Mobile semiconductors blog: ARM Mali GPU

Showing posts with label ARM Mali GPU. Show all posts

Thursday, June 4, 2015

MediaTek announces Helio P10 and MT6753 arrives in shipping devices

MediaTek has announced Helio P10 (MT6755), a performance mid-range smartphone SoC that is the successor of MT6752. Featuring an octa-core Cortex-A53 configuration, Helio P10 improves upon MT6752 by using TSMC's new 28HPC+ manufacturing process, which delivers power efficiency and performance improvements while remaining relatively cost-effective. It can reach a higher maximum CPU clock speed up to 2 GHz and upgrades the GPU to a Mali-T860 MP2. It is expected to be commercially available in end devices by the end of 2015.

Features shared with Helio-X10

The new SoC incorporates a few features from Helio X10 (MT6795), MediaTek's current high-end offering, including dual ISPs with 21MP camera support and improved capture capability, as well as improved audio quality.

Otherwise, the SoC has significant similarities to MediaTek's MT6752 which it succeeds, most likely including a 32-bit external memory interface, which keeps SoC cost and phone PCB cost down. With MT6752, MediaTek already demonstrated the ability to achieve memory performance adequate for a 1080p device within the constraints of a 32-bit memory interface.

The 28HPC+ process is an upgrade of the existing 28HPC (high-performance compact) process (which is also relatively new, used by Allwinner's A83T and other SoCs), which improves performance and cost relative to the established 28HPM (high-performance mobile) process. Existing MediaTek chips like MT6752 and MT6795 most likely use 28HPM, which is established and has also been used for previous-generation SoCs such as MT6592 and Snapdragon 801/805.

MediaTek migrating to big.LITTLE CPU configurations in new SoCs

A significant departure from existing octa-core MediaTek SoCs such as MT6752 and Helio X10 (MT6795) is the pseudo-big.LITTLE CPU configuration, whereby one cluster of four Cortex-A53 cores is clocked at a higher frequency (up to 2 GHz in this case), while the second of cluster Cortex-A53 cores is optimized for lower frequencies, being clocked at a lower maximum frequency (1.1 GHz according to AnandTech).

Together with the previously announced high-end Helio X20 (MT6797) and tablet/Chromebook-oriented chips such as MT8173, Helio P10 marks a migration to (pseudo-)big.LITTLE, hierarchical CPU designs at MediaTek. While symmetrical octa-core designs such as MT6752 and MT6795 reach very high multi-core processing power by allowing all cores to run at the maximum frequency, there are signs that this configuration impacts power efficiency for tasks that require less CPU power, which can be run on power-optimized low-frequency cores.

In practice, this may be reflected in somewhat mediocre standby battery life for smartphones using MT6752 or MT6795, even though power efficiency for demanding tasks that utilize all cores is likely to be pretty good.

Budget mid-range MT6753 reaches end-market

Meanwhile, MediaTek's previously announced MT6753, which is a cost-effective budget mid-range SoC, has arrived in commercially shipping device in the form of Meizu M2 Note. Despite the name chosen by Meizu, the new model actually has lower performance than the existing Meizu M1 Note, because the MT6753 is a less costly, lower end chip when compared to to the MT6752 inside the M1 Note, with considerably slower maximum CPU speeds for the eight CPU cores, as well as a lower performance GPU. There are also signs that the memory interface and the actual memory frequency used by the M2 Note is slower. The lower cost of the MT6753 platform is reflected in the low selling price of the Meizu M2 Note.

MT6753 implements several cost-reducing features, including a lower maximum clock speed (reported to be 1.3 GHz for the M2 Note), most likely associated with a cheaper manufacturing process (either 28LP or 28HPC) than the 28HPM process of the MT6752. A significant factor for lower performance is likely to be a reduced size of the L2 CPU cache inside the MT6753. MT6753 is likely to become a significant volume driver in MediaTek's 4G product line.

However, early Geekbench entries for the Meizu M2 Note suggest that the CPU cores of the MT6753 SoC used in this model are mostly unable to reach the planned clock frequency. The Geekbench results are mostly consistent with an average maximum CPU clock speed of about 1.1 GHz, significantly lower than the 1.3 GHz reported by the OS and the 1.5 GHz mentioned when the MT6753 was originally announced a few months ago. My following blog article about the use of AArch64 provides more details on this subject.

MT6753 has lower-performance GPU than MT6752

MT6753 also has a significantly lower-performance and smaller GPU (Mali-T720 MP3), compared to the Mali-T760 MP2 inside MT6752. MT6753 marks the first Mali implementation with three pixel processing cores; previous Mali GPUs either had one, two, four, six or eight pixel processing cores, Most likely, Mali-T720 does not have the memory bandwidth usage optimization that are present in Mali-T760, which together with the more limited pixel processing throughput means that devices with a 1080p display such as the Meizu M2 Note may be impacted in terms of 1080p game performance and power efficiency for graphics-intensive operations.

World modem support in new MediaTek platforms

All new MediaTek SoCs (including Helio P10 (MT6755), MT6753, the low-end quad-core MT6735 and the announced high-end Helio X20 (MT6797)) have world-modem support, facilitating compatibility with more cellular networks used worldwide, including legacy CDMA networks in the US and other countries. This makes MediaTek SoCs more attractive to smartphone manufacturers targeting multiple or worldwide markets.

