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Samsung, Arm Team Up: Expect New Mobile Chipset Faster Than 3GHz (zdnet.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the on-the-horizon dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Arm is teaming up with Samsung's foundry to manufacture the recently announced Cortex-A76 CPU, which the pair say will run at speeds above 3GHz. At that speed the Cortex-A76 will be more powerful than Qualcomm's best Cortex-A75 SoC, the Snapdragon 845, which tops out at 2.8GHz. At launch, Arm said Cortex-A76 chips would even challenge Intel's Core i7 on performance, meaning it could benefit not just smartphones but laptops too, such as "always connected" Windows 10 on Arm devices from HP and Lenovo, which use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835.

The collaboration will involve the Arm-designed chips being manufactured on Samsung's 7LPP (7nm Low Power Plus) and 5LPE (5nm Low Power Early) process technologies, combined with Arm's Artisan physical IP platform. However, it could still be some time before consumers see these high-powered Arm CPUs in devices. Initial production on the 7LPP process is set to begin in the second half of 2018. Samsung says 5LPE, the process technology after 7LPP, will allow greater area scaling and ultra-low power.

56 comments

  1. Re:Ah back to the old Mhz fight of the early 2000' by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Funny

    More MHz Better!!!

    Joke's on you; they're talking about GHz.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  2. Pentium 4 again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also, what are you guys doing on your phones that you need so much CPU?

    1. Re:Pentium 4 again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I know it can be difficult to read in this day and age, but they did mention laptops. Perhaps that means something.

    2. Re:Pentium 4 again? by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Funny

      Due to a combination of ads, trackers, auto-loading, self-playing video, and massive gobs of Javascript, the modern web page has become a bloated monstrosity that requires exceptionally powerful hardware to render. Also, as computers become more ubiquitous, the number of programming jobs increases without changes to the overall number of skilled programers. As such, we need more powerful CPUs to deal with all the poorly optimized code for those ads, trackers, etc.

    3. Re: Pentium 4 again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go to pornhub.

    4. Re:Pentium 4 again? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Exactly right, and thus you need 3Ghz in your pocket. And in your other pocket, a small refrigerator for additional cooling. And in a third pocket, a small nuclear reactor to power it all.

      Time to stop offloading work onto the client and keep it in the cloud server where it belongs

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    5. Re:Pentium 4 again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, I guess they can dream.

    6. Re:Pentium 4 again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hope people realize that the reason ARM parts top out at 2.x ghz is because their power efficiency breaks at that point.

      They're not competitive with a 90 watt i7 part, they're competitive with a ultra-low-power dual-core 3Ghz 15 watt part.

      You could crank the power up to 90 watts for an ARM part, and it will not beat the equivalent i7-7770K or whatever because it's simply not designed to be a high power part, it will literately melt before hitting that, and it wouldn't be running at 5Ghz, it would be running 32 cores in parallel to make up for the performance gap. As everyone and their dog knows, more cores is not how you get more performance out of existing software, as most software barely will use two. Only very specific applications and games can make use of more than 2 cores, and those that do often break in some amazingly wacky ways because they were designed for 2 or 4 cores, not 8/12/16/24/32/etc. Physics calculations tend to go haywire with faster calculations because of naive assumptions.

      For example, jiggle physics (boob physics) in a lot of games stop working over 30fps. This is because the CPU is too efficient, and since the developer tied it to the refresh rate, if the physics complete before the frame moves (eg 60fps, 120fps, etc) they lose their inertial values because, again, naive assumptions about what it's running on.

    7. Re:Pentium 4 again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let them have yellow cake...

  3. New Macbook incoming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's the new ARM processor that will power low end Macs.

    1. Re:New Macbook incoming by Desler · · Score: 1

      Except that Apple doesn't use ARM-designed cores. They make their own.

    2. Re:New Macbook incoming by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      If Samsung can do it, Apple can do it too. They're always neck-to-neck for their smartphone CPUs, just like Intel and AMD.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:New Macbook incoming by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      If Samsung can do it, Apple can do it too. They're always neck-to-neck for their smartphone CPUs, just like Intel and AMD.

      Actually, historically, they are at least a generation past Qualcomm.

    4. Re:New Macbook incoming by DeAxes · · Score: 1

      Except that Apple doesn't use ARM-designed cores. They make their own.

      Uhhh... Yes they do - all of the A-series chips used in iOS products are ARM Based. Meaning they license the ARM chip design, modify it, then send it off to be manufactured.

