL6 will ship with Snapdragon X Elite and Intel Meteor Lake it seems.

Now what I am concerned about is that this thing starts at 8 GB !??

8 GB for an AI PC doesn't sound like a good idea.

 

[soresu]

What is "heat exchange surface"?

In this context it means the thing air is blowing or jetting against to pump, channel or exchange heat away from it.

For traditional air coolers that would be the heatsink fins, or for a liquid cooling rig it would be the radiator assembly.

In a more general context it could be a heat spreader on any CPU or GPU, or the bottom of the heatsink / water cooling block that attaches to it.

 

[FlameTail]

https://dcinside.com/board/galaxy/1154827

This guy is saying Phoenix-L in SD 8G4 will have IPC gains.

 

[soresu]

https://dcinside.com/board/galaxy/1154827

This guy is saying Phoenix-L in SD 8G4 will have IPC gains.

Link is dead for me.

Screenshot it?

 

[FlameTail]

8G4 SM8750 관련 짧은 소식 - 갤럭시 마이너 갤러리

현 qrd 단계에서 주파수 더 올리는 중8750은 개선된 누비아로 기존 누비아 대비 ipc 증가sm8750 코드명 PAKALA

m.dcinside.com

Original link. I removed the "m." thinking it would redirect to the desktop site instead.

https://x.com/reikaNVMe/status/1747123978123284518?s=20

This is the twitter thread where I found the link.

 

[Nothingness]

On-going work of Linux porting to Oryon: https://www.linaro.org/blog/qualcomm-and-linaro-enable-latest-flagship-snapdragon-compute-soc/

ioquake3 running at 571 FPS

 

[FlameTail]

For now Frore are creating separate devices designed to sit on top of a flat surface of a vapor chamber, but the sensible thing to do further down the line would be to get in to the practice of building the 'housing' of the AirJet right onto a vapor chamber to eliminate the bottleneck of TIM and copper base.

AirJet - Direct Edition 😁

Oh- now I get what you mean.

Yes that's the way to go. Very smart.

But that would require Frore to collaborate with OEMs. The shape/size of the vapour chamber can vary from laptop to laptop for example.

 

[soresu]

But that would require Frore to collaborate with OEMs

Or become an OEM themselves.....

😎😆

 

[soresu]

But that would require Frore to collaborate with OEMs. The shape/size of the vapour chamber can vary from laptop to laptop for example.

It's the natural endpoint to the commercialisation of the technology - just like with custom coolers on GPUs.

The separate device design is fine for now, but as the tech finds more uses the various OEMs involved are going to want to apply it more directly to the thermal solution they already have to make the optimal solution.

Eventually I could see Frore selling OEM's just the MEMS arrays themselves and maybe those plastic/filter covers with a licensing deal to cover all the know how to build custom solutions like longer coolers for GPUs and such.

Or perhaps even stacked configurations in a manner similar to a heatsink fin stack, but using vapor chambers instead of fins.

If the devices are powerful enough to draw air through a waterproof air filter, then they can probably work well enough in the constrained spaces of a tightly spaced stack too.

 

[FlameTail]

Dang. We have a two lane conversation going on about AirJets in both the AirJet thread and this Qualcomm thread.

Now here's some actual Qualcomm stuff!

Mid-range phones could get 2024 flagship power later this year

The Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 could offer the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's CPU architecture, making for a super-powerful mid-range chip.

www.androidauthority.com

Leak about successor to Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. I am surprised we are getting one. I thought 7+ G2 would be a one off thing.

But on the other hand perhaps it's necessary? If you look at Qualcomm latest lineup, there is humongous performance gap between the 7G3 and 8G3

 

[FlameTail]

Snapdragon 8 gen 3 die shot revealed!


Die shot dimension is 10.72 x 12.81, so the die size is approximately 137.3 mm^2.

 

[FlameTail]

8 Gen 2 dies shot for comparison.
118 mm².

 

[ikjadoon]

That's great to see.

This is why I have trouble with the hypothesis "Qualcomm just nerfs its CPUs because more cache would prohibitively grow the die size" or "Apple's CPU cores succeed only because Apple can afford the larger dies for bigger caches".

The cache is hardly 10% of the die; Qualcomm's modem + ISP + VPU + GPU are massive compared to the CPU's SRAM. And Qualcomm grew the die 16% anyways YoY, according to these die areas.

It seems more plausible that each CPU uArch is only designed for a certain cache size; adding more to that uArch won't do much.

//

But on that note, how does one read this graph's x-axis? What are we looking at going left to right? This is from Arm for the Cortex-X4's design options.

 

[SarahKerrigan]

That's great to see.

This is why I have trouble with the hypothesis "Qualcomm just nerfs its CPUs because more cache would prohibitively grow the die size" or "Apple's CPU cores succeed only because Apple can afford the larger dies for bigger caches".

The cache is hardly 10% of the die; Qualcomm's modem + ISP + VPU + GPU are massive compared to the CPU's SRAM. And Qualcomm grew the die 16% anyways YoY, according to these die areas.

It seems more plausible that each CPU uArch is only designed for a certain cache size; adding more to that uArch won't do much.

//

But on that note, how does one read this graph's x-axis? What are we looking at going left to right? This is from Arm for the Cortex-X4's design options.

View attachment 92057

Generally, the X axis on that kind of graph is the set of tested proxy workloads (whether SPEC subtests or something else.) The labels aren't included here but it looks almost certain to me that that is what the graph is showing.

 

[FlameTail]

These SoCs are becoming huge. 137 mm² is in Apple base M chip turf.