Sources: MediaTek (Helio P10 announcement), AnandTech (Helio P10 article)

Updated 6 June 2015.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

HiSilicon introduces Kirin 930/935, a performance-oriented Cortex-A53-based SoC

Huawei has introduced the Huawei P8 and P8max smartphones, featuring the Kirin 930 and Kirin 935 SoCs from Huawei's HiSilicon semiconductor division. The octa-core Kirin 930 SoC is a performance-oriented SoC featuring only Cortex-A53 CPU cores. With a maximum clock frequency in excess of 2.0 GHz, it bears similarities to MediaTek's MT6795, but the use of a pseudo big.LITTLE configuration (four Cortex-A53 cores clocked up to 2.0 GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked up to 1.5 GHz, for a total of eight cores) is reminiscent of Qualcomm's midrange Snapdragon 615 SoC, which runs at lower clock frequencies.

Huawei also introduced high-end models of both the P8 and P8max with larger storage capacity featuring the Kirin 935 SoC, which is a higher-clocked version of Kirin 930. The Huawei P8max is a smartphone with an unusually large 6.8" display.

SoC is targeted at performance-oriented devices

The Huawei P8 models are higher-priced performance-oriented smartphones, and the characteristics of the SoC match this segment. Apart from the high maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A53 cores, the external RAM interface is likely to be a dual-channel 32-bit configuration like previous performance-oriented SoCs from HiSilicon. Presentation materials from Huawei describe the Cortex-A53 cores in the faster cluster of four CPUs as being of a special, performance-enhanced type, which probably reflects the application of ARM's PoP core-hardening technology whereby the core is optimized for running at a specific frequency and a particular power profile, trading performance against die size. The process technology used is likely to be TSMC's proven 28HPM process.

The SoC is reminiscent of MediaTek's recently introduced MT6795 (Helio-X), which also targets the performance segment with an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU configuration. MediaTek's SoC has been reported to have been adopted by competitors of Huawei such as HTC and Xiaomi.

Previous generation Mali-T628 MP4 GPU used

Rather than using an updated current-generation GPU like Mali-T760, the specs sheet for the P8max indicates the Kirin 930/935 SoCs continue to use the Mali-T628 MP4 GPU that was previously used in the Kirin 920 SoC. This GPU core is not known for great power efficiency, although there are suggestions that the more efficient Mali-T760 (which features memory bandwidth optimizations) has a relatively high silicon area and cost.

HiSilicon's new SoC line-up uses only Cortex-A53 CPU cores

Apart from Kirin 930, HiSilicon has also introduced the Kirin 620 SoC, which is an octa-core Cortex-A53 based SoC for the cost-sensitive segment, clocked up to 1.2 GHz and with a single-channel memory interface. This means Huawei now has in-house Cortex-A53-based SoCs suitable for most of its smartphone product range.

Sources: Huawei (P8 announcement), Huawei (P8max announcement), AnandTech (Huawei P8 announcement article)

Updated 17 April 2015.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoC

ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core.

Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016.

However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced SoCs using the Cortex-A72 core with commercial availability in the second half of 2015, suggesting that the CPU core itself is at an advanced stage of introduction. Already, early benchmarks for MediaTek's MT8173 tablet SoC that incorporates the Cortex-A72 have become available.

Cortex-A72 appears to be enhanced version Cortex-A57 optimized for next-generation processes

In its announcement press release from 3 February 2015, ARM claims that more than ten partners have already licensed Cortex-A72, including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Rockchip. Cortex-A72 is based on ARM's ARMv8-A instruction set architecture, and can be combined with the existing Cortex-A53 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Cortex-A72 seems to be positioned as a replacement for Cortex-A57. The similarities with Cortex-A57 are very apparent, for example in the identically sized L1 instruction and data caches, and a feature set that is otherwise very similar.

On a 16 nm FinFET process, the core can sustain operation at speeds up to 2.5 GHz within the constraints of a mobile power envelope (e.g. smartphones), with scalability to higher speeds for larger form-factor devices. However, the first announced devices, such as MediaTek's MT8173, appear to use older processes such as the tried-and-trusted 28 nm HPM process at TSMC, so they are likely to have a lower maximum clock speed.

ARM claims increased performance and power efficiency, although these claims seem to be based on implementation on next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET that deliver a significant intrinsic improvement in these metrics. ARM mentions micro-architectural improvements that result in enhancements in floating point, integer and memory performance. When implemented on a 16 nm FinFET process, ARM expects Cortex-A57 to provide 85% higher performance when compared to the Cortex-A57 core on a 20 nm process within a similar smartphone power budget.

Overall, the differences with Cortex-A57 appear to be relatively minor, so that Cortex-A72 is best viewed as an enhanced version of Cortex-A57 that is optimized for next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET. Nevertheless, the first SoCs to use the Cortex-A72 core will be manufactured using a less advanced process.

Benchmarks appear for MediaTek's MT8173

MediaTek's MT8173 is a mid-range tablet processor mainly targeting Wi-Fi-only tablets, since it does not have an integrated modem. It has two Cortex-A72 cores and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. Probably manufactured using the established 28HPM process at TSMC, the maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A57 cores is likely to be lower that the target for 16 nm FinFET, although MediaTek claims a clock speed up to 2.4 GHz, while a much lower frequency is apparent in early benchmarks results.

The chip also features a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which delivers higher performance than the G6200 GPU used inside MediaTek's existing MT8135 and MT6795.

Recently, early benchmarks for a MT8173 development board have appeared both in the Geekbench Browser and in the results database of GFXBench. The first Geekbench results already appeared in December 2014. The latest set of Geekbench results date from the end of February 2015, although they do show a certain amount variation that may reflect thermal throttling.