    5. Re:New Macbook incoming by hankwang · · Score: 1

      "Meaning they license the ARM chip design, modify it, then send it off to be manufactured."

      I think how it works is that Apple and Qualcomm treat an ARM core as a black box with just interface specifications. Kind of like how you'd by an IC, except that you don't solder it but rather draw it in a chip design. Qualcomm/Apple decide how to interface cores with the other stuff that's on a SoC (modems, GPU, memory bus, USB logic, power management). The SoC designer never* gets to see what's inside the ARM core; that knowledge is only shared with the fab company (e.g. TSMC, Samsung). In turn, the fab company has the details of how to make the individual transistors on the chip and only tells ARM (and other customers) how big the transistors are and what their electrical characteristics are.

      I'm not sure how it works with Samsung, which both has fabs and designs SoCs.

      *Well, of course there is a lot of reverse engineering going on in the industry...

      --
      Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
    6. Re:New Macbook incoming by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      I think how it works is that Apple and Qualcomm treat an ARM core as a black box with just interface specifications. Kind of like how you'd by an IC, except that you don't solder it but rather draw it in a chip design. Qualcomm/Apple decide how to interface cores with the other stuff that's on a SoC (modems, GPU, memory bus, USB logic, power management). The SoC designer never* gets to see what's inside the ARM core; that knowledge is only shared with the fab company (e.g. TSMC, Samsung). In turn, the fab company has the details of how to make the individual transistors on the chip and only tells ARM (and other customers) how big the transistors are and what their electrical characteristics are.

      No, Apple and Qualcomm have microarchitecture licenses (as do a few other companies. Marvell has the original license inherited from Intel who got it from Compaq via DEC). In this case, all Apple and Qualcomm get are the instruction sets and validation suite. They have complete freedom to design the CPU core as they wish. Apple's ARM cores are some of the fastest on the market. Qualcomm had their own 32-bit core, but now their 64-bit cores are derived from ARM's 64-bit designs. Marvell has XScale, but I haven't heard much from them as of late. I think they just use it as a network management processor.

      Other ARM licensees like RockChip, Allwinner, Broadcom, etc, license the blocks only. They can assemble the blocks to form an SoC, but they have to buy it pretty much as a black box. They get the IP core and can synthesize it using tools, but thats as far as it goes. They can't tweak it at all.

      I can't remember if Samsung has a microatchitecture license or not - I think they do as Exynos of late beats the crap out of Qualcomm's offerings. (Alas, Apple's last year chip still beats the current Exynos which beats Qualcomm's latest 835 chip).

      I think Samsung needed the help more to they can get their Exynos up to Apple's performance levels.

      The real problem is of course, how far away you are from the fab. Apple works with TSMC and Samsung to get their designs done for the fab, so you can tweak things a lot to get your yields in your favor. Samsung knows their own fabs so they can tweak as well. Qualcomm Kyro cores are derived from ARM's cores, so I think that's why they work (they're probably tuned for the fabs Qualcomm uses). Everyone else gets generic synthesizable and cannot tune it heavily for the fab, so you get great performance, but it's out of a generalized core.

    7. Re:New Macbook incoming by Desler · · Score: 1

      Wrong. They license the ISA and build their own custom-designed cores around that. This is as stupid as saying that AMD cores use Intel cores just because they both use the x86 ISA.

    8. Re:New Macbook incoming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chill it. He's not stupid, he just didn't know.

    9. Re: New Macbook incoming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that Apple doesn't use ARM-designed cores. They make their own.

      Um, no, all of Apple's SoCs use ARM-designed cores.

      What on earth made you think otherwise?

    10. Re:New Macbook incoming by Desler · · Score: 1

      Their statement was well beyond someone being ignorant and was straight into someone who had no idea what they were talking about but proclaiming to be knowledgable. AKA someone that is stupid.

    11. Re: New Macbook incoming by Desler · · Score: 1

      Um, no, all of Apple's SoCs use ARM-designed cores.

      Um, no, they don't. You're plainly an idiot.

      What on earth made you think otherwise?

      Facts and reality? Apple has an architectural license to ARM ISAs, but they do not use Cortex cores in their SoCs. They make their own cores based off the ARM ISA. Hence, they do not use the ARM-designed cores but their own designs that share an ISA. Again, as I point out above this is as dumb as saying that AMD uses Intel-designed cores simply because they share an ISA.

  4. Frequency doesn't equal speed by rahvin112 · · Score: 0

    Operating frequency, ie 3ghz is not the same thing as faster. Processor speed at completing tasks is a complicated mix of frequency, IPC and several other factors. Even at 200mhz faster the Qualacomm chip could still be significantly faster.

