Low-cost emerging market SoC/phone discussion

[Kaarlisk]

In no small part, this should be due to Moto G using a much better optimized WebKit browser together with a more recent version of Android.

Problem is, I also have Android 4.4. and a recent version of WebKit.

That said, I'd find it hard to believe a single-core Scorpion would be faster than a higher-clocked dual-core Krait..

It is not. The point is, A7@1.2GHz is not faster than my existing phone. If I want a new phone, I want it to be faster. Much faster. As a result, Krait@1.7 is a performance level where I would feel the difference.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

It is not. The point is, A7@1.2GHz is not faster than my existing phone. If I want a new phone, I want it to be faster. Much faster. As a result, Krait@1.7 is a performance level where I would feel the difference.

There's probably another important factor here: screen resolution. IIRC, those 1.4GHz Snapdragons went to smartphones with a 800*480 screen.
Almost all Snapdragon 400 models have to deal at least with a 720p screen, which will have over twice the number of pixels than the old models.
720p is great for user experience IMO, but it certainly takes a toll on general performance.

 

[liolio]

??? there are two versions of the snapdragon 400 (dual krait and x4 A7) they embark the same GPU.

 

[Kaarlisk]

720p is great for user experience IMO, but it certainly takes a toll on general performance.

When rendering a webpage (i.e. HTML/Javascript work)?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

When rendering a webpage (i.e. HTML/Javascript work)?

Of course, yes.

 

[Erinyes]

Not much news on this thread for a while. I was wondering..we've been seeing a lot of phones with Snapdragon 410 being announced of late..and even some Snapdragon 615. But news on Mediatek 6732 and 6752 has been conspicuously missing. Anyone have any news or info on this? (One point is that CES is right around the corner and maybe a lot of manufacturers decided to hold off until then to announce products.)

 

[Mariner]

Not been following things too closely, but I think the first Chinese phones containing the mid-range 64-bit Mediatek chips are just beginning to get to the market now. Check gizchina.com for various 'previews' of these phones.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I watch the news about Firefox phones (that's a very small subset of mobile hardware!) and so the LG Fx0, soon to be launched in Japan only is intriguing. It uses a Snapdragon 400 rather than a 410.
Not cheap, it's like it's some high end phone with mid range hardware. Web comments almost all say it's ugly but these considerations are lost on me. I like the color.
Similar in raw specs to Zaphod's phone but about triple the price. (but it has 1.5GB RAM, twice the flash, less weight and more battery)

720p is great for user experience IMO, but it certainly takes a toll on general performance.

Nitpick : to keep the same aspect ratio as 800x480, it should be 1280x768

 

[tangey]

I'm not entirely sure the hisilicon Kirin 920 Soc is "low cost", however this seemed the best place to put this.

Anandtech's article on it in Sept confirmed it has Mali T628MP4.

A blog article today from IMG, confirms that it also contains PowerVr Video encode and Video decode.

Is this the first time Mali and PowerVr have co-existed on the same silicon ?

It seems strange decision making. One assumes Mali and PowerVr each design their graphics and video IP to work best with their own IP. So was Mali's video IP so bad that they went to IMG ? Was IMG's graphics IP so bad that they went with Mali ? Or did it just make monetary sense ?

http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/miracast-streaming-using-powervr-video-processors

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The Kirin 920 has 4x Cortex A15 + 4x Cortex A7. AFAIK, the Cortex A15 cores only go up to 1.7GHz but in the end that means CPU performance is between Snapdragon 800 and 801.
GPU performance isn't great, I think it's close to the Adreno 320 in Snapdragon 600.

It's by no means a low-cost chip. The K92x all go into Huawei's highest end devices (Honor 6, Mate 7, etc.).


That said, I have no idea why they went ARM for GPU and PowerVR for video decoder.
Perhaps PowerVR's GPU solutions are substantially more expensive than ARM's, for the same target performance, while their video codecs are rather cheap.