Single-core performance good, but not spectacular

As expected, the Geekbench results show good single-core performance, albeit not spectacular. As shown in the following table, singe-core performance is in line with Cortex-A57-based SoCs such as Exynos 5433 and Exynos 7420. It should be noted that the MT8173 test SoC is most likely manufactured at 28 nm with a corresponding relatively low maximum CPU clock speed, while Exynos 5433 and 7420 are manufactured using smaller leading edge processes at Samsung.


SoC          "big" CPU                    Arch     JPEG (int)  Lua (int)   Mandelb. (fp)
                                                   Comp. IPC         IPC         IPC
MT8173       2 x 1.6? GHz Cortex-A72      AArch32  1310  2.13  1380  2.10  1064  1.95
Exynos 5433  4 x 1.80 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch32  1456  2.10  1397  1.89  1174  1.91
Exynos 7420  4 x 1.97 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch64  1481  1.97  1409  1.74  1198  1.92

In this table, to determine the IPC index I have made an educated guess about the actual clock speed of MT8173 when running the benchmarks. Geekbench reports a 1.40 GHz clock speed (which probably applies to the Cortex-A53 cores), 1.6 GHz seems to be a good match, providing just a little better IPC than Cortex-A57. Note that Exynos 7420 runs in AArch64 mode, which skews direct IPC comparisons.

Practical implications unclear

Without knowing the exact clock speed of the Cortex-A72 cores, it is hard to draw conclusions about the actual IPC improvement over Cortex-A57. If the MT8173 uses a 28 nm process, the ability to approach the single-core performance of Samsung's Exynos 7420 manufactured using 14 nm FinFET process is impressive. However, although MediaTek demonstrated the MT8173 in an actual tablet at MWC, it is unclear what kind of device the Alps development board in the benchmark entries actually represents, so it remains to be seen whether the benchmarks actually reflect the power budget of a tablet.

The multi-core performance reported is not very impressive, as expected because of the relatively small number of CPU cores. The JPEG Compress multi-core score shows CPU scaling factor of 2.72, which is good and implies utilization of the Cortex-A53 cores. The Mandelbrot floating point benchmark shows similar scaling.

However, the Lua integer benchmark has a very low multi-core scaling factor of 1.41, which is lower than expected, even when allowing for the limited number of cores. For example, MediaTek's MT6795 achieves multi-core scaling of 7.5 in this benchmark, and the Exynos chips range from 3.9 to 5.0. Other chips with a low multi-core scaling factor for Geekbench's Lua subtest include Snapdragon 810 (Cortex-A57-based), MediaTek's MT6595 (Cortex-A17-based) and NVIDIA's Denver-based Tegra-K1 SoC. There are indications that this benchmark test heavily depends on on-chip cache (primarily L2 cache) size and speed.

GPU performance of MT8173's PowerVR GX6250 GPU improves on G6200

The MT8173 test device's GPU performance as shown in GFXBench results database is not overly impressive, but suitable for a mid-range chip and an improvement over the PowerVR G6200 GPU used in other MediaTek SoCs such as MT6595 and MT6795. In the T-Rex Offscreen benchmark, the MT8173 registers a score of 1487, higher than the 1311 of the MT6595 (G6200)-equipped Meizu MX4. In the GFXBench 3.0 low-level tests, alpha blending scores higher than the MT6595 while the other low-level scores are comparable.

Sources: ARM (Cortex-A57 announcement press release), AnandTech (MediaTek MT8173 article), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Geekbench Browser (MT8173 test device results), GFXBench (MT8173 test device result)

Updated 10 March 2015.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

A deeper look at graphics benchmark results, including GFXBench 3.1 and Basemark X

In this post I will take a closer at graphics benchmark results for different SoCs. I will look beyond just GFXBench (for which a new version has appeared), because the workload tested by well-known GFXBench tests such as T-Rex and Manhattan is not necessarily reflective of the actual gaming experience. Alternative benchmarks exist, such as Basemark X which uses the Unity engine that is commonly used in games.

GFXBench 3.1 released for OpenGL ES 3.1, Snapdragon 805 does well

Kishonti recently released a new version of GFXBench, GFXBench 3.1 for OpenGL ES 3.1, that includes tests for the OpenGL ES 3.1 API standard supported by many recent devices. A few results from the new benchmark tests are already available, with the Adreno 420 GPU inside Snapdragon 805 closing most of the performance gap with the Mali-T760 MP6/MP8 in Samsung's Exynos SoCs in the Manhattan 3.1 test.


                                                      Offscreen Manhattan Manhattan
Device               SoC             GPU              T-Rex        3.0       3.1

NVIDIA Shield Tablet NVIDIA K1-32    Tegra K1 GPU        3692     1979      1443  
HTC One M9           Snapdragon 810  Adreno 430          2732     1413
Galaxy S6 Edge       Exynos 7420     Mali-T760 MP8?      3312     1607       793
Sams. Galaxy Note 4  Snapdragon 805  Adreno 420          2386     1153       773
Samsung Galaxy S6    Exynos 7420     Mali-T760 MP8?      3314     1609       634
Sams. Galaxy Note 4  Exynos 5433     Mali-T760 MP6       2163     1110       436
HTC One M8           Snapdragon 801  Adreno 330          1608      768
Teclast X98 Air      Atom Z3736F     Intel HD            1014      564       307
Google Nexus 10      Exynos 5250     Mali-T604 MP4        818      351       185

NVIDIA's Tegra 32-bit version of Tegra K1 leads (the 64-bit Denver-based version of Tegra K1, and Tegra X1, have not yet been tested). Performance of Snapdragon 805 as implemented in certain models of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 holds up better in the Manhattan 3.1 test than Samsung's Exynos SoCs with Mali-T760 MP6/MP8. Whereas Exynos 7420 (used in the Galaxy S6) has a clear advantage in existing benchmarks (1609 vs 1153 for Manhattan and 3314 vs 2386 for T-Rex), it loses that advantage in the new Manhattan 3.1 test (although the Galaxy S6 Edge benchmarks result suggests it is still slightly superior). Intel's Baytrail SoCs seem to hold up relatively well looking at the result for an Atom Z3736F-based tablet, albeit at a lower performance level.

