Tegra 4 benchmarked, clobbers Snapdragon 600.

[ams23]

We have yet to see battery life from any Tegra 4 phone.

True, but for the majority of smartphone use cases (including video playback and recording, music listening, social networking, ebook and webpage reading, emailing, calling, and texting), the low power battery saver CPU core in Tegra 4 will almost exclusively be used. In other more processor-intensive situations (such as web page loading), the main A15 CPU cores will quickly execute the task and then switch over to the battery saver core once the CPU-intensive task is complete. Do note that the new and more performant battery saver core, new software algorithms for switching between cores, and new fabrication process should help Tegra 4 greatly compared to Tegra 3 in these use cases. The useage scenarios where the battery life may not be so stellar are sustained CPU and/or GPU-intensive tasks such as heavy gaming using a Tegra enhanced game, but that would be the case for almost any other quad-core mobile device too.

 

[PingviN]

True, but for the majority of smartphone use cases (including video playback and recording, music listening, social networking, ebook and webpage reading, emailing, calling, and texting), the low power battery saver CPU core in Tegra 4 will almost exclusively be used. In other more processor-intensive situations (such as web page loading), the main A15 CPU cores will quickly execute the task and then switch over to the battery saver core once the CPU-intensive task is complete. Do note that the new and more performant battery saver core, new software algorithms for switching between cores, and new fabrication process should help Tegra 4 greatly compared to Tegra 3 in these use cases. The useage scenarios where the battery life may not be so stellar are sustained CPU and/or GPU-intensive tasks such as heavy gaming using a Tegra enhanced game, but that would be the case for almost any other quad-core mobile device too.

This is all theory. I remember the exact same thing being said about Tegra 3 and Tegra 3 never gained any traction in the smartphone market. Probably because the power draw was too high, even with the companion core.

With Nvidia, you just have to wait for the hard numbers in the reviews. I don't think Nvidia will be more successful with smartphones this time around. Quadcore A15 is gonna draw a lot, even when running menial tasks like rendering web pages.

 

[WelshBloke]

This is all theory. I remember the exact same thing being said about Tegra 3 and Tegra 3 never gained any traction in the smartphone market. Probably because the power draw was too high, even with the companion core.

With Nvidia, you just have to wait for the hard numbers in the reviews. I don't think Nvidia will be more successful with smartphones this time around. Quadcore A15 is gonna draw a lot, even when running menial tasks like rendering web pages.

I think thats safe to say with all hardware components but particularly in a field where you are buying a device rather than a chip.

 

[ams23]

This is all theory. I remember the exact same thing being said about Tegra 3 and Tegra 3 never gained any traction in the smartphone market. Probably because the power draw was too high, even with the companion core

The lack of traction in smartphones was largely due to lack of a 4G LTE modem from NVIDIA. As for power consumption, what most people care about is real world battery life. IIRC the battery life on the HTC One X (international version) improved significantly with OTA software updates, although battery life during very processor-intensive tasks cannot miraculously be conserved without throttling. P.S. The battery saver core really does make a difference in a variety of different scenarios. One can see an example of this low power consumption in the MWC 2013 1080p video playback on Tegra 4 (which is in stark contrast to the high power consumption in the video playback on Surface RT's Tegra 3 where the battery saver core is disabled under Windows RT).

 

[MrX8503]

A couple comments about this: 1) Qualcomm's recently introduced S4 Pro and upcoming S600 SoC's do not have an integrated LTE modem (and same goes for many other quality SoC's such as A6, A6X, Exynos 4, Exynos 5, etc.); A few weeks ago, Qualcomm's very own Raj Talluri claimed that Tegra 4 looks a lot like S4 Pro, and would be outperformed by S600, and we all know how that turned out.

I believe both the S4 Pro and A6 have integrated LTE.

 

[ams23]

I believe both the S4 Pro and A6 have integrated LTE.

No, those SoC's do not have an LTE modem integrated on-die with the rest of the SoC. The S800 and Tegra 4i will have an LTE modem integrated on the SoC die.

 

[lothar]

The lack of traction in smartphones was largely due to lack of a 4G LTE modem from NVIDIA. As for power consumption, what most people care about is real world battery life. IIRC the battery life on the HTC One X (international version) improved significantly with OTA software updates, although battery life during very processor-intensive tasks cannot miraculously be conserved without throttling. P.S. The battery saver core really does make a difference in a variety of different scenarios. One can see an example of this low power consumption in the MWC 2013 1080p video playback on Tegra 4 (which is in stark contrast to the high power consumption in the video playback on Surface RT's Tegra 3 where the battery saver core is disabled under Windows RT).