 

[Lodix]

The MTK6595 is a lowcost SOC and outperforms the Kirin 920 in every aspect.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The MTK6595 is a lowcost SOC and outperforms the Kirin 920 in every aspect.

Mediatek has stated very clearly that the MT6595 is not a low-cost SoC, by the contrary:

The MT6595 is a premium product and is designed to power the high-end devices. The high-end of the market has been dominated by a couple of players only and we believe that segment can be disrupted.

Mediatek will still cover low-end devices with the MT673x and mid-range with MT675x.


Making a low-cost SoC with 4x Cortex A17 + 4x Cortex A7 wouldn't be very smart on their part.

 

[Ailuros]

The Kirin 920 has 4x Cortex A15 + 4x Cortex A7. AFAIK, the Cortex A15 cores only go up to 1.7GHz but in the end that means CPU performance is between Snapdragon 800 and 801.

You'd be in battery lifetime trouble if it would go higher than 1.7GHz for the time being. At 1.6GHz A15 you're exactly on Snap 800 level if geekbench3 scores count for anything.

GPU performance isn't great, I think it's close to the Adreno 320 in Snapdragon 600.

***edit: oh the Kirin920? It's a Mali628MP4.

That said, I have no idea why they went ARM for GPU and PowerVR for video decoder.
Perhaps PowerVR's GPU solutions are substantially more expensive than ARM's, for the same target performance, while their video codecs are rather cheap.

Honestly who cares? Maybe the decoder IP contract lasted longer or who knows what else? IMG's sales folks seem to be too buys lately selling MIPS or whatever else and I'm not in the least surprised that ARM's GPU IP marketshare is nearly equivalent to that of IMG. In such a cut throat market anything you'll neglect will come chasing you down eventually...

 

[Deleted member 13524]

As tangey mentioned, the GPU in the Kirin 920 is a Mali T628MP4, not a G6200 (that's Mediatek's high-ends).
IIRC, the G6200 at 600MHz will be quite a bit more powerful than the T628 in Kirin 920. It seems that particular implementation was terribly done at least for the 3D part.

I'm not complaining about the 1.7GHz limit even one bit. My wife's Honor 6 has a spectacular performance and a very long battery life. Anandtech's review really doesn't make justice to the device (also, it seems they had a unit with broken WiFi antennas).

 

[Ailuros]

As tangey mentioned, the GPU in the Kirin 920 is a Mali T628MP4, not a G6200 (that's Mediatek's high-ends).
IIRC, the G6200 at 600MHz will be quite a bit more powerful than the T628 in Kirin 920. It seems that particular implementation was terribly done at least for the 3D part.

I edited in the meantime; well the G6200 should be at 8.0 fps Manhattan in the Meizu MX4. Differences to a T628MP4 aren't all that big, if you exclude possible throttling.

I'm not complaining about the 1.7GHz limit even one bit. My wife's Honor 6 has a spectacular performance and a very long battery life. Anandtech's review really doesn't make justice to the device (also, it seems they had a unit with broken WiFi antennas).

I wish I could have the tools to expose in selective cases DVFS settings. There's probably a lot more hidden in those than we imagine. I posted it in the Tegra thread for another reason:

http://www.ondaforum.com/topic/859-onda-v989-cpu-configuration/

...and that's how they actually get to idiotically high Antutu scores. In speed mode I get to 64.4k in Antutu while Geekbench3 gives me roughly 800 single/2500 multi-threaded. As for the standby consumption issue you were right; it's a wifi only tablet you'd expect the idiots to have all telephony references disabled for which my highest consumption initially was "cell standby". Rooted the device, removed the telephony crap and things are back to normal.....*sigh*

 

[Rys]

IMG's sales folks seem to be too buys lately selling MIPS or whatever else and I'm not in the least surprised that ARM's GPU IP marketshare is nearly equivalent to that of IMG. In such a cut throat market anything you'll neglect will come chasing you down eventually...

