Samsung Exynos Thread (big.LITTLE Octa-core)

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raghu78

Diamond Member
Aug 23, 2012
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el etro said:
Blasting performance from 8890. Top-class ST, pushed the brake on MT. Will be competitive against any chipset on efficiency, plus will make against the Kirin950 the ultimate 16FF+ versus 14LPP showdown.
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http://anandtech.com/show/10075/early-exynos-8890-impressions

"On the CPU side we find an 8-core SoC composed of 4x Cortex A53 cores running at up to 1.586GHz coupled with 4x Exynos M1 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. The most surprising revelation was the fact that the M1 cores reach an extremely high clock of up to 2.6GHz. This represents quite a significant boost over some past rumors which had put expectations 2.3-2.4GHz maximum frequency range. The catch here is that the Galaxy S7's power management doesn't allow all four cores to run at this high frequency but rather only enables the maximum clock when there's at most 2 cores loaded. If there are 3 or more cores under high load, the CPU frequency doesn't surpass 2288MHz."

"One observation I made today which was particularly concerning, was that both with the Snapdragon 820 LG G5 as well as the Exynos 8890 Galaxy S7 got considerably warm after running some heavy workloads. The fact that the Galaxy S7 touts having a heat-pipe thermal dissipation system is a quite worrying characteristic of the phone and should in no way be seen as a positive feature as it points to high power draw figures on the part of the SoC."

We also need to see at what power cost that performance has come. Andrei mentions that both the S820 based LG G5 and Exynos based Samsung Galaxy S7 were running warm and the S7 even had a heatpipe for the SoC. Not a good sign. The 1-2 core turbo for Exynos 8890 is 2.6 Ghz which might be just above the sweet spot for freq/voltage on the 14 LPP process.

CPU performance on the Apple is still clearly ahead of the Android flagships. GPU performance is slightly ahead for S820 and slightly below for 8890 compared to A9. My guess is the A10 is going to have SMT to better utilize those massive ARMv8 cores. If we combine that with architectural IPC improvements, a more mature 16FF+, 100% production on 16FF+ (rumours) and TSMC InFO packaging which brings power/area benefits Apple could get another 20% more ST and 40-50% more MT. I think Apple A10 will be unbeatable at the 16/14nm node.

Another good thing is that Mongoose comes closer to 1K/Ghz GB ST score, a pretty good metric of good enough per clock performance. Only A7/A8/A9, HSW/BDW/SKL, Kryo and maybe Zen surpasses this mark.
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running at 2.6 Ghz clocks for 1-2 cores. So its nowhere near 1k/1 Ghz ST score.

Sweepr said:
Pushing Samsung 14nm LPP to its limits. :p
I'm impressed. Mali T880MP12 basically matches A9's PowerVR GT7600 @ GFXBench offscreen tests. I bet we will be talking about Samsung's custom GPU this time next year.
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Literally Exynos 8890 and Snapdragon 820 seem to be pushing 14LPP to its limits to compete with Apple's last gen. The A10 will crush them in ST. If Apple gets SMT it will lead MT performance too.
 
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Arachnotronic

Arachnotronic

Lifer
Mar 10, 2006
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raghu78 said:
Literally Exynos 8890 and Snapdragon 820 seem to be pushing 14LPP to its limits to compete with Apple's last gen. The A10 will crush them in ST. If Apple gets SMT it will lead MT performance too.
Click to expand...

That's what being a rich, powerful, and highly focused company allows you to do. Apple has been sucking up the best & brightest CPU talent from across the industry and the results are just beginning to show. The full impact of the hires that Apple has made over the last couple of years will be felt in the products beyond A9.

The A10 will be a very impressive chip, don't expect a minor tweak of A9. I would be shocked if the A10 did not decisively outperform A9X in every conceivable way.
 
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L

linkgoron

Platinum Member
Mar 9, 2005
2,598
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raghu78 said:
http://anandtech.com/show/10075/early-exynos-8890-impressions

"On the CPU side we find an 8-core SoC composed of 4x Cortex A53 cores running at up to 1.586GHz coupled with 4x Exynos M1 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. The most surprising revelation was the fact that the M1 cores reach an extremely high clock of up to 2.6GHz. This represents quite a significant boost over some past rumors which had put expectations 2.3-2.4GHz maximum frequency range. The catch here is that the Galaxy S7's power management doesn't allow all four cores to run at this high frequency but rather only enables the maximum clock when there's at most 2 cores loaded. If there are 3 or more cores under high load, the CPU frequency doesn't surpass 2288MHz."

