Correct. This is the reason why previous Exynos Soc is not shipped in US. Whereas they have used Samsung Krait processor with Snapdragon with integrted Chipset. This Exynos looks to marketing slide. What is Speed of USB3 .. If they tell 5 Ghz. Then the chipset consumes lot of power. USB3 pipe interface is nothing but a Pcie interface where it guzzles power. I think unless they slightly modify A15 processor it will land up taking more power. LAPE is not a good feature for Mobile devices. LPDDR3 consumes more power than LPDDR2 ( some people confusingly inter-relate frequency and voltage), But conveniently overlook termination stuff. C2C more power consuming than MIPI HSI . why it is required. I perfectly under HSIC is a very good interface but latency proplem exists. Certainly this article is prepared by Marketing team.... (At least slide).
Looks like its directed more towards tablets. There was a news about samsung testing a exynos variant with radio in Korea. So I'd say the radio integration is coming soon.
2013-14 is shaping up to be exciting time for mobile. New atom,Infineon coming up with radio and amp in a package. and possibly atom with radio later on. Samsung exynos with integrated radio(s). NV chips with integrated radio.
I dont know how samsung will make a integrated radio chips. Even though samsung good at Wireless, unless they make chip it is very difficult to believe
Actual radio cannot be within the chip ( RF chip must be outside).
Well if not LTE, any air interface - obviously not the biggest deal for tablets but trying to see if it really makes any sense to wait for the Exynos 5 over the S4.
Adreno 320 has hard time keeping up with 543MP4 and beats /equals 544MP2. Considering that Mali 400 in 4412 can keep up with 544MP2 in most cases in a phone form factor, I dont think that would be enough to beat T604 in exynos 5.
I don't know benchmarks. But I still believe GPU is from Imagination technologies is better than Mali or Adreno or GeForce. Do any benchmarks available to compare the performance power....
I wish Broadcomm enter into the race of Smartphone market and make the consumers Winner.
Dude, I wish Videocore would get iterated soon. Supposedly Videocore IV is still competitive, though I doubt it's near the top of the charts. A new iteration + two A15s and two A7s would make for a monster SoC.
Qualcomm announced quad core versions of Krait a few weeks ago, Samsung is announcing their next gen chip now. Looks like Nvidia is holding their cards close to their chest before talking about Wayne.
I would think with Nexus 7 sales ramping up and the Surface tablet coming, along with other Tegra 3 products, it doesn't make sense for them to announce anything that might delay current shoppers.
Though they may probably be a bit later than Samsung.
N7 success has given great confidence to all $200 tablet manufacturers. We will see plenty in near future.Next in Line Asus with another $200 tablet dollar ready... Samsung may launch another. Apple will be in fray. Who knows.
N7 tablets offer cost effective version of 10 inch tablets. But they are missing GPU... that is very sad for visual apps and game apps.
It is going to be narrower war between apple and samsung in 10 inch tablets.
I am wondering AT never did the review of GS3 (normal GS3, not the faux US version).. At this stage, it makes no sense to review it either as 15million people might have already bought the device. think people don't like samsung products out in US.
There's something wierd about the benchmarks in AAT phone reviews - they often randomly include phones that don't have their own full review but there's no consistency to it.
If the data has been gathered but the phone is now too old to merit a full review they ought to just publish what they have as a mini-review at least.
Don't forget Cortex A15 chips (and A7) and the new Mali T600 GPU's are better integrated with each other thanks to cache coherency (an advantage of both being made by ARM). Imagination won't support that in their chips.
Wow nice to know Samesung uses 100% vanilla reference ARM designs for most important system chips, could be useful info when I choose my next smartphone or tablet. Thanks a ton Lucian.
CCI interface tells how multiprocessor are communication to avoid cache synchronization. But it is nothing to do with Graphics engine. Mali is mobile graphics processor which is separately made by ARM. Please note ARM is a product company not a product company.
Processor integration will be made by chip manufacturers not the IP vendors.
ARM processor and Imagination chipset can be closely integrable.
Product makers (smartphone maker do make a change with Processor). at least the wrapper for their chipsets.
