The Motorola X8

[Ry]

Hands On With the New Motorola Droids | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

via Sascha Segan of PCMag -

What Is The X8 Chipset?
The phones run on Motorola's "X8" chipset, which is mostly a rebranded dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro running at 1.73-GHz with Adreno 320 graphics. Motorola's secret sauce may be the two additional DSPs the company has been promoting, which handle "contextual computing" and voice processing. I ran the Antutu benchmark and got 18573, if you're curious.

"It's really a system architecture rather than developing the ASIC," Motorola product manager Jeff Snow said.

According to Snow, the voice processing DSP allows the phone to recognize voices even when apparently turned off; you can wake up Google Now by hollering at it without waking up the phone by hand first. The contextual computing chip, meanwhile, seems to function as a very low-power, off-duty CPU, doing things like maintaining time and status information on the screen without involving the more power-hungry main processors.

 

[Roundpotato]

I like how they try to call it 8 core by counting the GPU cores.

 

[anon(847090)]

i like how moto is taking this route. this chip means more battery saving compared to the normal S4

 

[Honestabebread]

I like how they try to call it 8 core by counting the GPU cores.

They never really called it an 8 core except by the name X8. They were very upfront about what cores did what. Not misleading at all.

Sent from my XT907 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[Ry]

They never really called it an 8 core except by the name X8. They were very upfront about what cores did what. Not misleading at all.

Sent from my XT907 using AC Forums mobile app

Except they're not expecting anyone to actually do research. They want people to think X8 = 8 cores and I doubt they'll be correcting anyone on what it really means.

 

[Honestabebread]

Except they're not expecting anyone to actually do research. They want people to think X8 = 8 cores and I doubt they'll be correcting anyone on what it really means.

Right during the announcement they said 2 cores for apps, 4 for graphics and 2 for sensors.

Sent from my XT907 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[apcman]

How do you think this chip will hold up against the test of time. I just don't think this chip will be able to handle the new features in a year or so. I am sure the dual core snapdragon are capable now, but in a year will they be able to handle the new features. I just think for a top of the line phone it should have the premium parts and that includes high processor.

 

[JHBThree]

How do you think this chip will hold up against the test of time. I just don't think this chip will be able to handle the new features in a year or so. I am sure the dual core snapdragon are capable now, but in a year will they be able to handle the new features. I just think for a top of the line phone it should have the premium parts and that includes high processor.

You missed the part where the added processors take the load off the snapdragon. Quad cores are overkill in a phone, and Motorola's approach is better in the long run.

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk 2

 

[osubeavs728]

How do you think this chip will hold up against the test of time. I just don't think this chip will be able to handle the new features in a year or so. I am sure the dual core snapdragon are capable now, but in a year will they be able to handle the new features. I just think for a top of the line phone it should have the premium parts and that includes high processor.

As JHBThree said, the extra cores lighten the loads given to each other.

It has also been rumored that while future generations of Android while have new and better features, Google is also working to make them less taxing on the processors.

 

[Justin Stepp]

Can we compare this to a nexus 4 for a minute?

The nexus 4 has a S4 pro quad core in it correct? How many of those cores are for graphics? Or does it have additional cores for graphics as well? That's what is confusing me. Anyone know?

Posted via Android Central App

 

[tech_head]

Can we compare this to a nexus 4 for a minute?

The nexus 4 has a S4 pro quad core in it correct? How many of those cores are for graphics? Or does it have additional cores for graphics as well? That's what is confusing me. Anyone know?

Posted via Android Central App

Four ARM cores with Adreno 320 GPU.

 

[Chiplg]

There was a CPU race at one time on desktop. Every few years I could tell, my PC just wasn't what it used to be. I'm on an original i7 right now, and it is probably not as fast as the day I built it, but it is still responsive and there are no issues. I remember my old 486DX4-100. I wanted a Pentium so bad I couldn't stand it. It just wasn't enough. After the Pentium I wanted a PII. I bought a PII and overclocked it, but that didn't even hold me for long. I notice the last few times I upgraded, that it wasn't as critical as the time before. Don't get me wrong, I want to upgrade my PC, but there is no pressing need to right now. I might get an i7 with 6 cores, or maybe I'll build another dual Xeon workstation if my photo and video hobby takes off. IDK, but right now my PC works just fine.