GFXBench 3.1 results for Snapdragon 801 and the new Snapdragon 810 are not yet available. However, given the fact that GFXBench appears to generally do well on Snapdragon SoCs, they can be expected to score fairly highly. I'll say more about the apparent advantage for Qualcomm's SoC in GFXBench in the final section of this article.

Basemark X is a useful alternative to GFXBench

Basemark X is a gaming benchmark that utilizes the Unity engine that is commonly used in games, and developer Rightware claims that it actually reflects practical performance in games. Although it does include an on-screen demo, the actual benchmark scores appear to be derived from off-screen rendering at a fixed resolution, so that benchmark results can be compared objectively between different devices.

Previous generation SoCs: MT6582 beats Snapdragon 400 in Basemark X

Taking a look at previous-generation cost-sensitive SoCs, while MediaTek's ubiquitous quad-core 3G SoC MT6582 (which supports Open GL ES 2.0 only, through its Mali-400 MP2 GPU) scores lower than Snapdragon 400 in GFXBench's OpenGL ES 2.0-based T-Rex test (about 230 vs 330), in Basemark X MT6582-based devices score higher than Snapdragon 400 based devices. This is despite the fact that Snapdragon was/is often employed in devices with a considerably higher selling price than MT6582-based devices.


Device               SoC             GPU                 Display*   Medium   High

Samsung SM-G800F     Exynos 3470     Mali-400 MP4        1280x720    7527    2712
Vodafone 985N        MT6582          Mali-400 MP2         960x540    4950    1717
Acer E53             MT6582          Mali-400 MP2        1280x720    4870    1694
Wiko Rainbow         MT6582          Mali-400 MP2        1280x720    4826
Galaxy S3 Neo        Snapdragon 400T Adreno 305          1280x720    4540    1551
Moto G (XT1032)      Snapdragon 400  Adreno 305          1280x720    4440
HTC Desire 816d      Snapdragon 400T Adreno 405          1280x720    4354    1441
Samsung SM-A500F     Snapdragon 410  Adreno 306          1280x720    4132    1900
Samsung SM-A300F     Snapdragon 410  Adreno 306           960x540    4076    1892
Samsung SM-G530H     Snapdragon 410  Adreno 306           960x540    3987    1690
Samsung SM-G800A     Snapdragon 400  Adreno 305          1280x720    3946    1362
HTC Desire 820q      Snapdragon 410  Adreno 306          1280x720    3786

* While Basemark X is independent of display resolution in terms of rendering, the
memory bandwidth used for screen refresh has some impact, giving lower-resolution
devices a small advantage.

Notes: Samsung SM-G800F is the Galaxy S5 Mini (Exynos version), while SM-G800A is a Snapdragon 400 running at the non-standard maximum clock speed of 1.4 GHz; Vodafone 985N is the Vodafone Smart 4 Power; Acer E53 is the Acer Liquid E700; Galaxy S3 Neo runs the Snapdragon 400 SoC at a non-standard maximum speed of 1.4 GHz; HTC Desire 816d runs the Snapdragon 400 SoC at 1.6 GHz; SM-A500F is the Galaxy A5, while SM-A300F is the Galaxy A3; SM-G530H is the Galaxy Grand Prime.

For both the medium detail and high detail settings, MT6582-based devices consistently score higher in Basemark X than Snapdragon 400 and also Snapdragon 410-based devices for the medium detail test, which gives a different picture than the one you get from just looking at GFXBench's T-Rex benchmark

Snapdragon 410 performs worse than Snapdragon 400 in Basemark X medium-detail

Also notable is that Snapdragon 410, which is the successor of the Snapdragon 400 and would normally be expected to improve performance, actually has lower performance in practice as judged by the Basemark X medium detail benchmark. This matches earlier findings of performance flaws in Snapdragon 410. When running the high detail Basemark X benchmark, Snapdragon 410 does better and beats Snapdragon 400.

Mid-range SoCs: Snapdragon 615 and MT6752 closely matched

When running GFXBench, Snapdragon 615 and MT6752 are closely matched, with Snapdragon 615 scoring about 830 to 850 in T-Rex while MT6752 scores just above 870. For T-Rex, devices using MediaTek's prior-generation octa-core MT6592 score in the range 650 to 750. In the OpenGL ES 3.0 API-based Manhattan benchmark, Snapdragon 615 and MT6752 are very closely matched, both scoring around 360. We will also take a look at Basemark X results.

The following table shows Basemark X results for the new competing mid-range SoCs Snapdragon 615, MT6752 and HiSilicon's octa-core Hi6210 (Kirin 620), as well as for the prior-generation octa-core MT6592 from MediaTek.


Device               SoC             GPU                 Display*   Medium   High

Lenovo P70-A         MT6752          Mali-T760 MP2       1280x720   11311 
Meizu M1 Note        MT6752          Mali-T760 MP2       1920x1080  11168    4636
HTC Desire 816G      MT6592          Mali-450 MP4        1280x720   10984
Huawei CHE2-TL00     Hi6210          Mali-450 MP4        1280x720   10546    3439
Oppo R8106           Snapdragon 615  Adreno 405          1920x1080  10277    4846 
HTC Desire 820       Snapdragon 615  Adreno 405          1280x720   10133    4814
Samsung SM-A700FD    Snapdragon 615  Adreno 405          1920x1080  10052    4757
Archos 50C Oxygen    MT6592          Mali-450 MP4        1280x720    9867    3702
HTC Desire 616d      MT6592M         Mali-450 MP4        1280x720    7976    3045

* While Basemark X is independent of display resolution in terms of rendering, the
memory bandwidth used for screen refresh has some impact, giving lower-resolution
devices a small advantage.