Why are you spitting venom on amateur Technical discussion. I am reading AMBA 4 (ACE) specification. Based on that i have shared my points. ACE specifications are very complicated. So people go for ACE lite. Designing Interconnect is a job of devil.
it lacks what I found to a great feature of A15 -- the A7 core. that is the logical conclusion on nvidia's tegra 2 5+1 concept in that it is a purpose built power efficient core.
4+1 Concept looks to very unconvincing. By Efficiently controlling POWER gating and Adaptive frequency scaling lesser power can be maintained. 4 +1 concept illogical, redundant and it marketing chip(smaller chip).
Depends on how you view it Samsung's Intrinsity enhanced Hummingbird is not only what Apple used before they cooked their own but what they based their work on as they bought Intrinsity. Samsung is still a semi fab that has to do a lot more engineering work themselves then taking ready IP-cores from ARM for TSMC processes. They do that work for themselves as well as customers like Apple. The IP-libraries for the ARM-cores etc comes from the fabs as ARM themselves only provide for TSMC. They will have a lot of tools written and configured for their process.
Can you show me the evidence you base that assumption upon? Because as I see it, we can test Samsung chips in an Android environment vs Apple chips in an iOS environment which says nothing about an Android vs. iOS or the Samsung vs. Apple question you are tackling. It just says something about the Android+Samsung vs. Apple+iOS questions which this isn't about.
All the cell libraries are fab specific and optimized thus an ARM-core from ARM is not built for Samsung directly without work and collaboration by Samsung, the tools are for the Samsung process and so on, Samsung has their own IP for that. That they collaborate with and develop for ARM. They have their own process, they have their own transistor type/design. Any IP core will have some work by Samsung in it. Plus the netlist comes from ARM if you build with hard macro cores. Either way they are not designing the processor itself. Apple probably only has a physical IP license or uses Samsungs RTL designs. They necessarily don't generate and synthesis their own netlist (for the ARM cores) for the fab. Thus the stuff ARM and Samsung (itself a RTL licensee) cook up together or what Samsung develops from the soft cores (RTL) is likely what Apple and other customers uses. By using Samsungs stuff in their design and engineering tools. Inevitably technology from Samsung will be there even if it where an design by their own from the ground up. An design for another fab, using other tools, processes, design kits, cell libraries etc just wouldn't work. Although some companies collaborate with each other so that you can move designs more easily, that doesn't mean it's compatible with TSMC though.
Regarding power, we just don't know they are two different designs sitting in different products. Samsung Semi is a design foundry. Apple also uses their packing technology (PoP) thats why you see Samsung chips on there right in the packing of the SoC.
Correct. Cell libraries are fab specific as well as process geometries specific. Samsung advertises itself will make 32nmHK proces which is already used in sandy bridge . But I believe 20 nm and 14 nm FinFET may offer great advantages. But some guys argue planar architecture may be greater good.(ST). FinFET 4 terminal device has got triagular structure (Not a rectangular one) for larger yield.
ARM gives RTL code some are soft and some may be GTECH ( Un optimized gatelevel netlist).ARM is used to license architecture. Some guys like QUALCOMM optimize the RTL code for power consumption. I think Apple may also do that. Samsung has their own fab. I think for economy reasons APPLE go for Samsung. Remember a company called Portal player who designed first APPLE chips later APPLE went to Samsung for the economy. ( They offer SOC + DRAM ) combo cheaper. Later Portal player took over by nVIDIA , nVIDIA started shipping (Tegra chipsets). Hmmm.. the disucssion is going on different direction.
Power there are two components ( they are many).... Let me explain.. Static and Dynamic... Static when transistors go in idle... Smaller geometries offer larger leakage.. Dynamic when it is powered CV2F... Usually clock gating and Multi Vt librarires are used... But High Vt cells offer greater delay and lesser leakage. There are many more schemes available for discussion sake we need have to go.
Power gating offers good power saving .. Nothing but switching off power when not used . Basically for that we need multi rails (voltages), isolation cells, retention cell ( Low power architecure).
But the devil lies in DFT.. How do we test the POwer gating .. If it fails what will happen...
Beyond that Macrocells like hardcores like RAMS, PLLs, PADS also consumes lot of power. The bad guys are PLLs and Termination. They consume lot of power.
If you enlighten me with more info , I am ready to hear...
This would usually be the case, but it's well known that Intrinsity performed the design work for Samsung's Cortex-A8 Hummingbird offering on their 45nm process, and Apple bought Intrinsity.
