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Arm Unveils Next-Gen 76-Series Mobile CPU, GPU Cores (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

MojoKid writes: Last week, Arm showed off its new Machine Learning Processor design, but today it has lifted the veil on its next-generation Cortex and Mali CPU, GPU, and VPU architectures, destined for 2019 smartphones and mobile devices. The Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, Mali-G76 GPU, and Mali-V76 VPU designs all step up performance and efficiency over previous generation designs, though there are architectural and layout changes and more advanced manufacturing processes.

Arm believes its A76 core, which can be clocked at 3GHz+ when produced on a 7nm process, can perform within 10 percent of an Intel Skylake core within the same thermal constraints, but at approximately half the footprint. The Mali-G76 improves density and energy efficiency by 30 percent over the previous generation G72, while providing a 2.7x uplift in machine learning workloads. And the Mali-V76 VPU improves on the recently announced V52 by adding support for 8K UltraHD content, among many other improvements.

25 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Wait what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Getting to within 10% of a skylake core (you know it's really probably 15 to 20%) with the same heat dissipation and at 7nm is terrible even if the footprint is 50%.

    Skylake is a 14 nm chip. That means if Intel blindly shrunk it to 7nm, it would perform way faster and take up approximately half the footprint too .. AND have less heat dissapation. So I am not sure what ARM is bringing to the table. I expected way better from ARM.

    Switch to RISC V .. ARM is dying.

    1. Re:Wait what? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      WTF are you talking about? Getting to 90% of Intel single-core throughput is freaking awesome for a chip that costs a lot less and mainly operates at the low end of its thermal profile.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re:Wait what? by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      They're comparing theoretical performance of a 7nm chip with a 14nm one, while both consuming the same power yet performing not as well.
      So what they're really saying is they're getting 10% less performance per watt with much better, more efficient process.

    3. Re:Wait what? by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      It's also the reference design that almost none of the big players actually use. All of Apple, Qualcomm, and NVidia have custom cores. Even Samsung has moved away from the reference design for their Exynos line. I wouldn't be surprised to see one or more of these companies catch or surpass Intel in the next few years. Apple might even do it with their next chip.

      Also, for what it's worth Intel's 14 nm process (14++) is also performing better than their own first generation 10 nm process, which is about the equivalent (if you start measuring feature size instead of just looking at the marketing label) of the 7 nm processes from TSMC and Global Foundries. Intel has been stuck at 14 nm for so long that they've refined the hell out of it. Even if they didn't have terrible yield problems with their 10 nm node, the 14 nm parts would still perform better. See the recently announced i3 8181U which has lower clocks than Kaby Lake processors and the same TDP, despite having the GPU fused off.

    4. Re:Wait what? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      My takeaway from this announcement is: ARM already beats Atom in every way and consequently is now taking aim at Core arch, which also beats Atom, so there you go. If the ARM chip costs less and runs cooler, I'm most probably in for my next laptop. Likely to hit the streets in Chromebook form and be a hit with school kids. With a decent amount of flash and confirmed Debian friendliness, I'll take a flyer.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    5. Re:Wait what? by dfghjk · · Score: 2

      Considering that the article never said it "mainly operates at the low end of its thermal profile" (nor that it was differentiated from Skylake in that respect), nor that it "costs a lot less" presumably than Skylake, nor that it gets "90% of Intel single-core throughput", it appears "freaking awesome" to you based on facts that you've 100% made up.

    6. Re:Wait what? by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      "f the ARM chip costs less and runs cooler, ..."

      Wait, haven't you already declared that it does both these things?

      "Likely to hit the streets in Chromebook form and be a hit with school kids. With a decent amount of flash and confirmed Debian friendliness, I'll take a flyer."

      Critical thinking isn't your specialty, is it? Good thing that "confirmed Debian friendliness", how will Intel compete? No wonder it will be a hit with school kids, Debian all the rage there.

      It's sad what ignorant tribalists people have become.

    7. Re:Wait what? by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      On the first slide of the article, the "overarching design goal" is to "outperform the competition at half the area and power". They then go on to say that the design offers 35% more performance and 40% better power efficiency compared to a Cortex-A75 core, yet less performance than Skylake with the same "thermal constraints" and half the footprint.

      The conclusion should be that either "the competition" is Cortex-A75 or they failed to meet their "overarching design goal". Perhaps they reach their "thermal constraints" at half the power, but they really shouldn't brag about their poor power dissipation capabilities nor should they point out their performance deficiencies with respect to their competition in "laptop-class" performance.

    8. Re: Wait what? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it costs way less and have 90% of the performance of an already very good platform for desktop... it's dying!!!

      90% of the performance only if you were to artificially handicap the Skylake core.

