Low-cost emerging market SoC/phone discussion

  • Thread starter Deleted member 13524
  • Start date
Arun said:
So far, so good. The Cortex-A5 is a nice core, but it needs a performance upgrade. The Cortex-A8 has nice performance, but surprisingly bad perf/mm² and perf/watt, so I bet they're working on a cheap in-order dual-issue CPU that still achieves higher performance than the A8. So far nothing super exciting, right?
Click to expand...
Hmm dual-issue in-order with high performance sounds a bit problematic to me.
I suspect Kingfisher will be the first ARMv8 (64-bit) core despite being reasonably low-end. A strange choice perhaps, but it's easier to start with an in-order architecture, and it would certainly remove any advantage MIPS might have had with the upcoming 64-bit Prodigy. I could be wrong, but it'd make quite a bit of sense.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure though why they'd target it towards low-cost smartphones though in this case.
Another explanation could be a multithreaded (not necessarily restricted to two...) in-order dual-issue core?
Then the "software support" required would just be that apps need multi-thread support to really leverage the power of the chip. Basically the "atom way". That's just a guess but multithreading still looks like a good way to increase efficiency of multi-issue in-order designs to me (but of course, not for single-threaded performance...).
 
mczak said:
Hmm dual-issue in-order with high performance sounds a bit problematic to me.
Click to expand...
There are many possible shades of grey between the A5 and the A9. Look at the Marvell PJ4 for example...

I'm not sure though why they'd target it towards low-cost smartphones though in this case.
Click to expand...
Many possible explanations including the fact they likely wanted to release A15 faster so they stuck to ARMv7, and the Kingfisher design team is likely smaller and completely separate.

Another explanation could be a multithreaded (not necessarily restricted to two...) in-order dual-issue core?
Then the "software support" required would just be that apps need multi-thread support to really leverage the power of the chip. Basically the "atom way". That's just a guess but multithreading still looks like a good way to increase efficiency of multi-issue in-order designs to me (but of course, not for single-threaded performance...).
Click to expand...
I agree that SMT is very possible for Kingfisher (see: www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/111/2) but there's nothing you need for it beyond what you already need for a dual-core Cortex-A9. It makes no sense for Dell's Director of Strategic Processor Technology to say something like that for SMT. The only thing that could possibly blow anyone's minds more is special instructions to make ARM-to-x86 transcode faster, but that's just crazy talk, especially on a lower-end core. And we'd know about it - that thing would have leaked a long time ago. No way.

So we're back at ARMv8 really... Or maybe just new NEON extensions or a new MPCore model, I guess. Heterogeneous computing is supported on A5/A9/A15 so you can do say 2xA5+2xA15, but the full solution isn't provided by ARM and it prevents you from using the (very) few new instructions on the A15. So it's possible Kingfisher makes heterogeneous an 'official' feature. Anyhow, this is all a bit speculative, but I can't help but think it'll be more exciting than A5.
 
Arun said:
There are many possible shades of grey between the A5 and the A9. Look at the Marvell PJ4 for example...
Click to expand...
Yes but I have absolutely no idea if that improved perf/power or perf/area over a A8 (I've no idea if it is faster than a A8 neither).

Many possible explanations including the fact they likely wanted to release A15 faster so they stuck to ARMv7, and the Kingfisher design team is likely smaller and completely separate.
Click to expand...
I'm still not quite sold on the idea.

I agree that SMT is very possible for Kingfisher (see: www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/111/2) but there's nothing you need for it beyond what you already need for a dual-core Cortex-A9. It makes no sense for Dell's Director of Strategic Processor Technology to say something like that for SMT.
Click to expand...
Hmm well unless it would really require lots of threads to get decent performance. Doesn't make much sense though.
Or maybe just new NEON extensions or a new MPCore model, I guess.
Click to expand...
Neither one sounds like a game-changer to me.
So yes maybe your guess is better than mine :) Or he didn't quite mean what he said ;-).
 