"One observation I made today which was particularly concerning, was that both with the Snapdragon 820 LG G5 as well as the Exynos 8890 Galaxy S7 got considerably warm after running some heavy workloads. The fact that the Galaxy S7 touts having a heat-pipe thermal dissipation system is a quite worrying characteristic of the phone and should in no way be seen as a positive feature as it points to high power draw figures on the part of the SoC."

We also need to see at what power cost that performance has come. Andrei mentions that both the S820 based LG G5 and Exynos based Samsung Galaxy S7 were running warm and the S7 even had a heatpipe for the SoC. Not a good sign. The 1-2 core turbo for Exynos 8890 is 2.6 Ghz which might be just above the sweet spot for freq/voltage on the 14 LPP process.

CPU performance on the Apple is still clearly ahead of the Android flagships. GPU performance is slightly ahead for S820 and slightly below for 8890 compared to A9. My guess is the A10 is going to have SMT to better utilize those massive ARMv8 cores. If we combine that with architectural IPC improvements, a more mature 16FF+, 100% production on 16FF+ (rumours) and TSMC InFO packaging which brings power/area benefits Apple could get another 20% more ST and 40-50% more MT. I think Apple A10 will be unbeatable at the 16/14nm node.

running at 2.6 Ghz clocks for 1-2 cores. So its nowhere near 1k/1 Ghz ST score.



Literally Exynos 8890 and Snapdragon 820 seem to be pushing 14LPP to its limits to compete with Apple's last gen. The A10 will crush them in ST. If Apple gets SMT it will lead MT performance too.
Click to expand...

Can someone give more insight on how much faster the 820/8890 ST could have been if they had been dual-core (like the A9) instead of going for big.LITTLE or a quad-core design? Would it have a made any significant difference (i.e. cooler, better performance because of the circuitry needed for more cores, possibly bigger cores because it's only a dual core etc.)?

What I'm trying to understand is this: how much of the A9(X)'s ST performance is because of better engineering (which I'm sure is a part of it), and how much of it is by deciding to stick to dual-core designs, thus having the liberty of using stronger cores because there are just 2 cores which generate heat/need resources etc.
 
Arachnotronic

Arachnotronic

Lifer
Mar 10, 2006
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raghu78 said:
CPU performance on the Apple is still clearly ahead of the Android flagships. GPU performance is slightly ahead for S820 and slightly below for 8890 compared to A9. My guess is the A10 is going to have SMT to better utilize those massive ARMv8 cores. If we combine that with architectural IPC improvements, a more mature 16FF+, 100% production on 16FF+ (rumours) and TSMC InFO packaging which brings power/area benefits Apple could get another 20% more ST and 40-50% more MT. I think Apple A10 will be unbeatable at the 16/14nm node.
Click to expand...

IMO, you're low-balling. A10 should bring a ~10% perf/clock increase, but IMO clocks will be unleashed. Expect frequencies of 2.3GHz+ (I'd bet on 2.4GHz).

+30% from frequency boost, +10% from perf/clock boost, for a good ~40% improvement in ST performance in going from A9 -> A10.

I do not expect SMT, as I think Apple is still focused on pushing ST perf above all else.

Anyway, that'd put GB3 ST score at ~3500 for the A10.
 
S

Sweepr

Diamond Member
May 12, 2006
5,148
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Before I forget, thanks Andrei, Ian and Joshua for the news coverage today. ;)

AnandTech: Early Exynos 8890 Impressions And Full Specifications

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www.anandtech.com/show/10075/early-exynos-8890-impressions
 
R

raghu78

Diamond Member
Aug 23, 2012
4,093
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Arachnotronic said:
IMO, you're low-balling. A10 should bring a ~10% perf/clock increase, but IMO clocks will be unleashed. Expect frequencies of 2.3GHz+ (I'd bet on 2.4GHz).

+30% from frequency boost, +10% from perf/clock boost, for a good ~40% improvement in ST performance in going from A9 -> A10.

I do not expect SMT, as I think Apple is still focused on pushing ST perf above all else.

Anyway, that'd put GB3 ST score at ~3500 for the A10.
Click to expand...

If there is a 10% IPC improvement, Apple A10 at 2 Ghz can match A9X at 2.2 Ghz. A9X already gets 3200+.

https://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks

So probably A10 at 2.2 Ghz should be enough to hit 3500 ST. Given past generations (A7->A8) I definitely see the A10 clocking atleast 2.2 Ghz. I think SMT is definitely happening. Such a big core is definitely having idle execution resources. SMT drives up resource utilization and improves perf/watt significantly, though multithreaded only. Still the overall chip would be faster and more responsive when running multithreaded apps or multitasking or running multiple programs.
 
