Qualcomm Krait & MSM8960 @ AnandTech
- Thread starter Arun
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There were some leaks about a APQ8084. Pretty much the same as APQ8074 except with Adreno 420 instead of 330 (and also featuring h.265 decode). No idea what the name would be. There's indeed not much roadmaps to be seen from them, even the "leaked" stuff only covers like half a year in advance 
. But surely they'd be working on something new for 20nm for quite a while already.
. But surely they'd be working on something new for 20nm for quite a while already.There were some leaks about a APQ8084. Pretty much the same as APQ8074 except with Adreno 420 instead of 330 (and also featuring h.265 decode). No idea what the name would be. There's indeed not much roadmaps to be seen from them, even the "leaked" stuff only covers like half a year in advance
So presumably, APQ8084 is still on 28nm, right? I googled it a bit, but there doesn't seem to be any information about Adreno 420, beyond h.265 support.
Wishmaster
Newcomer
Probably doubled GPU performance, support for higher performance RAM and higher clock speeds for CPU with some minor tweaks.
After that we'll probably get something on 20nm, maybe something based on ARMv8(krait 2.0 or some new name) who knows
Yeah APQ8084 would still be on 28nm (probably the last high-end chip before 20nm from Qualcomm would be my guess, there's going to be a couple more budget oriented chips coming out on 28nm). As for graphics I don't think it's just going to be doubled performance, the number implies the chip is significantly different (Adreno 3xx is quite different to 2xx too), and doubled performance might be a stretch imho (330 is quite a monster and it's still on 28nm after all).
Wishmaster
Newcomer
You may be right that doubling 330 performance on 28nm could be too much to ask for. So probably 420 will be slightly faster GPU than 330(maybe higher fillrate) but with full directx 11 support and higher compute performance. Who knows, maybe they'll be able to reduce power consumption due to advancements made to the micro-architecture
Mobile GPUs are allowed to grow a lot more in upcoming SFF mobile SoCs; that said 8 TMUs are more than plenty already in Adreno320/330. I wouldn't suggest that 420 needs more; what they'd need is far higher fillrate efficiency since it should be the worst in the industry right now.
Other than that graphics performance should double in 420 compared to 320 at least, otherwise the comparison to competing solutions of the time might look bad.
Other than that graphics performance should double in 420 compared to 320 at least, otherwise the comparison to competing solutions of the time might look bad.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Aren't these GPUs starting to suffer from bandwidth starvation?
Is there a point in continuing to increase the GFLOPS like hell without substantial upgrades in the memory bandwidth?
Is there a point in continuing to increase the GFLOPS like hell without substantial upgrades in the memory bandwidth?
That's same story as with desktop/notebooks really, gflops increasing much faster than bandwidth. So you need to make sure bandwidth efficiency increases (aside from the fact that more modern apps will use shaders requiring high flops/bandwidth ratio).
Memory bandwidth though does increase substantially too. Just recently dual-channel lpddr2 was common (for high-end, single channel for lower end), and now there's dual-channel lpddr3 nearly doubling bandwidth (most of the newer dual-channel lpddr2 designs used lpddr2-533 AFAIK, and the dual-channel lpddr3 ones are using lpddr3-800 so that's not a doubling but it will scale further).
Also FWIW the flops/bandwidth ratio is actually still lower than what you get on some ordinary graphics cards.
On top of mczak's post above IO will get wider in SoCs too eventually.
french toast
Veteran
Samsung and another company is already starting to produce lpddr 3 2166 modules for something like 17gb/s in smartphones this year.
I get the impression more bandwidth saving techniques will be implemented in next generation, a member pointed out to me rogue will introduce frame buffer compression in high end variants, I would also expect the class leading adreno uarch will be improved to accomodate something similar.
Also qualcomm have signed up to the HUMA (heterogeneous unified memory addressing? ) initiative with the likes of AMD and Samsung et al, so I would expect that to save some bandwidth and be making an appearance sooner rather than later, ARM already implement something like this with mali midguard / A15 generation, although im unsure how successfull that solution is and what effect on bandwidth/resource management that has in real world without devs codimg for it? :/
ltcommander.data
Regular
They could also implement a pool of embedded memory. If TSMC's claim of 16nm coming online 1 year after 20nm is accurate, admittedly optimistic, a lot of die area is going to open up. If things are memory bottlenecked then they might as well devote some of that area to embedded memory rather than more ALUs and other hardware that would otherwise be underutilized. By controlling their own CPU and GPU architectures Qualcomm also has the option to implement it as shared memory between CPU and GPU like Haswell instead of GPU only memory which I believe is how its done in consoles.
ltcommander.data
Regular
Ah yes. I forgot that there won't be large density improvements with 16nm FinFET. I believe its the backend that's the same as 20nm though.
Oops, my mistake - you are correct. Metal interconnects and stuff should be the same, like you say that's back-end and not front-end. For some reason the terms were playing out in the opposite direction in my mind. I really need to study this stuff more.
Err, guys, I've just noticed that the Snapdragon S600 features integrated LTE (Qualcomm's web page) when I was sure it didn't.
My confusion is partly Wikipedia's fault (or mine for trusting it) but I could swear I've seen a number of reports saying the same thing. Did I dream the whole thing?
My confusion is partly Wikipedia's fault (or mine for trusting it) but I could swear I've seen a number of reports saying the same thing. Did I dream the whole thing?
http://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx27&D=Sony+C6802+Xperia+Z+Ultra
S800/Adreno330 now officially in the GLB2.7 database.
S800/Adreno330 now officially in the GLB2.7 database.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
The wikipedia is semi-right on this one.
Both the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 have a SoC labeled APQxxxxx, which means it's a chip without baseband processor. AFAIK, both are paired with the MDM9215 (or whatever is its CDMA counterpart).
I don't know of any S600 implementation with integrated baseband, at the moment.
Isn't it a bit weird how it says 4G LTE and no 3G UMTS support? Is it omitted?
Both the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 have a SoC labeled APQxxxxx, which means it's a chip without baseband processor. AFAIK, both are paired with the MDM9215 (or whatever is its CDMA counterpart).
I don't know of any S600 implementation with integrated baseband, at the moment.
Isn't it a bit weird how it says 4G LTE and no 3G UMTS support? Is it omitted?
Isn't the MDM9215 both CDMA and UMTS compatible?