I thought it'd be nice to bring this thread back from the grave with some updates on the low-cost SoCs that we'll be having this year:

- Rockchips RK3066
1.6GHz dual-core Cortex A9 + Mali 400MP4.
This one means business (see the "Yuandao N90" results).
GPU performance is on par with Exynos 4210, which means it's probably clocked at the same 264MHz.

This chip is appearing in chinese tablets with 9.7" IPS screens, looking like complete ipad knock-offs in shape, for about $200.
Apparently, there's also a single-core RK31xx (smartphones?) and a quad-core RK32xx (higher-performance tablets?) coming out afterwards.

- AMLogic AML8726-MX
1.2GHz dual-core Cortex A9 + Mali400MP2
GPU performance sits between SGX 540 @ 386MHz and Adreno 220


These are chips that will be coming in "brand-less" tablets. Since Honeycomb never made it to actual "open-source", all brand-less tablets from last year had really poor implementation (usually Gingerbread with a Honeycomb skin), but after the public release of ICS there's been some fairly good options all around.


Moreover, these tablets have been coming out with IPS panels and decent capacitive touchscreens.
I believe they can become quite menacing to Samsung's Tab 2 and Motorola's Xoom 2 lines since they can be quite a bit faster for a much lower price.
Even more so if some retail stores decide to rebrand and resell them.
Too bad that there's probably no Google Play "compliance" and software updates are pretty much non-existant.
 
Is there going to be much room for these outside of China? Samsung has come out with a $250 tablet and Asus is going to come out with a Tegra 3 one for $250 as well.

Also, aren't Huawei and ZTE suppose to be going more upscale?
 
I've decided to get myself a budget Android tablet later this year and have been looking with interest at the RK3066 and AML8726-MX. The first tablets containing these chips should be available over the course of the next few months (I understand tablets containing the AML chip will be available in May with the Rockchip devices in June or July).

As the benchmarks show, performance is impressive, but I wonder how good the battery life will be? You'd have to assume that the Rockchip and AML chips won't be quite as bespoke as the TI/Samsung/NVidia/Apple equivalents so battery life probably won't be at quite the same level.

The question is, will battery life be good enough? If build quality is decent and performance is equivalent, battery life may be the only factor stopping me buying a device with 90% of the performance for 50% of the price!
 
Looks like Chinese SoC vendors jumped on whatever new 40nm process they're using, greatly closing the feature gap. It'll widen again once the major 28nm Cortex-A15 SoCs come out but for now this could be a big opportunity.

Could be a big win for Mali marketshare too.
 
Mediatek keeps upping its 2012 3G smartphone soc shipping estimates. Started at 50M, went to 50-70M, and just this week they revised it to 75M. Quite impressive as they only started shipping 3G solutions last quarter of 2011.

Some of their more recent chips/upcoming chips are: MT6575,MT6575T,MT6515,MT6515T,MT6577,MT6517. 1Ghz A8 are the current generation, with a handset price starting at $130. Dual core Socs will appear mid year. All of their 3G socs are shipping with SGX531 graphics.

It appear mediatek have some serious plans going forward, as they have already licensed multi-core series 5, and Series 6 (aka Rogue).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi;

Mediatek has just launched it's dual-core A9 Mediatek MT 6577 SoC.

Does anyone know which SGX Series5 GPU is inside this SoC?
I was not able to find anything about the GPU.

Link: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/mediatek-mt6577-pushes-dual-core-android-4-smartphones-under-200/

The MT 6577 is pincompatible with the MT6575, so maybe we will see cheap dual-core mobile phones soon. Something like this maybe: http://www.zopomobileshop.com/en/26-zopo-zp300-field-mtk-smartphone-dualsim-where-to-buy.html
 
I've read somewhere that the description for the GPU is "PowerVR SGX531 Ultra".

I don't know if this is true but if it is, don't expect it to be nearly as competitive as the other dual-Cortex A9 solutions in the market.
Unless it's clocked at 750MHz or something.
 