That only speaks for the US.
What about the rest of the world in Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia, and other places where they didn't have LTE luxury like the US did for most of 2012 and even today?

The battery life on the International HTC One X(Tegra 3) couldn't hold a candle to the AT&T HTC One X(Krait) version on a battery life test.
The "Tegra 3" International HTC One X was better in GLBenchmark than the "Krait" US HTC One X...That's about it.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5779/htc-one-x-for-att-review/3
Looks like "battery saver" core on Tegra 3 didn't help it much in competing against Krait last year.
Maybe things will be different regarding the "battery saver" core on Tegra 4 but until I see a real review from a shipping product, it's all hype and marketing as far as I'm concerned.

 

[ams23]

Most of those tests probably make little use of the battery saver core. Anyway, there is no question that the non-international One X had better battery life in several tests, but the international One X had a faster GPU, a quad-core CPU, and a 40nm fabrication process. And even with all that considered, the international One X still had better WiFi Hotspot battery life and longer cellular talk time vs. the non-international One X.

 

[Mopetar]

Tegra 3 was 40nm, Krait was 28nm. I wouldn't expect the Tegra to win in terms of efficiency.

 

[MrX8503]

No, those SoC's do not have an LTE modem integrated on-die with the rest of the SoC. The S800 and Tegra 4i will have an LTE modem integrated on the SoC die.

"Going into 2012, Qualcomm is set for a return to glory as it will be the first to deliver a brand new microprocessor architecture and the first to ship 28nm SoCs in volume. Qualcomm's next-generation SoCs will also be the first to integrate an LTE modem on-die, which should enable LTE on nearly all high-end devices at much better power levels than current multi-chip 4x-nm solutions."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4940/qualcomm-new-snapdragon-s4-msm8960-krait-architecture

Wiki lists MSM8960T as on die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdragon_(system_on_chip)#Snapdragon_S4

On die or not, it looks like T4 is going to be pretty power hungry.

 

[djgandy]

Wiki lists MSM8960T as on die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdragon_(system_on_chip)#Snapdragon_S4

On die or not, it looks like T4 is going to be pretty power hungry.

And it opens with this

Compared to System on chips from many competitors, Snapdragon SoCs have been unique in that they have had the modem for cellular communication on-die.

 

[PingviN]

And it opens with this

Yeah, but it's not an LTE modem.

 

[ams23]

Wiki lists MSM8960T as on die.

The quad-core S4 Pro and quad-core S600 SoC's do not have an integrated LTE modem on the SoC die. Anandtech has mentioned this in some of their previous articles.

 

[MrX8503]

The quad-core S4 Pro and quad-core S600 SoC's do not have an integrated LTE modem on the SoC die. Anandtech has mentioned this in some of their previous articles.

I just linked an anandtech article. Lol. Is there another source that is more clear?

 

[ams23]

I just linked an anandtech article. Lol. Is there another source that is more clear?

The Anandtech article you linked to is the dual-core MSM8960 SoC+baseband. The quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro has the APQ8064 SoC with a separate MDM9615 LTE modem. The soon to be released Snapdragon S600 is simply a higher performance variant of S4 Pro.

 

[MrX8503]

The Anandtech article you linked to is the dual-core MSM8960 SoC+baseband. The quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro has the APQ8064 SoC with a separate MDM9615 LTE modem. The soon to be released Snapdragon S600 is simply a higher performance variant of S4 Pro.

Why does it matter if its dual core? Does it not have LTE on die?

 

[ams23]

Why does it matter if its dual core? Does it not have LTE on die?

It is what it is. Qualcomm's quad-core [and most performant] SoC's currently do not have an LTE modem integrated on die. The reason could be due to die size and/or complexity involved with fitting four CPU cores and an LTE modem all on one reasonably small die (note that Qualcomm's first dual-core Krait SoC's showed up many months earlier than their first quad-core Krait SoC's too). Qualcomm's first quad-core SoC with integrated on-die LTE modem will be S800 (available by the second half of 2013).

 

[MrX8503]

It is what it is. Qualcomm's quad-core [and most performant] SoC's currently do not have an LTE modem integrated on die. The reason could be due to die size and/or complexity involved with fitting four CPU cores and an LTE modem all on one reasonably small die (note that Qualcomm's first dual-core Krait SoC's showed up many months earlier than their first quad-core Krait SoC's too). Qualcomm's first quad-core SoC with integrated on-die LTE modem will be S800 (available by the second half of 2013).

When does T4 release? If the S800 will have LTE integrated, I don't know what the issue is.