My guess is that Intrinsity licensed their hardened cores to Samsung, to make available to third parties. Now that Apple owns Intrinsity they don't have to pay that licensing fee, but maybe they're still licensing hardened Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 cores to Samsung for use in their own SoCs on their fabs (or maybe Samsung is doing their own versions now). In the future when Apple does their own ARM cores using PASemi's uarch design talent then chances are Intrinsity will harden those too and probably won't license it out to anyone else.
With reference to DAC 2012 conference, Wide IO is going to implemented in Samsung next processor. .But It seems it is going to be Non JEDEC Wide I/O. Samsung already claimed TSV and PDK proved in 32nm node.
But the yield for Wide I/O.....
I don't believe it is going to DDR3-L(1.35) as their for Exynos 5. Misleading block diagram. There are chances of LPDDR3..
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36 Comments
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nyonya - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
There's no integrated modem, correct? Does that not bode well for the battery life vs. say the Qualcomm S4, with its integrated LTE radio?vasanthakumar - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
Correct. This is the reason why previous Exynos Soc is not shipped in US. Whereas they have used Samsung Krait processor with Snapdragon with integrted Chipset. This Exynos looks to marketing slide. What is Speed of USB3 .. If they tell 5 Ghz. Then the chipset consumes lot of power. USB3 pipe interface is nothing but a Pcie interface where it guzzles power.I think unless they slightly modify A15 processor it will land up taking more power.
LAPE is not a good feature for Mobile devices.
LPDDR3 consumes more power than LPDDR2 ( some people confusingly inter-relate frequency and voltage), But conveniently overlook termination stuff.
C2C more power consuming than MIPI HSI . why it is required. I perfectly under HSIC is a very good interface but latency proplem exists.
Certainly this article is prepared by Marketing team.... (At least slide).
leomax999 - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
Looks like its directed more towards tablets.There was a news about samsung testing a exynos variant with radio in Korea.
So I'd say the radio integration is coming soon.
2013-14 is shaping up to be exciting time for mobile.
New atom,Infineon coming up with radio and amp in a package.
and possibly atom with radio later on.
Samsung exynos with integrated radio(s).
NV chips with integrated radio.
rd_nest - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
I think the LTE GS3 (Korean edition) uses Exynos 4 quad with radio and 2GB RAM.vasanthakumar - Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - link
I dont know how samsung will make a integrated radio chips.Even though samsung good at Wireless, unless they make chip it is very difficult to believe
Actual radio cannot be within the chip ( RF chip must be outside).
rd_nest - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
Couldn't care less about LTE, coz we don't have LTE. good that die space is not wasted for LTE ..those who need LTE can use the S4.BTW, GPU is running at 533Mhz..there were many leaks in past about that.
White paper link: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconduct...
nyonya - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
Well if not LTE, any air interface - obviously not the biggest deal for tablets but trying to see if it really makes any sense to wait for the Exynos 5 over the S4.dazweeja - Sunday, August 12, 2012 - link
When the Exynos 5 is released, it may not be the fastest then either - Qualcomm will already have shipped the quad-core S4 Pro with Adreno 320.leomax999 - Sunday, August 12, 2012 - link
Adreno 320 has hard time keeping up with 543MP4 and beats /equals 544MP2. Considering that Mali 400 in 4412 can keep up with 544MP2 in most cases in a phone form factor, I dont think that would be enough to beat T604 in exynos 5.vasanthakumar - Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - link
I don't know benchmarks. But I still believe GPU is from Imagination technologies is better than Mali or Adreno or GeForce. Do any benchmarks available to compare the performance power....I wish Broadcomm enter into the race of Smartphone market and make the consumers Winner.
Vigorous competition ... Joy for consumer.
lmcd - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
Dude, I wish Videocore would get iterated soon. Supposedly Videocore IV is still competitive, though I doubt it's near the top of the charts. A new iteration + two A15s and two A7s would make for a monster SoC.Guspaz - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
Who is "we"? Because my definition of "we" has pervasive LTE coverage in every major city of "our" country from multiple networks.rd_nest - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
i should apologize for not defining "we" in the first comment. clearly you are not part of my "we"tviceman - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
Qualcomm announced quad core versions of Krait a few weeks ago, Samsung is announcing their next gen chip now. Looks like Nvidia is holding their cards close to their chest before talking about Wayne.fm123 - Sunday, August 12, 2012 - link
I would think with Nexus 7 sales ramping up and the Surface tablet coming, along with other Tegra 3 products, it doesn't make sense for them to announce anything that might delay current shoppers.Though they may probably be a bit later than Samsung.
vasanthakumar - Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - link
N7 success has given great confidence to all $200 tablet manufacturers. We will see plenty in near future.Next in Line Asus with another $200 tablet dollar ready...Samsung may launch another. Apple will be in fray. Who knows.