    9. Re:Wait what? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      You jerk. You know that ARM costs a lot less than Intel because of the Arm Holdings licensing policy, and it typically operates at the low end of its thermal profile because of the market it is aimed at. Don't be disingenuous.

      Of all the issues with ARM, the biggest one for Intel is its low cost. Intel relies on a huge margin to continue to support itself in the manner to which it has become accustomed. Arm holdings is a leaner operation. When ARM gets anywhere close to Core arch at its lower price point, Intel shudders.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    10. Re:Wait what? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I feel more stupid after reading your post.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    11. Re: Wait what? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I'm afraid we can't really compare the claims about power and speed, because ARM is referring to a 7 nanometer process that doesn't really exist in mass production, and comparing it to an Intel process that is getting rather long in the tooth.

      TSMC, Glofo and Samsung 7nm is roughly comparable to, maybe a bit better than, Intel's stalled 10nm node. AMD has 7nm samples in the lab. That means that TSMC has caught up with Intel, maybe just a few months lag now, or maybe it is in reality a tie race in terms of commercially viable production.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    12. Re:Wait what? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      A76 cores won't be cheap, at a smaller process than the Skylakes they can't beat in thermal or speed, they're still half the area size at 7nm than Skylake is at 14nm.

      They're massive compared to the cheap ARM cores, like A53. They're adding massive numbers of transistors to get this extra performance. A76's apparently won't run some 32bit code either, you'll need a big.little chip so you can run Aarch32 code on the little cores.

      Don't get me wrong, I still want ARM to succeed outside the smartphone, tablet and STB market. It's hard to find systems with A72 chips, let alone A73 or A75.
      The ones you do find are few and far between or more expensive than a low power Intel board. There's a few based on the RK3399 chip, but that's getting old now.

      The vast majority of what's available is quad-core A53's with shit memory bandwidth. When was the last time you had a PC or laptop with a 16bit memory data bus?
      For the last decade it's been dual channel, 64 bit DDR, minimum. You're lucky if you can find an ARM board with 32bit single channel these days.

    13. Re: Wait what? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Don't forget speculative execution too.

  2. 90% as good as a Skylake core with the same power by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    Cool, why did they compare it to a Kaby lake or a Coffee lake? They're both still 14nm chips, how bad can a 7nm A76 be compared to them?

  3. Behind Schedule by theweatherelectric · · Score: 1

    The V76 is really geared towards the next generation of 8K Ultra HD content, like planned coverage of the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

    The 2018 Winter Olympics ended months ago.

  4. Re:90% as good as a Skylake core with the same pow by Khyber · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're implying 7nm is actually that much smaller than a 14nm process.

    In reality, it isn't. That's just describing the smallest feature size, usually the distance between components, not component size itself.

    It's almost entirely marketing. TSMC's 7nm is in many respects exactly like intel's 10nm.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  5. 76 huh? by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    Just in time to coincide with Fallout Vault 76. Coincidence? Probably.

  6. *SMARTPHONE* by DrYak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How can the A76 be compared to Skylake when it doesn't have Skylake's X86/X64's command set and cannot run Skylake's X86/X64 code natively?

    The instruction set is absolutely completely irrelevant.

    It's targetting smartphone/tablet/embed not desktops.

    i.e.: a market that almost exclusively runs Android (save for Apple, a couple of things trying to add full blown GNU/Linux support (SBCs, after market OSes like Sailfish), and the big joke coming from Microsoft).
    not a market that is stuck to Windows 10.

    i.e.: a market where (parts of) the OS is available for free and can be compiled for your CPU (AOSP, Armbian/Sailfish/Etc.), and most of the applications are delivered as bytecode that get JIT/AOT during installation and will run on whatever architecture your CPU runs (except for a few apps packing native libraries, but those are usually available for both x86 and ARM arches)
    not a market that is stuck with proprietary closed source blobs.

    i.e.: each CPU will be running natively. the support for x86/x86_64 is completely irrelevant.
    Nobody with any level of sanity wants to run Microsoft Windows binaries on a smartphone/tablet/SBC.

    The problem of comparing lays elsewhere :
      - the Skylake is a chip that actually exists in the real world. You could make the Android x86 benchmarks on it using some dev board.
      - ARM Cortex-A76 is a core. A design. That a company could license and then ask TMSC to actually build. There are no current physical chips that you could benchmark Android on them. You need first for, e.g.: Qualcom to announce they'lll use this core in the upcomming Snapdragon 900 or whatever number they'll decide to slap on it. Once they start producing actuall chips, you'll finally be able to get real world numbers.

    Until then all you have is engineers' speculations "can be clocked at 3GHz+ when produced on a 7nm process, can perform within 10 percent of an Intel Skylake core within the same thermal constrain". Not necessarily will.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:*SMARTPHONE* by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      "It's targetting smartphone/tablet/embed not desktops."

