Qualcomm's New 600 & 800 Series Quad-Core CPU's Which Phones Get Them ?

[RaiderWill]

Does It Not Seem That Long Ago,
That the S3 was the "Top Dog" on the porch..

Now.. There are CPU's from Qualcomm in the pipe that will make the Note 2, DNA, Nexus 4, OneX + all look like... well.. dare I say, "Mid-Range" powered phones..

Ouch.

These new CPU's from Qualcomm sound like Monsters.. 1,900 mhz for the 600 series and 2,300 mhz for the 800 series.. Man thats some serious juice.. Imagine Overclocking Them...

I think the Samsung Galaxy S4 is out of the running.. Now that Sammy is starting to use their Exynos chips with LTE ( at least in Korea ) and will most likely now bring that SoC to the rest of the Planet as well..

So, in your opinion which device(s) will be receiving these All Mighty Cpu's ?

 

[BlackHippy21]

If I had to guess I would say the next line of HTC phones, and motorola razr series will be most likely running these new super mobile chips. Maybe even the next nexus phone.

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[anon62607]

Does It Not Seem That Long Ago,
That the S3 was the "Top Dog" on the porch..

Now.. There are CPU's from Qualcomm in the pipe that will make the Note 2, DNA, Nexus 4, OneX + all look like... well.. dare I say, "Mid-Range" powered phones..

Ouch.

These new CPU's from Qualcomm sound like Monsters.. 1,900 mhz for the 600 series and 2,300 mhz for the 800 series.. Man thats some serious juice.. Imagine Overclocking Them...

I think the Samsung Galaxy S4 is out of the running.. Now that Sammy is starting to use their Exynos chips with LTE ( at least in Korea ) and will most likely now bring that SoC to the rest of the Planet as well..

So, in your opinion which device(s) will be receiving these All Mighty Cpu's ?

Qualcomm hasn't actually said too much about the new cores (Krait 300 and Krait 400) or what architecture level improvements are made over the Krait in the current S4s.

An increase in clock speed is nice if all other factors are equal but you should understand that you can "buy" an increase in clock rate during the design process with a much deeper pipeline. It's a tradeoff and it's not always a wise thing to do - if you knew hypothetically that the programs being executed would consist mostly of completely unpredictable branches a longer pipeline and higher clock speed dramatically *hurt* performance because in a simple architecture once a branch is mispredicted the entire pipeline must be flushed and restarted this time executing the correct branch and subsequent instructions. In the very old days the branch prediction (particularly in student-designed, FPGA-synthesized, project microprocessors) was as simple as if branch backward, presume taken, if branch forward, presume not taken. Of course things are much more sophisticated now then the prediction rate is very good, but not so good that the insanely long, GPU-length pipelines become useful (or even pipelines of the length of Pentium 4's various incarnations).

Anyway, where I'm going with this is don't read anything into clock speed. It really is just one relatively small factor in the over all performance of a CPU. If they detailed their architecture a bit more on top of estimating clock speeds, then we could get more excited about it.

Mobile is looking really interesting though.

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[mazzmoney95]

I wonder what HTC will do this year. Last year I think they messed up big time not using the s4 on their One X. They could have had a more streamlined device instead of a one X and a one xl. They also wouldn't need a one x+. This year they could go with either Tegra 4 or Qualcomm's newest offerings. They both have their advantages over one another, Qualcomm being overall better while Tegra 4 being better for games. Either way I'd bet Samsung's processor will be the best in the business like it was for the past 3 years (hummingbird beat snapdragon, exynos beat snapdragon s3 and tegra 2,and exynos quad beat s4). Just my opinion but I hope Samsung makes the next nexus phone for that reason alone.

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[Kevin OQuinn]

Qualcomm hasn't actually said too much about the new cores (Krait 300 and Krait 400) or what architecture level improvements are made over the Krait in the current S4s.

An increase in clock speed is nice if all other factors are equal but you should understand that you can "buy" an increase in clock rate during the design process with a much deeper pipeline. It's a tradeoff and it's not always a wise thing to do - if you knew hypothetically that the programs being executed would consist mostly of completely unpredictable branches a longer pipeline and higher clock speed dramatically *hurt* performance because in a simple architecture once a branch is mispredicted the entire pipeline must be flushed and restarted this time executing the correct branch and subsequent instructions. In the very old days the branch prediction (particularly in student-designed, FPGA-synthesized, project microprocessors) was as simple as if branch backward, presume taken, if branch forward, presume not taken. Of course things are much more sophisticated now then the prediction rate is very good, but not so good that the insanely long, GPU-length pipelines become useful (or even pipelines of the length of Pentium 4's various incarnations).

Anyway, where I'm going with this is don't read anything into clock speed. It really is just one relatively small factor in the over all performance of a CPU. If they detailed their architecture a bit more on top of estimating clock speeds, then we could get more excited about it.

Mobile is looking really interesting though.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

Pretty sure architecturally they are the same. Maturing the manufacturing process is probably the sole reason for the clockspeed increase.

I wonder what HTC will do this year. Last year I think they messed up big time not using the s4 on their One X. They could have had a more streamlined device instead of a one X and a one xl. They also wouldn't need a one x+. This year they could go with either Tegra 4 or Qualcomm's newest offerings. They both have their advantages over one another, Qualcomm being overall better while Tegra 4 being better for games. Either way I'd bet Samsung's processor will be the best in the business like it was for the past 3 years (hummingbird beat snapdragon, exynos beat snapdragon s3 and tegra 2,and exynos quad beat s4). Just my opinion but I hope Samsung makes the next nexus phone for that reason alone.