MT6577 is definitely SGX531. I'm not sure about the "ultra" thing, mediatek clumped together the single core 6575 with the 6577 when going for Khronos opengles2.0 compliance. Ultra likely means its clocked higher, which would be in keeping with them promoting it as an overall higher performing soc. Nice that they've made it pin compliant with the single core, reduces time to market.

Today, it's also been reported that Huawei is going to use the 6577.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120627PB201.html

Lenovo and zte also use mediatek 3g socs, and I've seen some reports that Motorola are considering them for certain markets. So certainly they are used widely in 'white box' products but also some brand names are selecting them too.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
I've read somewhere that the description for the GPU is "PowerVR SGX531 Ultra".

I don't know if this is true but if it is, don't expect it to be nearly as competitive as the other dual-Cortex A9 solutions in the market.
Unless it's clocked at 750MHz or something.
Click to expand...

An "Ultra" low cost solution then; as for competitiveness I'd say it comes more down to perf/mW than anything else in the small form factor market.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

On a complete OT basis where did I read again in the past days that MediaTek is going to acquire MStar? If true it'll bump up MediaTek quite a bit in the list of top ten semiconductors and they'll hold quite a huge market share for TV SoCs.
 
As both MediaTek and MStar are IMG licensees, it sounds like IMG GPU IP will find its home in a crapload of TV SoCs for the future.
 
Meh. The Nexus 7 looks alright, but it's no good for me.

I've decided I'm going to buy an Android tablet this summer which I will use, in part, as a portable media device. Therefore, I'll need a mini-HDMI output and also a microSD socket.

I was hoping that Asus would be releasing a budget 7" tablet with these options (as rumoured earlier this year), but I'm guessing they will be too busy churning out the Nexus in large quantities.

Oh well. I may have to go try out a budget tablet from China containing one of the dual-core A9 chips from Rockchip or AMLogic. Initial reviews of some of these seem to be pretty good, providing the ROMs end up being nice and stable.
 
I'd definitely recommend you stay away from those devices unless you can try it first hand. Not because of the SoCs, but because the digitisers tend to be inaccurate and can only see a couple of touches, the screens tend to be dreadful and the battery life is barely there.

I've had the displeasure of working on a couple of dozen of the things over the last couple of years and they're almost universally poor to use because of those things. Pretty good silicon, terrible everything else.

Buyer beware.
 
I've actually got one on order - taken a punt on an Aoson M11 which has received a couple of decent reviews elsewhere.

It has dimensions and screen size pretty much the same as an iPad and battery life is reputedly around 7-8 hours which isn't pretty good. Build quality is reported to be good as well, with a metal casing and solid build

It should arrive next week and I'm hoping to avoid too much in the way of import duty and VAT. If worst comes to worst and it has too many problems, I've bought it under escrow so can always send it back for a refund, even if it costs me return shipping.

I've paid about £150 for this tablet (9.7" IPS display, 16GB internal SD, 1GB memory, 5-point digitiser) and it uses the RK3066 chipset - dual-core A9 running at 1.6GHz and quad-core Mali graphics. The only real downside is a low-res front-facing camera and lowish-res rear camera but then I don't use Skype so it doesn't bother me too much and I'm not buying a tablet to take photos!

Fingers-crossed, the device will turn out to be as impressive as the specs would indicate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
The Lack Of Interactivity In Games Is A Big Problem
2
Replies
37
Views
2K
Boss
B
F
Sumimasen for my rant on the Japanese language
Replies
9
Views
516
orangpelupa
orangpelupa
M
Batman Quest 3 is a graphical showpiece and a great game
Replies
2
Views
722
mavox01
M
Cyan
Happy New Year 2025 PC forum! May it bring us more teraflops of happiness, joyful frames without drops, low latencies, 480Hz and RT
Replies
6
Views
441
Davros
D
S
Discussion about lighting (usage of lighting techniques).
2
Replies
21
Views
3K
Frenetic Pony
F
Back
Top