My point is, I'm seeing the same thing with my phones. We're not there just yet. My RAZR definitely has issues, but not like the Droid X did before it. I'm hearing the same thing from others with their phones. The desperate need to ditch that old phone is there, but not as pressing as the previous upgrade, or the one before it. I don't feel the need to get the latest CPU like I would have a couple of years ago. In the end it's going to be driven by the software. At work we are moving everything to virtual servers. The standard is for each one to have a single CPU. If you want more, you have to actually show that the application is multithreaded. Just because it is an enterprise application on a server does not mean it's a multithreaded application. Having not done any research on the topic, I'm wondering. How does the OS handle 4 cores vs. 2? How many applications on Android are multithreaded and how much better do they perform with extra cores? I don't know these answers yet. I do know that the last few months of having a Droid X were increasingly painful. My RAZR has done some things that tell me it's time to replace it (or smash it and replace it), but on a day to day basis, I'm still satisfied with it. I really do expect my next phone will be better longer than the RAZR. I just made an appointment to myself to come back and read this in a year. Assuming I got an Ultra Maxx, or even if I get an HTC One, I will be interested to see if my expectations were met, and if the phone in my hand seems like it will last another 6 months or more.

 

[MikeLip]

Oh yeah, CPU race. Funny how I am running the latest and greatest, but still pounding on Word and Excel, doing the same things I was years ago! I can do simulations that I used to run on mainframes though...

 

[YAYTech]

Except they're not expecting anyone to actually do research. They want people to think X8 = 8 cores and I doubt they'll be correcting anyone on what it really means.

And in what way are there not 8 cores? The architecture they've developed sounds a LOT more intelligent than just having an octo-core processor, so a) there really are 8 cores, and b) they're set up to potentially be far better used than a straight-up 8 core processor. Seems like honest marketing to me.

 

[Ry]

And in what way are there not 8 cores? The architecture they've developed sounds a LOT more intelligent than just having an octo-core processor, so a) there really are 8 cores, and b) they're set up to potentially be far better used than a straight-up 8 core processor. Seems like honest marketing to me.

That's not really traditionally the way the industry has referred to cores on a mobile device. For the most part, only CPU cores factored in to calling a phone a single-core, dual-core, or quad-core.

Example: Tegra 3. Quad-core CPU + one "stealth" companion core. Should it be marketed as a 5-core processor? Oh wait. Let's factor in the GPU cores as well. It's a 12-core GPU. Tegra 3 should be referred to as T17. Fair comparison to the X8 Computing System then?

 

[Honestabebread]

That's not really traditionally the way the industry has referred to cores on a mobile device. For the most part, only CPU cores factored in to calling a phone a single-core, dual-core, or quad-core.

Example: Tegra 3. Quad-core CPU + one "stealth" companion core. Should it be marketed as a 5-core processor? Oh wait. Let's factor in the GPU cores as well. It's a 12-core GPU. Tegra 3 should be referred to as T17. Fair comparison to the X8 Computing System then?

It's like that scene in Mad Men when Don says "Lucky Strike- Its toasted" and the CEO of Lucky Strike says "Everyone toasts their tobacco" and Don says "As far as the public knows, Lucky Strike is the only tobacco that's toasted."

There are phones with way more cores than the Ultra but it's the only one letting people know how many it has.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Ry]

It's like that scene in Mad Men when Don says "Lucky Strike- Its toasted" and the CEO of Lucky Strike says "Everyone toasts their tobacco" and Don says "As far as the public knows, Lucky Strike is the only tobacco that's toasted."

There are phones with way more cores than the Ultra but it's the only one letting people know how many it has.

Posted via Android Central App

I hope the Tegra 4 is marketed as a 76-core system.

 

[SteelGator]

It's like that scene in Mad Men when Don says "Lucky Strike- Its toasted" and the CEO of Lucky Strike says "Everyone toasts their tobacco" and Don says "As far as the public knows, Lucky Strike is the only tobacco that's toasted."

There are phones with way more cores than the Ultra but it's the only one letting people know how many it has.

Posted via Android Central App

^^^
This

 

[YAYTech]

Well then, Motorola has set a new precedent, and their competition can feel free to flaunt # of cores. Perhaps Motorola should have called it X4 for the number of unique processors instead of cores. How does the competition compare in unique processors? Overall, we all know the number of processors or cores doesn't necessarily correlate with a device being more useful or powerful. That's why benchmarking exists, though it too can be misleading (see recent Samsung overclocking fiasco).