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I was with you until your last line. Compare one quad-core with another and the Exynos quad doesn't stand a chance next to the S4 Pro. While I'm sure the new Exynos will be good, so are ALL the other chips that have been talked about. We're to the point where software matters more than hardware. All of the hardware is capable of handily making a phone or tablet UI smooth and stutterfree. But what to do with all the extra horsepower? Real time hardware level HDR is one thing, and Tegrazone is another. I really hope Samsung does something similar, because their chips are plenty fast. And they are in a TON of phones. Same with Qualcomm now, too.

 

[mazzmoney95]

I was comparing the Exynos Quad and the dual core S4 since they were from the same "generation. " The s4 pro is a whole 6 Months newer. That hardly fair. I agree software is more important now. This is the first year where the hardware and software are both there for android (quad cores and project butter ftw) and that's great. But the new big.LITTLE processor seems to be just the type of improvement we need in mobile hardware. Comparable hardware with great battery is great. Now all we need is possible software optimizations from Google (if possible).

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[anon62607]

Pretty sure architecturally they are the same. Maturing the manufacturing process is probably the sole reason for the clockspeed increase.



I was with you until your last line. Compare one quad-core with another and the Exynos quad doesn't stand a chance next to the S4 Pro. While I'm sure the new Exynos will be good, so are ALL the other chips that have been talked about. We're to the point where software matters more than hardware. All of the hardware is capable of handily making a phone or tablet UI smooth and stutterfree. But what to do with all the extra horsepower? Real time hardware level HDR is one thing, and Tegrazone is another. I really hope Samsung does something similar, because their chips are plenty fast. And they are in a TON of phones. Same with Qualcomm now, too.

They're not architecturally identical (S4 Pro's Krait vs 300/400 anyway), at very least the rules for which instructions can be executed out of order with which other instructions have changed and the pipeline depth has changed. The cache has likely changed in some way or another (optimal set associativity and size usually changes at least a little with the new process anyway) but that's a guess.

Unfortunately, I've seen very little other than that, even a block diagram.


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[Auzo]

Architecturally things stay mostly the same with a few exceptions. These exceptions lead to a noticeable improvement in efficiency though. It's estimated to improve IPC (instructions per clock) by around 15%.
The summary of the changes are as follows:
1) Features a hardware data prefetcher that preemptively grabs data out of main memory and brings it into L2 cache (not available previously)
2) Improved branch prediction accuracy
3) Supports forwarding between pipelines (OoO processes)
4) improvements to floating point and JavaScript performance
5) Krait 400 only - Lower latency to main memory and a faster L2 cache (due to redesign for new process)

It's worth noting that even with these enhancements the Krait core is still not as powerful as a standard A15 core clock for clock, although they do get closer now.

Additionally Qualcomm is able to push higher clocks from the cores:
Krait 300 goes up to 1.9 GHz (Uses TSMC's 28nm LP, same as the S4)
Krait 400 goes up to 2.3 GHz (Uses TSMC's new 28nm HPm process (High-K + Metal Gate, optimized for low power at peak performance))
the HPm process has higher power use at idle since their is more leakage so probably not too suited for Phones.

The full analysis can be read at Anandtech: AnandTech - Qualcomm's Next-Gen Krait 400 & Krait 300 Announced in Snapdragon 800 & 600 SoCs

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

Architecturally things stay mostly the same with a few exceptions. These exceptions lead to a noticeable improvement in efficiency though. It's estimated to improve IPC (instructions per clock) by around 15%.
The summary of the changes are as follows:
1) Features a hardware data prefetcher that preemptively grabs data out of main memory and brings it into L2 cache (not available previously)
2) Improved branch prediction accuracy
3) Supports forwarding between pipelines (OoO processes)
4) improvements to floating point and JavaScript performance
5) Krait 400 only - Lower latency to main memory and a faster L2 cache (due to redesign for new process)

It's worth noting that even with these enhancements the Krait core is still not as powerful as a standard A15 core clock for clock, although they do get closer now.

Additionally Qualcomm is able to push higher clocks from the cores:
Krait 300 goes up to 1.9 GHz (Uses TSMC's 28nm LP, same as the S4)
Krait 400 goes up to 2.3 GHz (Uses TSMC's new 28nm HPm process (High-K + Metal Gate, optimized for low power at peak performance))
the HPm process has higher power use at idle since their is more leakage so probably not too suited for Phones.

The full analysis can be read at Anandtech: AnandTech - Qualcomm's Next-Gen Krait 400 & Krait 300 Announced in Snapdragon 800 & 600 SoCs

I knew they would have something and that I was behind with keeping up with it LOL.

I guess that's what happens when you go to CES.

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[mazzmoney95]

Since the krait core isn't as powerful, does it give better battery life? Like compared to Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual or the new Tegra 4 chip.

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[Auzo]

Since the krait core isn't as powerful, does it give better battery life? Like compared to Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual or the new Tegra 4 chip.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

Yes, that is in fact why they didn't just use the A15 design. They thought it used to much power so they tried to develop something on their own that would get close to it without as big a hit to power consumption.

 

[mazzmoney95]

That makes sense then. I was under the assumption that a krait processor was easier to make at the time then an a15 since Qualcomm was the only one who made an a15 processor when it first released (if you remember both nvidia and Samsung went with quad core a9's instead).

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