    1. Re:Frequency doesn't equal speed by WorBlux · · Score: 1

      With raw CPU performance and IPC the A76 should win every time for cpu restricted tasks. Other tasks may be varied more based on the full SOC, which given the A76 has takes up slightly more die area, it's more of a toss-up. Any way you cut it though, it looks like the A76 is very lean and mean modern chip, though it's still not going to compete flat out with an i7, even a mobile one on intensive tasks. Where it's be competitive is on workloads where the Intel processor is having trouble finding a lot of instruction level parallelism. A four-core A76 might be close to a two-core Intel with hyper-threading and clocked down to mobile speeds for many tasks, but I expect Intel has a better branch predictor, rename, and floating point units, which impact real-world performance.

    2. Re:Frequency doesn't equal speed by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      That isn't the news here. Samsung already makes chips, and they're incrementally faster, same as chips from other fabs.

      The news here is that they're teaming up with ARM and ARM is going to provide a bunch of logic compilers and IP blocks that are used to connect other IP blocks together. Remember, ARM chip designs don't come with peripherals; they're just the CPU. Their customers design the rest of the chip. So this deal also will bring some other ARM IP blocks to the Samsung offering.

      Expect most of the chips that eventually get manufactured using the technologies in this story to have some other company's name on the silkscreen. And if you try to choose Qualcomm for that use case you'll find out how much slower it is to customize! You'll be bribing them for years just to get into negotiations, because that isn't their business model.

  5. Does Samsung have a foundry? by Snotnose · · Score: 1

    I worked for $BigNameChipCo some 10-15 years ago. Back then there were 4 foundries: a, b, c, and Intel. Chip version A from foundry A was considered a completely separate beast from same chip from foundry B.

    My company cross-licensed stuff from ARM, but the resulting chips came from foundry's A, B, or C. None of those foundries were named Samsung, ARM, nor Intel.

    Having Samsung and ARM join up to make faster clock speeds just don't work. Neither Samsung nor ARM are in the business of cranking up clock speeds.

    1. Re:Does Samsung have a foundry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It seems Samsung has many fabs, but perhaps two of them do microprocessors. So it seems they are in the business of cranking up clock speeds.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

    2. Re:Does Samsung have a foundry? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      ARM doesn't make chips, they aren't involved in fabrication, and their designs don't even include peripherals like I/O or memory or anything.

      The story is about ARM providing logic compilers so that other companies can design the products that Samsung will manufacture. They will also provide some IP blocks that assist in connecting high performance peripherals.

      ARM has nothing at all to do with the part about increased clock speeds. Don't expect headlines or summaries to capture actual events in the world.

      But yes, Samsung is all about faster clock speeds; they're investing $2B in just one part of the tech, for bleep's sake!

    3. Re:Does Samsung have a foundry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My company cross-licensed stuff from ARM, but the resulting chips came from foundry's A, B, or C. None of those foundries were named Samsung, ARM, nor Intel.

      Try https://www.samsungfoundry.com...

    4. Re:Does Samsung have a foundry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wonder if those Samsung fabs leak water like their refrigerators, explode like their phones, or have bad design issues like their 840 EVO SSDs. Maybe if they'd fix their engineering processes, stupid failures like these wouldn't happen again. Ok, my rant is over - and yes I have been an unfortunate owner of two out of the three things above.

  6. Re:Ah back to the old Mhz fight of the early 2000' by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Joke's on you, GHz is made up of MHz!

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  7. I wish Intel would get real by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wish intel would stop pissing around and get real: Android Go, the entry level budget phone platform.... a typical phone being the Samsung J2 Core, quad core, 64 bit A53, 1.4 Ghz processor.

    This is the lowest end smartphone and it comes with a decent fast quad core processor.

    Intel needs to be realistic here if its to keep the desktop market, it needs to increase the core count and cut the prices across the processor range. If speed is its advantage, it needs to price competitive AND faster. Core i5, 8400 should be their *budget level* chip now. No more Core i3s. No more 4 core chips. At very minimum 4*2=8 hyperthreading, if not real 8 cores at budget price. Nothing less than 8.