 

[ams23]

Tegra 4 should appear in commercial devices starting in Q2 2013 (towards the latter half of the quarter), but the majority of devices will presumably come in Q3 and Q4. There is no "issue" per se in integrating an LTE modem on die, but it does take time and increases time to market, and also reduces the amount of SoC die area that can be devoted towards the CPU and/or GPU for a given SoC die size area.

 

[StrangerGuy]

http://www.dailytech.com/Qualcomm+C...sily+Beat+by+Snapdragon+800/article30002c.htm

Who to believe? Methinks Qualcomm.

Besides 600 is already shipping while T4 is still vaporware.

 

[PingviN]

http://www.dailytech.com/Qualcomm+C...sily+Beat+by+Snapdragon+800/article30002c.htm

Who to believe? Methinks Qualcomm.

Besides 600 is already shipping while T4 is still vaporware.

"Qualcomm is confident that the Snapdragon 800 willl still be more than enough to hold off the Tegra 4i (Grey), the refined version of Tegra 4 that's slated to land later this year. Tegra 4i and Snapdragon 800 are somewhat similar on paper -- both are clockd at up to 2.3 GHz, both feature four primary CPU cores, both feature an on-die LTE modem."

Isn't Tegra 4i basically a beefed up Tegra 3? Quadcore A9's with Tegra 4 graphics core (60 of them, 72 in the real Tegra 4)?

 

[ams23]

The CPU and GPU performance of Tegra 4i will be much closer to Tegra 4 than to Tegra 3. The expectation is that Tegra 4i will have ~ 80% of the performance of Tegra 4 in most scenarios. Note that due to improvements in IPC and clock operating frequencies (including several design features that are shared between R4 Cortex A9 and Cortex A15) , the Tegra 4i CPU performance should be about 2x faster than Tegra 3. Given the very strong CPU and GPU performance of Tegra 4, this means that Tegra 4i should be very impressive, especially for the target market of mainstream smartphones. T4i may even outperform S800 in a variety of different scenarios, which again would be impressive considering that T4i has an SoC die size that is literally half that of S800.

 

[s44]

"Qualcomm is confident that the Snapdragon 800 willl still be more than enough to hold off the Tegra 4i (Grey), the refined version of Tegra 4 that's slated to land later this year. Tegra 4i and Snapdragon 800 are somewhat similar on paper -- both are clockd at up to 2.3 GHz, both feature four primary CPU cores, both feature an on-die LTE modem."

Isn't Tegra 4i basically a beefed up Tegra 3? Quadcore A9's with Tegra 4 graphics core (60 of them, 72 in the real Tegra 4)?

Yeah, that really is a crazy comparison. However, I'm pretty sure it's DailyTech ignorance rather than Qualcomm itself.

The original Verge piece *does* show Qualcomm's actual arguments for 800>T4 to be non sequiturs, though: 4k encode/decode, integrated LTE... neither has anything to do with raw horsepower, at which quad A15 should destroy even super-tweaked/OCed Krait.

 

[ams23]

NVIDIA showed some slides at MWC 2013 comparing Tegra 4 to quad-core S4 Pro (http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34689618&postcount=230). Tegra 4 apparently is more than 2x faster than S4 Pro in SPECint2000, Sunspider, Web page load, WebGL Aquarium (50 fish), Quadrant Pro 2.0, Vellamo Metal, and is between 1.5-2x faster than S4 Pro in Geekbench, AndEBench Native, CFBench Native, Linpack MT (4T-Market), Antutu, DMIPS, Vellamo HTML5, while being only slightly faster than S4 Pro in Coremark. Strangely enough, NVIDIA somehow estimated the performance of Snapdragon 800 on a case by case basis. Now, take this with a huge grain of salt, but according to NVIDIA they expect Tegra 4 to have a significant performance advantage vs. S800 in SPECint2000, Sunspider, Web page load, WebGL Aquarium (50 fish), Quadrant Pro 2.0, Geekbench, CFBench Native, Linpack MT (4T-Market), Antutu, Vellamo HTML5, and Vellamo Metal, while Snapdragon 800 will have a slight performance advantage vs. Tegra 4 in AndEBench Native, and a significant performance advantage in Coremark and DMIPS. Tegra 4i is supposed to have 80% of the CPU performance of Tegra 4, but we will have to wait and see if that is truly the case across the board.

According to Oleg at B3D, the reason Krait S800 is relatively strong in Coremark and DMIPS is because "those benchmarks are so old that they can fit in L1 cache, so they don't rely on an advanced OoO, memory prefetching and etc, those benchmarks has nothing to
do with real workloads".