Notes: SM-A700FD is the Galaxy A7; Huawei CHE2-TL00 is a new version of the Honor 4X.

When running the standard medium-detail version of Basemark X, MediaTek's MT6752 has a moderate advantange over Snapdragon 615, while at the high detail setting Snapdragon 615 has a small advantage. Huawei's Kirin 620 performs adequately and just ahead of Snapdragon 615 in the medium detail setting.

MediaTek's prior-generation octa-core MT6592 with Mali-450 MP4 GPU keeps up relatively well in Basemark X, with certain models (e.g. HTC Desire 816G) actually beating Snapdragon 615 in the medium detail setting.

Performance-oriented SoCs with Basemark X

The following table shows Basemark X results for several performance-oriented mobile SoCs.


Device               SoC             GPU                 Display*   Medium   High

Samsung Galaxy S6    Exynos 7420     Mali-T760 MP6       2560x1440  36017
Galaxy S5 LTE-A      Snapdragon 805  Adreno 420          1920x1080  32685   18334
Google Nexus 6       Snapdragon 805  Adreno 420          2560x1440  30362   20265
Sams. Galaxy Note 4  Snapdragon 805  Adreno 420          2560x1440  31963   21152
Sams. Galaxy Note 4  Exynos 5433     Mali-T760 MP6       2560x1440  29335   19019 

Apple iPad Air 2     Apple A8X       PowerVR Series 6    2048x1536  41700   29239
Google Nexus 9       NVIDIA K1-64    Tegra-K1 GPU        2048x1536  37939   28646
Apple iPad Mini 3    Apple A7        PowerVR Series 6    2048x1536  26499   14780
Teclast X98 Air      Atom Z3736F     Intel HD            2048x1536  14825    7160
Teclast P90HD        Rockchip RK3288 Mali-T764           2048x1536  13053    5645
Onda V989 Core8      Allwinner A80   PowerVR G6230       2048x1536  11004    5724

Meizu MX4 Pro        Exynos 5430     Mali-T628 MP6       1920x1200  25547   12674
Samsung SM-G900A     Snapdragon 801  Adreno 330          1920x1080  25178   11930
Samsung SM-G850F     Exynos 5430     Mali-T628 MP6       1280x720   21872   10666
Meizu MX4            MT6595          PowerVR G6200       1920x1200  17038    7817
Huawei MT7-TL10      Kirin 925       Mali-T624 MP4       1920x1080  15973    6802

* While Basemark X is independent of display resolution in terms of rendering, the
memory bandwidth used for screen refresh has some impact, giving lower-resolution
devices a small advantage.

Notes: SM-G900A is the Samsung Galaxy S5 (US version), Huawei MT7-TL10 is the Huawei Mate 7.

Looking at the ultra-high-end smartphone segment (mostly with a display resolution of 2560x1440), Exynos 7420 provides superior performance in Basemark X. Snapdragon 805 follows, a small distance ahead of Exynos 5433 as used in the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

In the high-end tablet segment, Apple's iPad Air 2 with the Apple A8X leads, but the Nexus 9 with NVIDIA's Tegra K1 (64-bit version) comes fairly close. Apple's prior generation SoCs also delivers good performance, while Intel's current Baytrail SoC for the tablet market outperforms two high-end chips from established Chinese players in the tablet SoC market, Rockchip's RK3288 and Allwinner A80 Octa.

Mainwhile, in the mainstream performance smartphone segment, Snapdragon 801 (in the past the performance leader in the market) still provides good performance, but is actually just beaten by the 32-bit Exynos 5430 in the Meizu MX4 Pro. The chip is also used in the Galaxy Alpha (for which it provides higher-than-necessary performance given its relatively low screen resolution), while the performance of MediaTek's MT6595 SoC, while not bad, falls short of most other high-end solutions. HiSilicon's Kirin 925 as implemented in the Huawei Mate 7 is just behind.

Conclusion

It appears that just concentrating on GFXBench may give a misleading picture with regard to 3D graphics performance of mobile SoCs. In particular it is apparent that Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoCs consistently do better in GFXBench than in other benchmarks such as Basemark X. This is particularly true for the lower-end Snapdragon 400 and higher-end Snapdragon 800 series; for Snapdragon 615, results are more consistent across different benchmarks.

Basemark X, which utilizes the Unity game engine commonly used in mobile games, may more accurately reflect real-world performance.

Sources: Rightware Power Board (Basemark X benchmark results), GFXBench results database

Updated 5 March 2015: Add Galaxy S6 Edge result for GFXBench 3.1.
Updated 15 March 2015.

Monday, March 2, 2015

New mobile SoCs announced at MWC

At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced.

MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones

MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets.

The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, according to MediaTek. Features include an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU up to 1.5 GHz and a Mali-T720 GPU with an unspecified number of cores. ARM's Mali-T720 GPU is positioned at a significantly lower performance bracket than the Mali-T760 used in the MT6752, positioning the MT6753 below the MT6752 in terms of cost and performance.

The MT6753 is described as being compatible with the previously announced MT6735 for entry-level smartphones. The MT6735 has four Cortex-A53 cores instead of eight but otherwise has a similar configuration with a Mali T720 GPU.