      FTFA: "Arm claims laptop-class performance with the A76." "Designed to run flat-out in multi-core implementations".

      Doesn't sound like "smartphone/tablet/embed" at all. "flat-out multi-core" and "laptop-class" is not how "smartphone/tablet/embed" works...ever.

      "i.e.: a market that almost exclusively runs Android (save for Apple, a couple of things trying to add full blown GNU/Linux support (SBCs, after market OSes like Sailfish), and the big joke coming from Microsoft).
      not a market that is stuck to Windows 10."

      This is a claim fabricated entirely to suit your point of view. ARM has no interest in tying it's designs to Android nor would they have any reason to do so.

      "i.e.: a market where (parts of) the OS is available for free..."

      Another fabrication of yours that doesn't address any of ARM's interests at all.

      "...and most of the applications are delivered as bytecode that get JIT/AOT during installation and will run on whatever architecture your CPU runs (except for a few apps packing native libraries, but those are usually available for both x86 and ARM arches)
      not a market that is stuck with proprietary closed source blobs."

      Apparently you don't know how modern Windows apps work. You certainly don't appreciate how little difference there is in this respect nor, again, understand that this has nothing to do with ARM's business model.

      "Until then all you have is engineers' speculations..."

      Well at least you have some appreciation for other people's speculations, just sadly not your own.

      ARM is quite clearly, and explicitly, targeting applications for which Skylake is used. Smartphones and tablets do not run processors continuously since they lack the battery capacity and thermal dissipation to do so. This design targets much higher function devices where x86 dominates. Whether future devices in the category run Windows 10 or something else is irrelevant.

  7. Future Raspberry Pis ? by DrYak · · Score: 1

    Given that the Linux devs are also getting good support for the Video Core V and 6,
    we might indeed get within a couple of years some Raspberry Pi running newer SoCs from broadcom.

    Until then, you can count on the less known/widespread manufacturer to make SBC with A76 cores from other chip makers.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  8. Re:90% as good as a Skylake core with the same pow by radarskiy · · Score: 2

    "That's just describing the smallest feature size"

    It's not even that. Calling a node "7nm" just means it comes after the node called "10nm" and before the node called "5nm". Even that is not a given since retroscaling is becoming popular these day.

    There's a good chance that *no* features in a 7nm process are actually 7nm.

  9. Question for someone who actually knows ARM by wonkavader · · Score: 1

    This is great. But so was A75. And I don't see any pickup of that. I'm looking in the Chromebook space. They all seem to be based on MUCH older ARM designs.

    I see blurbs saying N Billion (with a B) ARM 53 cores have been used in things. Where are those? In Chromebooks? Or are these things really pitched at the set-top box/smart TV/embedded device market?

    I have an old, Samsung series 3 Chromebook. It's 6 years old. And I'd love to replace it, but it's years old and I don't see ARM-based Chromebook with double the speed specs. No doubling in 6 years?

    My series 3 is really, really light. 1.1kg. From my standpoint, that's the real benefit of ARM in a Chromebook -- less heat/less power means less metal and a lighter battery. I can get a much faster Chromebook, but that means intel and generally significantly HEAVIER devices.

    So will we really see these kinds of chips moving into Chromebooks? Have we already?

    This is the page I've always gone to for benchmarks, but it's a year behind: https://zipso.net/chromebook-s...
    However, in 2017, the processors really hadn't changed much since 2012. Will improvements in ARM have any real benefit in the Chromebook space?

    1. Re:Question for someone who actually knows ARM by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      I see blurbs saying N Billion (with a B) ARM 53 cores have been used in things. Where are those? In Chromebooks? Or are these things really pitched at the set-top box/smart TV/embedded device market?
      Cars electronics. Especially camera based driver assist systems often use ARMs.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    2. Re:Question for someone who actually knows ARM by jfisherwa · · Score: 1

      Set-tops, TVs and SBCs .. Fire TVs, tablets, Android phones ..

      Keep in mind that e.g. the ARM Cortex A53 is just a standard. The implementations/manufacturers are pushing bounds on clock speeds, bandwidth, power optimization for incremental improvements between standards.

      I just finished moving to a Rock64 (https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=7147) as my main desktop machine. 4GB RAM, 4x cores, 4k LXLE desktop, media/TV server and 16x drives in two 16TB RAIDZ2 arrays.. and idling at a few watts.. for $50.

      The next big thing that I'm looking forward to is the RK3399 series boards -- https://www.96boards.org/produ... https://www.pine64.org/?page_i...

        -- 6 cores, PCIe, good graphics--fast enough for a great Linux desktop/portable experience. The end result is a build-your-own-Chromebook scenario where you can upgrade and control all aspects like the breakout days of DIY PC builds..