Question Qualcomm's first Nuvia based SoC - Hamoa

[poke01]

Qualcomm's working on a 2024 PC chip codename "Hamoa" with up to 12 (8P+4E).

Said to the same cache layout as M1. large private L1$, per-cluster L2$ (cluster = 4 cores, 12MB for every cluster) and a lot of LLC.

source:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1589405172979339264

 

[BorisTheBlade82]

Humbug.

Is this international? Just asking cause I am German and know this (admittedly great) word. I am just not sure if everyone does...

 

[moinmoin]

Is this international? Just asking cause I am German and know this (admittedly great) word. I am just not sure if everyone does...

Humbug is actually derived from English. English, German.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Humbug, indeed.

 

[FlameTail]

Do yall reckon Qualcomm will make use of chiplets? I think it is certainly inevitable, what with the death/slowing down of SRAM scaling and rocketing wafer costs with each new node. They will certainly have to, or lose competitiveness with Intel and AMD. It is not a question of 'if' but 'when'. And the sooner, the better.

That said though, I am certain that this rumoured 'Hamoa' with 8P+4E and it's smaller sibling 4P+4E are certainly going to be monolithic. Qualcomm has 0 experience with chiplets, and thus going the chiplet route in their first attempt at entering the PC market is risky and could end up in a disaster.

 

[FlameTail]

Reading through all the speculation in the other threads about future Intel and AMD chips which are utilising chiplets with 2D, 2.5D and 3D stacking and packaging technologies, it makes me wonder what approach will Qualcomm take?

That said though, it is regrettable we have so little information right now, so any speculation would have no firm basis.

 

[BorisTheBlade82]

@FlameTail
QC are even more Mobile-oriented than AMD and Intel. So I would guess that for their Smartphone SoCs they will be a late follower, as that is where chiplets hurt the most.

 

[Thibsie]

If anything of what some are saying about QC is true, I'm not even sure we'll see anything from Nuvia on the market at all.
Maybe. I wish but....

 

[FlameTail]

If anything of what some are saying about QC is true, I'm not even sure we'll see anything from Nuvia on the market at all.
Maybe. I wish but....

Why not? Qualcomm themselves took to stage at the Snapdragon Summit this November and announced that they are calling their new Nuvia-based CPUs as Orton, and said that it is coming next year.

Optimistically, we can expect it to debut at the Snapdragon Summit 2023, so the laptops themselves will probably come to market in 2024.

The only thing that can stop their plans is the present lawsuit with ARM. ARM might block Qualcomm's endeavour, stopping them from bringing the Oryon CPUs to market.

 

[FlameTail]

The only thing that can stop their plans is the present lawsuit with ARM. ARM might block Qualcomm's endeavour, stopping them from bringing the Oryon CPUs to market.

However, as has been discussed extensively in this thread earlier and in the Arm Lawsuit thread, this might not happen because the Oryon CPUs may not necessarily be designed from the Nuvia cores.

Qualcomm now has the Nuvia engineers working for them, and they can resort to building an ARM core from ground up and not base their Oryon cores on the Nuvia IP. What the lawsuit is disputing is the Nuvia IP, which ARM claims Qualcomm cannot use.

 

[Thibsie]

Qualcomm now has the Nuvia engineers working for them [...]

Some. Those who didn't go already and were'nt (yet?) fired.

The question is : what will remain of the team ?

 

[Exist50]

If you could read it, you would probably probably cry. QC really are stupid idiots.

If you have access, could you post the salient quotes?

 

[Thibsie]

"Multiple sources are telling about an executive pissing match and the bloodbath that resulted from it."

"The depths of the layoffs make it clear that most of what was Nuvia is done for though."

For more read the paper. It really is interesting. I know a paywall is something most people hate but IMO my money is well spent.
I have no horse in this race, this is purely for my education.

 

[DrMrLordX]

"The depths of the layoffs make it clear that most of what was Nuvia is done for though."

Eww. Yuck. Here's hoping RISC-V pans out.

 

[Exist50]

For more read the paper. It really is interesting. I know a paywall is something most people hate but IMO my money is well spent.

I'm willing to pay in theory, but the price Charlie asks is way too high, and the quality way too low. You can't publish BS articles (e.g. Intel 10nm is canceled) and then expect people to pay for it. $1000/year for "news" with a very good chance of being fake or useless? Nah.

 

[FlameTail]

$1000/year !?