High-performance MT8173 tablet SoC uses small big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A72

The MT8173 is a high-performance tablet processor (without integrated modem) that utilizes ARM's new Cortex-A72 core in a big.LITTLE configuration. By using only two Cortex-A72 cores (clocked up to 2.4 GHz) as well as two Cortex-A53 cores, the chip has a lower cost than would be the case with the four-by-four core configuration commonly used for big.LITTLE designs, while still providing good performance.

The Cortex-A72 core, the successor of Cortex-A57, appears to be seeing quick adoption as Qualcomm has already announced performance-segment smartphone SoCs (Snapdragon 618 and 620) featuring the core.

MediaTek has previously used a similar two-by-two big.LITTLE configuration in its MT8135(V) tablet SoC, which has two Cortex-A15 cores and Cortex-A7 cores. This chip was used in Amazon tablets but otherwise did not see much adoption.

Other features include a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which is part of Imagination's Series 6XT family, with higher performance and efficiency than the G6200 GPU used in chips such as the MT8135 and MT6595.

Other tablet SoCs not yet publicly announced by MediaTek

Meanwhile, tablet product announcements by Lenovo also refer to the MT8161 and MT8165 SoCs, which have not been announced. From the specifications of the Lenovo Tab 2 A8 which is using it, the MT8161 appears to be a tablet SoC without modem with quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU running up to 1.3 GHz, while the MT8165 (used in the Tab 2 A10) is a similar SoC with the CPU running up to 1.5 GHz. The 4G version of the Lenovo tablets come equipped with the MT8735 (Tab 2 A8) and MT8732 (Tab 2 A10). These chips are the tablet versions of the MT6735 and MT6732 smartphone SoCs.

MT6795 renamed to Helio X10

In a closed-door presentation at MWC, MediaTek also presented the Helio X10 smartphone SoC, featuring a 64-bit octa-core CPU up to 2.2 GHz, 120 Hz display refresh rate and H.265 video encode up to 4K2K @ 30 fps. A photograph of a slide taken at the presentation strongly suggests that Helio X10 is nothing other than the delayed MT6795 SoC, whose specifications closely match. Devices using this chip are likely to have already started production. MediaTek also talked about the Helio P series, a high-performance platform, which will make its way into devices before the end of the year.

Qualcomm gives preview of next-generation Snapdragon 820 SoC

In a press release, Qualcomm has given a preview of the Snapdragon 820, which utilizes Qualcomm's new custom 64-bit CPU architecture for mobile devices called Kryo. The chip will start sampling in the second half of 2015 according to Qualcomm, with devices becoming available in 2016. It will be manufactured on a next-generation FinFET process (which probably means TSMC's 16FF+, but Samsung cannot be excluded). In the press release, Qualcomm does not mention whether the chip will conform to ARM's ARMv8 instruction set architecture.

In conjuction with the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm also announced the Zeroth hardware/software platform focusing on device intelligence features including video and audio recognition techniques (such as visual object and face recognition).

Intel introduces tablet and smartphone SoCs with integrated modem

Intel has finally introduced SoCs with an integrated cellular modem in its Atom system-on-a-chip product line. The former SoFIA platform has been renamed to Atom X3 and features multi-core 64-bit Atom processors with integrated 3G or 4G LTE modem technology. The following products are available:

Atom X3-C3130, which has dual-core Atom CPU running up to 1.0 GHz and integrates a 3G modem. It features Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Maximum display resolution is 1280x800. It appears to be in the same market segment as MediaTek's previous-generation 3G SoCs such as MT6572 and MT6582 and other SoCs that are already on the market.
Atom X3-C3230RK, which was developed by Intel partner Rockchip following the agreement announced last year. It has quad-core Atom CPU, integrates a 3G modem and features a Mali-450 MP4 GPU.
Atom X3-C3440, a quad-core Atom CPU platform that integrates a Cat 6 LTE 4G modem. It has an Mali-T720 MP2 GPU. This product appears to be one that is most likely to succeed in the market.

All feature a 32-bit memory interface with support for LPDDR2 (and DDR3/DDR3L with the X3-C3230RK). These are the first Intel products that have features (such as the integrated modem) that make them specifically suitable for the smartphone market. They also target cellular-enabled tablets.

The 3G products are a little behind the times, and their success is uncertain. It will be interesting observe whether Rockchip was able to develop the X3-C3230RK in time (one would expect Intel to have greater expertise/resources so that the other products will appear on the market first).

One notable fact is that these are among the first SoCs to integrate an ARM GPU core with a non-ARM CPU.

Intel announces first 14 nm Atom SoCs for tablets and all-in-ones

Intel also rolled out its first 14 nm Atom SoCs, the Atom x5 and x7 processor series (formely codenamed Cherry Trail) with Intel Gen 8 graphics, targeting tablets and small screen all-in-ones.

Intel has also introduced a new stand-alone modem chip, XMM 7360, which support LTE Cat 10 and download speeds up to 450 Mbps, as well as wireless connnectivity products (including WiFi/Bluetooth, GNSS/GPS and NFC solutions).

Sources: MediaTek (MT6753 announcement), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Qualcomm (Snapdragon 820/Zeroth platform preview), Intel (MWC announcements), Intel Atom x3 Processor Series Brief

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Samsung announces Galaxy S6 with Exynos 7420 SoC manufactured on "14nm" FinFET process

At the Mobile World Congress today (Sunday 1 March), Samsung announced the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, featuring a numerous improvements over the previous generation Galaxy S5, including a SoC manufactured on Samsung's 14 nm FinFET-based process. The Galaxy S6 is planned to available in 20 countries starting on April 10th, 2015.