N7 tablets offer cost effective version of 10 inch tablets. But they are missing GPU... that is very sad for visual apps and game apps.
It is going to be narrower war between apple and samsung in 10 inch tablets.
rd_nest - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
I am wondering AT never did the review of GS3 (normal GS3, not the faux US version).. At this stage, it makes no sense to review it either as 15million people might have already bought the device. think people don't like samsung products out in US.MadMan007 - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
There's something wierd about the benchmarks in AAT phone reviews - they often randomly include phones that don't have their own full review but there's no consistency to it.If the data has been gathered but the phone is now too old to merit a full review they ought to just publish what they have as a mini-review at least.
Skiddywinks - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
I have been waiting for the International SGS3 review for what feels like months now.Lucian Armasu - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
Don't forget Cortex A15 chips (and A7) and the new Mali T600 GPU's are better integrated with each other thanks to cache coherency (an advantage of both being made by ARM). Imagination won't support that in their chips.http://www.arm.com/products/system-ip/interconnect...
It works like this:
http://www.cnx-software.com/wp-content/uploads/201...
Pirks - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
Wow nice to know Samesung uses 100% vanilla reference ARM designs for most important system chips, could be useful info when I choose my next smartphone or tablet. Thanks a ton Lucian.vasanthakumar - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
CCI interface tells how multiprocessor are communication to avoid cache synchronization. But it is nothing to do with Graphics engine.Mali is mobile graphics processor which is separately made by ARM.
Please note ARM is a product company not a product company.
Processor integration will be made by chip manufacturers not the IP vendors.
ARM processor and Imagination chipset can be closely integrable.
Product makers (smartphone maker do make a change with Processor). at least the wrapper for their chipsets.
Death666Angel - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
Stop using online translation programs, your posts barely make sense, although you seem to have some knowledge of the material.vasanthakumar - Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - link
Why are you spitting venom on amateur Technical discussion. I am reading AMBA 4 (ACE) specification. Based on that i have shared my points.ACE specifications are very complicated. So people go for ACE lite.
Designing Interconnect is a job of devil.
aranyagag - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
it lacks what I found to a great feature of A15 -- the A7 core. that is the logical conclusion on nvidia's tegra 2 5+1 concept in that it is a purpose built power efficient core.rd_nest - Friday, August 10, 2012 - link
think it was already under development when ARM introduced big-little concept.vasanthakumar - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
4+1 Concept looks to very unconvincing. By Efficiently controlling POWER gating and Adaptive frequency scaling lesser power can be maintained. 4 +1 concept illogical, redundant and it marketing chip(smaller chip).vasanthakumar - Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - link
I think A15 tablets are more suitable for tablet and above computing monsters. Tablet , Desktop, Servers..lilmoe - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
"Samsung, having manufactured the A5X for Apple, learned from the best"Really Anand? Isn't Exynos the closest SoC to ARM's reference design?
Penti - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
Depends on how you view it Samsung's Intrinsity enhanced Hummingbird is not only what Apple used before they cooked their own but what they based their work on as they bought Intrinsity. Samsung is still a semi fab that has to do a lot more engineering work themselves then taking ready IP-cores from ARM for TSMC processes. They do that work for themselves as well as customers like Apple. The IP-libraries for the ARM-cores etc comes from the fabs as ARM themselves only provide for TSMC. They will have a lot of tools written and configured for their process.vasanthakumar - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
Samsung processor is lesser power efficient when compared to APPLE. I think SAMSUNG manufactres Ax chip and it is not designing.Apple provides GDSII netlist kind of stuff to Samsung.
Dont jump into conclusion of Samsung designing APPLE chipsets. It is wrong assertion.