 

[FlameTail]

"Multiple sources are telling about an executive pissing match and the bloodbath that resulted from it."

"The depths of the layoffs make it clear that most of what was Nuvia is done for though."

For more read the paper. It really is interesting. I know a paywall is something most people hate but IMO my money is well spent.
I have no horse in this race, this is purely for my education.

How reliable is this information?

If true, Qualcomm effectively wasted $1.4 billion.

 

[FlameTail]

I do remember watching the Snapdragon Summit Keynote. Gérard Williams didn't seem very happy or enthusiastic when he presented the Oryon brand. It was certainly a warning sign something was astir at Qualcomm.

 

[FlameTail]

Report: Google looked at buying Nuvia before Qualcomm acquisition

Before Qualcomm made the winning $1.4 billion acquisition, Google and other tech companies were also interested in buying Nuvia...

9to5google.com

Apparently, Google wanted to buy Nuvia.

 

[Thibsie]

$1000/year !?

No, the student is 100 andd you don't actually need to be student.

 

[NTMBK]

No, the student is 100 andd you don't actually need to be student.

I had a subscription for a while, it was worth the money back when I had more time and money to devote to hobbies!

 

[FlameTail]

As Arm plays chicken with Qualcomm, both have a lot to lose

High risk means high reward ... well, usually

www.theregister.com

One interesting said in this article is that ARM will suffer a greater or lesser loss, irrespective of if they lose or win the lawsuit.

 

[Vince789]

There's been some interesting rumors on the Korean forums, supposedly (take it as a grain of salt):

2024 8g3 will be N4P and still Cortex cores
2025 8g4 will N3E and Nuvia Oryon CPU. Supposedly 2x Phoenix-I cores + 6x Phoenix-M cores

2024 Exynos 2400 will be 1x X4 + 2x A720 + 3x A720 + 4x A520
2025 Exynos 2500 will be 1x X5 + 3x X5 + 2x A730 + 4x A520 with an interesting big+mid+little+tiny config (big X5 at 3.2~3.3GHz and mid X5 cores 2.3~2.5GHz)

 

[FlameTail]

There's been some interesting rumors on the Korean forums, supposedly (take it as a grain of salt):

2024 8g3 will be N4P and still Cortex cores
2025 8g4 will N3E and Nuvia Oryon CPU. Supposedly 2x Phoenix-I cores + 6x Phoenix-M cores

2024 Exynos 2400 will be 1x X4 + 2x A720 + 3x A720 + 4x A520
2025 Exynos 2500 will be 1x X5 + 3x X5 + 2x A730 + 4x A520 with an interesting big+mid+little+tiny config (big X5 at 3.2~3.3GHz and mid X5 cores 2.3~2.5GHz)

That Exynos 2500 CPU is gonna be so powerful that it will be absurd.

2024 8g3 with Cortex and N4P fits with what I have heard of it elsewhere.

Phoenix-I and Phoenix-M ? Of these I haven't heard before. Why are they calling it Phoenix? Didn't Qualcomm just publicly announce their CPU cores being named as 'Oryon' ?

 

[Exist50]

That Exynos 2500 CPU is gonna be so powerful that it will be absurd.

2024 8g3 with Cortex and N4P fits with what I have heard of it elsewhere.

Phoenix-I and Phoenix-M ? Of these I haven't heard before. Why are they calling it Phoenix? Didn't Qualcomm just publicly announce their CPU cores being named as 'Oryon' ?

I think Phoenix is the core name, and Oryon the first SoC using them.

NUVIA Phoenix Targets +40-50% ST Performance Over Zen 2 for Only 33% the Power

www.anandtech.com

 

[FlameTail]

I think Phoenix is the core name, and Oryon the first SoC using them.

NUVIA Phoenix Targets +40-50% ST Performance Over Zen 2 for Only 33% the Power

www.anandtech.com

Phoenix was the core name when Nuvia was still an independent company.

But they got acquired by Qualcomm. As I understand it, Qualcomm is basically going to replace their Kryo CPUs with these new Oryon CPUs. They will still be sold under the Snapdragon brand. So you get a Snapdragon SoC bundled with Orton CPU + Adreno GPU + Hexagon AI + Spectra ISP etc... you get the idea.

At any rate I am certain the upcoming Qualcomm products are not using the Phoenix cores, but a descendant of them. The original Phoenix itself won't be very competitive against today's cores from Apple, Intel and AMD.