Where do you get the idea that we've neglected to sell our primary IP properly to chase markets for our other tech? That's not how it works.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

...and that's how they actually get to idiotically high Antutu scores. In speed mode I get to 64.4k in Antutu while Geekbench3 gives me roughly 800 single/2500 multi-threaded.

That's predictible.. the chinese love AnTuTu and its scores sell devices.
Regardless, it's not like you can complain about the device's performance for web browsing, playing games and watching videos!
Unless they screwed up with the mass storage, though. I get the feeling that slow/cheap-ass mass storage is responsible for the overwhelming majority of bad experiences with android devices nowadays.

As for the standby consumption issue you were right; it's a wifi only tablet you'd expect the idiots to have all telephony references disabled for which my highest consumption initially was "cell standby". Rooted the device, removed the telephony crap and things are back to normal.....*sigh*

Well Onda has been getting their fair share of popularity with doing some quality and well-specced hardware, but I imagine they don't hire a lot of software engineers
As for that, there's nothing like getting a Windows 8 tablet, really. Experience is pretty much streamlined and you know what to expect.
Good to know you're getting a decent standby longevity, though.

 

[Ailuros]

That's predictible.. the chinese love AnTuTu and its scores sell devices.
Regardless, it's not like you can complain about the device's performance for web browsing, playing games and watching videos!
Unless they screwed up with the mass storage, though. I get the feeling that slow/cheap-ass mass storage is responsible for the overwhelming majority of bad experiences with android devices nowadays.

Albeit just one indication, if you look at the MT6595 CPU overhead scores in GFXbench3.0 it shows that MTK has been improving quite a bit in terms of software. The problem with chinese devices is usually still on the software side these days and decreasingly less on the hardware level. Other than that I operate it in "speed mode" which gives priority to the A15 cluster. The relative increase in power consumption is worth the additional smoothness. Overall not too far apart from a past generation laptop.

Well Onda has been getting their fair share of popularity with doing some quality and well-specced hardware, but I imagine they don't hire a lot of software engineers
As for that, there's nothing like getting a Windows 8 tablet, really. Experience is pretty much streamlined and you know what to expect.
Good to know you're getting a decent standby longevity, though.

You wouldn't expect otherwise from me, but again the PowerVR GPU in it (G6230 up to 600MHz) is to the point exact what public benchmarks state. It doesn't throttle a single inch and that's what vendors should look for these days as an utmost priority and not some meaningless wankalicious benchmark scores.

 

[tangey]

Where do you get the idea that we've neglected to sell our primary IP properly to chase markets for our other tech? That's not how it works.

I don't think it is a MIPS issue. The problem occurred before the MIPS acquisition.

I've been a keen IMG observer for a long time. It is very clear to me, that IMG neglected to R&D a low cost / low area/ "good enough" IP for the Powervr series 5, which allowed Mali to stomp all over the ultra low/low end of the graphics IP arena with it's Mali400. It is from this arena that they have gained their market share, and it has provided opportunities to migrate upwards. Just looking at your Royalty shipments over the last year, and comparing with previous years, it is apparent that non-apple PowerVR shipments are down year-on-year, even though the SAM has increased significantly over the time period. Mediatek being the most stunning example, from having the prominence of mediatek phone soc graphics IP in 2012, there is a comparative dearth of IMG graphics IP in mediatek phone socs currently shipping. That may in part, be down to reasons other than pure performance metrics, but far from all.

The fact that IMG have, belately IMHO, developed and are marketing IP cores for low area/low cost series6 designs, is indicative of an acceptance that this end is important going forward.

For me, not being able to be competitive for volume mobile mediatek socs seats in an 18 month period, was a major misstep by the company.

 

[wco81]

Thinnest phone in the US is the Blu Vivo Air, which uses an MTK6592.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7504935/thinnest-phone-blu-vivo-air-price-amazon