New model implement several improvements

The improvements in the new model include the following:

Exynos 7420 SoC manufactured on 14 nm FinFET process with 20 nm interconnects. The CPU is a big.LITTLE configuration with four Cortex-A57 and four Cortex-A53 cores, similar to Exynos 5433. The maximum clock speeds are 2.1 GHz and 1.5 GHz, respectively. Samsung claims 20% better performance and 35% better efficiency for the new chip when compared to Exynos 5433, which is manufactured using Samsung's 20 nm HKMG process.
The GPU has been rumoured to be a faster version of the Exynos 5433's Mali-T760 MP6 (either a higher clock rate or an MP8 configuration).
Early benchmarks indicate a significant increase in CPU and memory performance combined with a measurable increase in GPU performance (which is required because of the higher screen resolution).
Runs in 64-bit AArch64 mode, which has several advantages, as well as some disadvantages.
Uses new LPDDR4 SDRAM (3 GB), which has higher memory bandwidth at a given memory bus width due to higher effective clock speeds.
The cameras have been improved, including greater light gathering capability.
The 5.1" AMOLED screen's resolution is QHD (2560x1440), which is 77% more pixels than the FullHD (1920x1080) screen in Galaxy S5. The higher CPU, GPU and memory performance are essential to keep pace with increased demands caused by the higher resolution.
Utilizes the new UFS 2.0 interface for embedded flash memory, providing SSD-like performance according to Samsung.
Cat 6 LTE mode.
Touchwiz user-interface on top of 64-bit Android 5.0 is said to be more intuitive and less demanding in terms of processing requirements.

At the same time, Samsung has dropped the MicroSD slot and the battery is non-removable. The battery capacity is also slightly smaller that of the Galaxy S5.

The Galaxy S6 Edge, like the Galaxy Note 4 Edge, features a screen that curves around the edges. It is priced significantly higher than the Galaxy S6, which will not be cheap either.

Quick ramp of 14nm FinFET process brings challenges to Samsung

The initial 14 nm FinFET process used by Samsung has been reported to use 20 nm interconnects with a 14 nm features size. As such it is more of an evolutionary step from 20 nm than full-blooded 14 nm FinFET would be, comparable to some degree with TSMC's 16FF process.

Still, Samsung will face a huge challenge ramping up the process in sufficient volume and acceptable yield rates to equip the high volume of Galaxy S6's expected. Rumours have mentioned low yield for the process in the recent past as Samsung started ramping up (test) production. Given the massive investment in the new process and non-optimal yield rates, it is unlikely that Samsung will significantly benefit financially from production of the chip in the near-term in terms of gross margin and other chip production-related metrics.

However, the performance lead of the Galaxy S6 made possible by the new chip could have significant positive implications for the sales and financial performance of Samsung's smartphone division, allowing Samsung to recoup some of its investment.

A few months ago, Samsung already signed an agreement with Apple whereby Samsung would supply part of the production capacity for future Apple processors. If this bears fruit it would allow Samsung to recoup more of its investment in 14 nm FinFET technology in the future.

Early benchmark performance impressive

In early benchmarks scores reported in Geekbench's result database, a device that probably is the Galaxy S6 shows impressive performance, well ahead of most existing SoCs and devices. In a direct comparison with an Exynos 5433-equipped Galaxy Note 4, the performance gain is fairly significant for most benchmarks (up to 30% for integer tests, higher for floating point), with a few negative outliers such as SHA2 and the Dijkstra integer subtest. The Dijkstra subtest also scores lower on other 64-bit AArch64 platforms, suggesting it suffers from particular AArch64 features such as the doubled size for pointer storage.

Memory performance is also significantly higher, aided by high clock rate and high amount of bandwidth delivered by the LPDDR4 memory interface, which unlike Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 does not seem to have serious flaws.

Sources: AnandTech (Samsung annnounces the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge), AnandTech (Samsung Unpacked, MWC 2015 Live Blog), Geekbench Browser (Samsung SM-G925F)

Thursday, January 8, 2015

New mobile SoCs announced at CES

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, USA this week, a large number of new devices as well as chips for various kinds of multimedia devices is being announced, including mobile SoCs for smartphones and tablets. Several of the newly announced SoCs use Cortex-A53 CPU cores.

Rockchip announces octa-core Cortex-A53 tablet SoC

Rockchip announced the RK3368 at the show, which is a tablet processor with eight Cortex-A53 cores clocked up to 1.5 GHz and an unnamed GPU supported OpenGL 3.1. Rockchip also claims 4Kx2K H.264/H.265 video playback capability and HDMI 2.0 display output supporting 4Kx2K resolution. Early information about this chip became available a few months ago, when it was codenamed "MayBach". Rockchip mentions support for Android Lollipop in its materials.

The quoted maximum clock speed of 1.5 GHz is not very high, but an up-to-date revision of the Cortex-A53 core should provide good CPU performance at that speed even for single-core, and the octa-core configuration will provide very good multi-core performance. At which foundry it is being produced in unclear; in the past Rockchip has been using the 28 nm SLP process at GlobalFoundries for its high-performance chips, although plans for chips produced at TSMC have been reported.

Most of the specifications suggest that the chip is targeted at the performance segment, more or less as a replacement for the RK3288 that is more suitable for tablets due to lower power consumption. Based on the fact that DirectX support up to 9.3 is claimed as well as OpenGL 3.1, the GPU is most likely a Mali-T760 GPU. The RK3288 already contains a performance-oriented Mali GPU, of which the exact nature is unclear. The memory interface is likely to be 32-bit dual-channel with support for LPDDR3, similar to the RK3288 and suitable for performance-oriented devices.