D

dark zero

Platinum Member
Jun 2, 2015
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Seems that Apple is going for SMT... Why not adding edRAM? At least 32 MB?
Also, expecting that A10 will come with Power VR 8th generation GPU. Their own GPU maybe they are keeping for the next iteration...
 
S

Sweepr

Diamond Member
May 12, 2006
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Samsung Enters Top 5 in Market Share Rankings in Global Smartphone AP Market

Samsung Electronics dramatically boosted its share in the global smartphone application processor (AP) market, entering the top five in the rankings. The company already ranked top in the global DRAM and NAND Flash markets but showed relatively weak sales in the smartphone AP market.

The global smartphone AP market declined 4 percent year-over-year to reach US$20.1 billion (25 trillion won) in 2015, according to a report from market research firm Strategy Analytics on Feb. 28.

Qualcomm's market share reached 42 percent, maintaining its top spot. Apple and MediaTek ranked number two and three with 21 percent and 19 percent shares, respectively. Samsung LSI came in fourth and Spreadtrum in fifth. Apple doesn’t directly manufacture its smartphone AP. It gives its design to Taiwan’s TSMC and entrust with the production.

Strategy Analytics said, “Qualcomm, the leader of the global smartphone AP market, now faced strong competition from Samsung LSI, which is vertically integrated from the semiconductor division to the smartphone division.”

According to DRAMeXchange, the shipments of Exynos chips, a smartphone AP which were developed by Samsung’s own technology, reached around 50 million units last year. Samsung Electronics shipped over 300 million smartphones and the share of Samsung smartphones carrying in-house APs was about 15 percent. Exynos chips, which have an octa-core model, are the product that basically targets the premium smartphones, and they were only used in Samsung’s flagship models, such as the Galaxy S6 and Note 5, last year.
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www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/new...-5-market-share-rankings-global-smartphone-ap


Instead of Qualcomm Samsung chose Exynos 7580 Octa for the 2016 Galaxy A5 and Exynos 7578 @ this year's Galaxy A3. Do we have specific info about which Galaxy S7 variant each country will have? I'm under the impression that most markets get Exynos.
 
E

Exophase

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2012
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Sweepr said:
Do we have specific info about which Galaxy S7 variant each country will have? I'm under the impression that most markets get Exynos.
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/3035732/what-chip-will-your-galaxy-s7-or-s7-edge-have.html

It looks like only the USA is slated to get the Snapdragon 820 version, but who knows.

I get the impression that Samsung is being more aggressive in filling its fab capacity, especially since they lost some of their Apple manufacturing share. Hence why we've seen more and more Exynos SoCs in their mobile lineup. That and the disasters that Snapdragon 808 and 810 were.

Snapdragon 820 would be the most likely of the lineup to get Samsung device wins because it too is being fabbed by Samsung.
 
el etro

el etro

Golden Member
Jul 21, 2013
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At first smartphone buyers want a phone to do all the basic work a PC can do, but mainstream smartphone power is still away from what suits perfectly most users needs. I know about what i'm talking because i am a SD800 phone user, and the phone still feels that it lacks some power to do comfortably the workloads i run on him.
ARM A72 core is a shot to right way, mainly addressing the mainstream users needs. ARM simply could make the core big as a Apple core, but they did not want because they target the bulk of the smartphone market, clearly sighting its eyes to the Chinese smartphone market.

Powering mid-range phones will in any way cannibalize the high-end phones sales, because mid-end phones demand grew(and constantly grow) to point it become the main segment of the whole smartphone market. High-End buyers will always get the top bin, newer process, far better screen cameras and the very last battery tech(yep, battery technology get upgraded every year).
Mid-range chips like SD652/SD650 still not help that much, because they are still costly than the average chip that goes in phones most users buys. Creating a high mid-end segment in the mainstream is a plain dumb thing.


Smartphone chipmakers should learn to be "populist" like the way Intel(i.e. i5 priced at 2/3 of i7 price, having 85% or more of the later's performance) and AMD do. The performance gap between the top-class Exynos and the others is too big.
 
el etro

el etro

Golden Member
Jul 21, 2013
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monstercameron said:
Trying to figure out how to take a screenshot...<br />
<br />
<br />
GB score is huge for a phone. Browser seems unoptimized for Kraken, you should try running it in Android stock browser. Kraken score may be around 2300 to match AT test.
Click to expand...
 
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