    Also Pichai/Google, how many of your Go phones are 512MB? J2 is 1GB RAM and is better than the spec that ran full Android in last year's J2! So what exactly was the point of fragmenting Android with Android Go? Stop the crappy downgrading of Android, and drive it up at the high end. Nobody cares about your Browser based OS, nobody wants a WIMP interface on a touch OS like Android. Meanwhile Microsoft is taking advantage of your misstep to finally get Windows running properly on ARM chips and clean up their own legacy WIMP. /rant

    1. Re: I wish Intel would get real by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmmmm. Some internet retard or intels teams and teams of market r and d, stats, and everything else.

      Shit up you stupid fucking piece of shit.

    2. Re: I wish Intel would get real by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Samsung took over from Intel as the worlds biggest *single* chip maker back in 2017:
      http://fortune.com/2017/07/27/samsung-intel-chip-semiconductor/

      ARM chips sell 15 billion processors a year, Intel sells less than 5% that number.

      4%, 3%, 2%....

      It's not difficult to see if they go from near 90% of the microprocessor markets to 5%, what will happen next. Trash talking me does not fix it.

  8. Meanwhile, from TSMC ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Operating frequency, ie 3ghz is not the same thing as faster. Processor speed at completing tasks is a complicated mix of frequency, IPC and several other factors. Even at 200mhz faster the Qualacomm chip could still be significantly faster.

    ARM collaborates not only with Samsung.

    From https://www.design-reuse.com/n...

    "ARM and TSMC announced a multi-year agreement to collaborate on a 7nm FinFET process technology which includes a design solution for future low-power, high-performance compute SoCs"

    And on the frequency side of things ...

    From https://www.anandtech.com/show...

    "With the CLN5, TSMC will also offer an Extremely Low Threshold Voltage (ELTV) option that will enable its clients to increase frequencies of their chips by 25% "

    Taking 2.8GHz as baseline, a 25% increase of frequency would land the new chip at 3.5GHz.

    While it is true that the new chip might not be running 25% faster, it still able to run at 3.5GHz, rather than 2.8GHz.

  9. Re:Ah back to the old Mhz fight of the early 2000' by Joce640k · · Score: 1, Funny

    Slashdot really needs a "-1 Retarded" option for moderation.

    --
    No sig today...
  10. Correction by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 1

    Arm said Cortex-A76 chips would even challenge Intel's Core i7 on performance only when running native code

    FTFY.

    There aren't that many native Windows ARM applications so far.

    1. Re:Correction by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      That could be true but it doesn't need to be a lot all they really needs is a full and complete version of MS office because the business user is really the target. A native .net framework that will allow you to easily recompile old .net also opens up a bunch of software.

      I've been waiting a long time for arm to become competitive in the laptop/desktop market. Software appears to be moving along in small increments while the resources it consumes is moving in leaps and bounds hopefully a new competitive Arm will make developers re-think how they design software.

  11. Much faster by backslashdot · · Score: 1

    Uh, the difference between 2.8GHz and 3GHz is about 7% .. not a lot when you consider the Apple A11, due to its larger die area, scores 15% more than the Qualcomm 845 in all the benchmark tests.

  12. There was a time I cared about cpu speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now I don't. They are plenty fast at general purpose computing. Would like to see more effort put into accelerators such as gpgpu, massively parallel integer computing, increase in memory bandwidth, reduction in latency between cache/on-chip memory and the logic units, algorithmic improvements in neural networks, and so on.

  13. Re:Ah back to the old Mhz fight of the early 2000' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's been on the /. requests board since 1998.

  14. RoTfLmAo @ Antifa "NuKLeeR-ShuTdOwN"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Watch Antifa WEEZIL get his computer "rebooted" by good U.S. Patriot https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    * Hahahahaha - A good dose of the "ole' 5 knuckle shuffle" sleeping potion...

    ("WHAP!")

    APK

    P.S.=> Hilarious/Priceless/CLASSIC - traitor "not-man" pussy went DOWN like a SACK OF POTATOS in 1 punch - ("SPLAT") lol... apk

  15. Faster chip set = quicker battery drain by pgmrdlm · · Score: 1

    I would like to have a faster phone, but I already kill my battery to quickly. And the days of swapping batteries out are long gone.

    --
    Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
  16. Samsung, Arm Team Up... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Expect more efficient room heaters.

  17. Yawn by p51d007 · · Score: 1

    Oh goodie! The twitter, facebook & pokemon apps will launch 0.000001 seconds faster, really enhancing my user experience.

  18. Tor browser will FTFY. by emil · · Score: 1

    Give it a try.

  19. But how much RAM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll find it interesting if there's a 16G RAM option, or a memory slot. What use is a super high tech, high end latest CPU with RAM capacity of a decade ago?