The promised Third Level (last generation) of 10nm consumer production processes are here, now. Qualcomm and Huawei are participating on this new sub-section of 10nm, using four BRAND NEW box stock ARM Cortex A75 cores and four A-55 cores running with a 20% throughput improvement over the existing Qualcomm 835. Top of the heap life span of this generation will be only a half a year as the very first 7nm wave is pending very soon.
TSMC is going to be a fab shop this time around, not just Samsung who is now extending all their efforts to drop down to 7nm on their next major chipset which will be out the first of next year. AND Samsung is struggling to make enough of the back ordered Snapdragon 835 chips for all the various premium phones and then make them for the long delayed Microsoft Chromebook killers,
when and if that stuff ever actually does take place ....
Microsoft ..... can you say "overcome by events" three times fast ??? You still really don't move fast enough to play in phone space .... This new stuff is bone stock ARM tested, ARM supported ARM designed stuff, and finally Huawei has actually made good on Mediatek's brag of being officially neck and neck with Qualcomm at a brand new SOC release point.
In fact, Huawei has been ARM poster child for two consecutive ARM releases now and Huawei was the one that LENARO used to make up the official demo board for that earlier A-73 spec level. Perhaps a SOC upgrade to the demo board will come due at the end of this upcoming six months when the stock of already built up demo boards goes on sale and gets sold out -- I guess this depends on if the ball grid array on the SOC stays the same and how much the graphics side changes this time out. Or if the software / hardware changes enough to even need a new LENARO demo board as the old one was 12nm lithography and this one is third gen 10nm lithography.
Or even if this third generation is going to even really last long enough to even need a demo board ....
Qualcomm simply hasn't had enough time to tweek up their own Snapdragon core variant on this one -- and since 7nm hits in a few months after this one Qualcomm likely never will build their own tweeked cores on this particular sub-section of 10nm (as they are busy with 7nm as well).
We look to see a new design wave out of ARM on Cortex A-80 big and A-60 little cores announced soon, paired to a new improved Mali VR graphics set that are all three going to be aimed at the new 7nm and 5nm production space.Some vendors are skipping out on 10nm completely and are bending all their efforts and development dollars at getting the new 7nm designs right as soon as possible -- as getting there first means a year of uncontested high end profits (for the first wave anyway) -- but this comes at the risk of some potentially LARGE EXPENSIVE sorts of screw ups which also can come with "being there first".
Ask 'ol Samsung and Qualcomm about being there first all the time --- occasionally they do get to bite the big one, big time.Risk is minimal with this one, since it is a guaranteed ARM design that already gone through the ARM proof build process.
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Since their vendors have announced phones with the new stuff inside them, ARM will now tell us all about it.
ARM’s Cortex-A75 CPU big core design is an upgrade to the Cortex-A73, and the company says it offers at least 20 percent “more mobile performance” in most tasks, with some benchmarks showing a nearly 50 percent improvement. Also note the A55 little cores got 2x more energy efficient and 25% more powerful,
The new Mali-G72 graphics tech is an update to last year’s Mali-G71, and it includes improvements that ARM says should make it a better option for virtual reality and machine learning applications. The company says it offers up to a 40 percent overall performance boost, 25 percent higher energy efficiency, and 20 percent better performance density. Once again, the current VR and AI tricks are baked right into the Mali-G72 GPU.
Taken as an entire SOC, this new package looks to be an across the board improvement to the QualComm 835 family of chipsets which is the current cream of the crop ARM implementation.
Please note that the new DynamiQ is present inside this SOC design and IT CAN ACCEPT new styles of persistent RAM type memory and it can co-join with other SOCs according to the new DynamiQ methodology so look to see these chipsets show up in Automotive products.
In this it is a clear advancement over the Qualcomm 835.Note that the lithograpy change didn't do all of this -- New Automotive demanded changes gave you shared memory access to the new Optane styles of memory for much faster throughput.
Next couple of months -- 7nm begins to roll through, further improving throughput and cementing the total future use of DynamiQ systems and fixing "pooled new style memory" as the only way going forward. I predict larger total core counts will begin showing up commonly as the existing chip ball grid packages have LOTS of spare room on them right now.
POP memory (installed on top of the SOC at manufacture) will increase to over 6 gigs going forward and it will all be non-volatile memory suitable for both HD type app storage as well as system RAM uses.
And all of this would fit on top of your big toe nail .....
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Uh, lets talk about those A-55 littles a bit.
They share a DynamiQ pooled bus and DynamiQ pooled memory and it can use the new style non-volatile memory as they come bone stock from ARM. You can buy design packs of 2, 4 and 8 cores of the A-55 little main cores to go along with your any count of A-75 big cores.
Please remember the A-55 has twice the throughput, is twice as energy efficient and overall is twice as "good" as an A-53 and four times as good as a A-57 used to be.Cast your mind back a whole year, and remember when 8 each of A-53 or A-57 used to make up an upper end Chinese phone.
Then remember that the new A-55 is TWICE as good as a A-53 that is selling right now.So, box stock from ARM you got low end phones at 4 each A-55 cores and upper level low end phones at 8 each A-55 cores all with performance that kicks the butt of what we sell as a primo phone right now. Cheap. Using Android O that can show a full sized monitor screen, run a keyboard and mouse FROM YOUR POCKET, box stock.
Add some A75 big cores to it and it gets downright flat big computerish in the CPU power level department. And in the GPU department too.
Clearly Better than what you got now, anyways. Runs VR natively and can GAME real Vulcan based AAA games as it sits there in your pocket ..... running the keyboard mouse and monitor using Bluetooth 5.0 (no cables).
And, at 10nm the stuff is now so small there is lots and lots of unused room on the standard SOC POP die packages for lots and lots of other associated stuff to go into the SOC itself. To pull LOTS & LOTS of memory from the pooled new style memory pool and to share whatever passive cooling system (the aluminum frame, generally) that the SOC itself uses.
Phones, even low end phones are going to get a WHOLE lot better, more capable and cheaper, real soon.
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