Death666Angel - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
Can you show me the evidence you base that assumption upon? Because as I see it, we can test Samsung chips in an Android environment vs Apple chips in an iOS environment which says nothing about an Android vs. iOS or the Samsung vs. Apple question you are tackling. It just says something about the Android+Samsung vs. Apple+iOS questions which this isn't about.Penti - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
All the cell libraries are fab specific and optimized thus an ARM-core from ARM is not built for Samsung directly without work and collaboration by Samsung, the tools are for the Samsung process and so on, Samsung has their own IP for that. That they collaborate with and develop for ARM. They have their own process, they have their own transistor type/design. Any IP core will have some work by Samsung in it. Plus the netlist comes from ARM if you build with hard macro cores. Either way they are not designing the processor itself. Apple probably only has a physical IP license or uses Samsungs RTL designs. They necessarily don't generate and synthesis their own netlist (for the ARM cores) for the fab. Thus the stuff ARM and Samsung (itself a RTL licensee) cook up together or what Samsung develops from the soft cores (RTL) is likely what Apple and other customers uses. By using Samsungs stuff in their design and engineering tools. Inevitably technology from Samsung will be there even if it where an design by their own from the ground up. An design for another fab, using other tools, processes, design kits, cell libraries etc just wouldn't work. Although some companies collaborate with each other so that you can move designs more easily, that doesn't mean it's compatible with TSMC though.Regarding power, we just don't know they are two different designs sitting in different products. Samsung Semi is a design foundry. Apple also uses their packing technology (PoP) thats why you see Samsung chips on there right in the packing of the SoC.
vasanthakumar - Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - link
Correct. Cell libraries are fab specific as well as process geometries specific. Samsung advertises itself will make 32nmHK proces which is already used in sandy bridge .But I believe 20 nm and 14 nm FinFET may offer great advantages.
But some guys argue planar architecture may be greater good.(ST).
FinFET 4 terminal device has got triagular structure (Not a rectangular one) for larger yield.
ARM gives RTL code some are soft and some may be GTECH ( Un optimized gatelevel netlist).ARM is used to license architecture. Some guys like QUALCOMM optimize the RTL code for power consumption. I think Apple may also do that. Samsung has their own fab. I think for economy reasons APPLE go for Samsung. Remember a company called Portal player who designed first APPLE chips later APPLE went to Samsung for the economy. ( They offer SOC + DRAM ) combo cheaper.
Later Portal player took over by nVIDIA , nVIDIA started shipping (Tegra chipsets). Hmmm.. the disucssion is going on different direction.
Power there are two components ( they are many).... Let me explain.. Static and Dynamic... Static when transistors go in idle... Smaller geometries offer larger leakage..
Dynamic when it is powered CV2F... Usually clock gating and Multi Vt librarires are used... But High Vt cells offer greater delay and lesser leakage. There are many more schemes available for discussion sake we need have to go.
Power gating offers good power saving .. Nothing but switching off power when not used . Basically for that we need multi rails (voltages), isolation cells, retention cell ( Low power architecure).
But the devil lies in DFT.. How do we test the POwer gating .. If it fails what will happen...
Beyond that Macrocells like hardcores like RAMS, PLLs, PADS also consumes lot of power. The bad guys are PLLs and Termination.
They consume lot of power.
If you enlighten me with more info , I am ready to hear...
Exophase - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
This would usually be the case, but it's well known that Intrinsity performed the design work for Samsung's Cortex-A8 Hummingbird offering on their 45nm process, and Apple bought Intrinsity.My guess is that Intrinsity licensed their hardened cores to Samsung, to make available to third parties. Now that Apple owns Intrinsity they don't have to pay that licensing fee, but maybe they're still licensing hardened Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 cores to Samsung for use in their own SoCs on their fabs (or maybe Samsung is doing their own versions now). In the future when Apple does their own ARM cores using PASemi's uarch design talent then chances are Intrinsity will harden those too and probably won't license it out to anyone else.
vasanthakumar - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
With reference to DAC 2012 conference, Wide IO is going to implemented in Samsung next processor. .But It seems it is going to be Non JEDEC Wide I/O. Samsung already claimed TSV and PDK proved in 32nm node.But the yield for Wide I/O.....
I don't believe it is going to DDR3-L(1.35) as their for Exynos 5. Misleading block diagram.
There are chances of LPDDR3..