Allwinner announces low-cost quad-core Cortex-A53 tablet SoC

Meanwhile, Allwinner, Rockchip's archrival in the Chinese tablet processor market, announced the A64, a new low-cost tablet processor with four Cortex-A53 CPU cores. Allwinner quotes a price of $5 for the chip. The SoC appears to be the logical successor to the recently introduced A33 with Cortex-A7 cores, which is also a low-cost quad-core tablet processor that appears to have been less successful than anticipated. Allwinner also recently introduced an octa-core Cortex-A7-based SoC, the A83T.

The new SoC supports H.265/H.264 decoding in hardware, and is compatible with various types of DDR memory (presumably in a single channel 32-bit configuration). 4K HDMI output is also listed.

MediaTek announces Android TV and wearable device SoC platforms

Outside of the mobile space, MediaTek (which has long being prominent in the digital television SoC space, both through its internal division and through MStar, which it acquired not too long ago), announced a new digital television SoC, MT5595, with support for Android TV. Sony will be using the chip in new LCD TV models. The chip has a big.LITTLE-type CPU configuration with two Cortex-A17 cores and two Cortex-A7 cores, and has hardware support for HVEC (H.265) and VP9 for 4K2K content streaming at 60 frames per second. As shown by the MT6595 smartphone SoC, MediaTek's Cortex-A17 implementation can provide very high single-core CPU performance, which is probably helpful in providing good performance and response times on the Android TV platform.

MediaTek has also announced an optimized solution for wearable devices based on Google’s Android Wear software. The MT2601 is equipped with a dual-core Cortex-A7 CPU up to 1.2 GHz and a single-core Mali-400 MP GPU, with support for display resolutions up to qHD (960x540). In several respects, these specifications match those of MediaTek's existing low-cost MT6572 smartphone SoC. MediaTek is touting the small die size and power efficiency of the new chip. It can be paired with various external wireless connectivity chips including the recently introduced MT6630 for Bluetooth (MT6630 also integrates advanced WiFi, GPS and FM radio functionality).

Sources: CNX Software (Rockchip RK3368), CNX Software (Allwinner A64), MediaTek (MT5595 announcement), MediaTek (MT2601 announcement)

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Cortex A53-based Snapdragon 615 arrives, but power efficiency in question

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 (MSM8938), an octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU core based SoC with four cores clocked at 1.54 GHz and four cores clocked at 1.0 GHz, has arrived on the market with a significant number of new models shipping from several manufacturers.

The new chip conveniently fills the gap in Qualcomm's product line for SoCs with integrated baseband between the low-to-mid-range Snapdragon 400/410 and the high-end Snapdragon 801, which have a large performance and cost difference, as for some time Qualcomm has offered no competitive smartphone solution with performance falling in between for the performance mid-range category.

While the SoC appears to offer good mid-range CPU and GPU performance, based on early evidence its power efficiency appears to be less than what one would expect based on its utilization of low-power Cortex-A53 cores.

DRAM interface appears to be 32-bit after all

Early data suggested that Snapdragon 615 (MSM8389) would utilize a relatively relatively wide 64-bit external DRAM interface, which is not typical of cost-sensitive devices because it significantly increases the cost of the PCB design, chip as well as other components. A 64-bit DRAM interface would mean that memory bandwidth is relatively high and that the chip would run relatively smoothly at resolutions such as FullHD (1920x1080) at higher.

However, more recent sources as of December 2014 (including Qualcomm's website) indicate the chip uses a cost-effective 32-bit DRAM interface with support for LPDDR3 up to 800 MHz, resulting in memory bandwidth of 6.4 GB/s, comparable with other cost-effective mid-range SoCs, which can lead to constrained performance when running at high resolutions such as 1920x1080.

GPU appears to have strong pixel processing capabilities, but is limited by memory bandwidth

The Adreno 405 GPU provides adequate performance for a mid-range SoC, comparable in benchmarks such as the GFXBench T-Rex and Manhattan tests to that of MediaTek's new MT6752 (also an octa-core Cortex-A53-based SoC with a 32-bit memory interface, in conjunction with a Mali-T760 MP2 GPU), while being roughly three times faster than the GPU in the low-to-mid-range Snapdragon 400/410 platforms.

In GFXBench subtests, the ALU and Alpha Blending benchmark results are particularly high for a mid-range device and close to the scores achieved by higher-end chips from competitors such as Kirin 920 and Exynos 5 Octa, which have Mali-T628 MP4 and Mali-T628 MP6 GPUs and a wider DRAM interface. However, the pixel fill rate is lower and probably provides a bottleneck because of the memory bandwidth limitation. This could suggest that the GPU inside the chip is larger and higher powered than it needs to be, stemming from original plans for a 64-bit DRAM interface on the SoC. In comparison, the Mali-T760 MP2 as implemented in the MT6752 has less processing power but implements bandwidth-saving techniques from ARM that improve performance in a bandwidth -constrained environment.

The 32-bit memory interface and resulting memory bandwidth bottleneck probably means that devices using the SoC will run significantly smoother (especially in games) with better battery life when using a screen with a lower resolution screen like 1280x720, while a resolution 1920x1080 will make the memory interface the bottleneck, also resulting in shorter battery life. A similar phenomenon is seen with other relatively high-powered SoCs with limited memory bandwidth, such as MediaTek's previous generation MT6592.

SoC design shows some signs of cost-reduction measures, including use of 28LP process

Benchmark scores and GPU performance illustrate that this is not a high-end chip and that Qualcomm has reduced cost in a number of ways, reducing CPU and GPU performance. A likely factor is a smaller amount and slower L2 cache memory when compared to higher-end SoCs, as well as the relatively limited memory bandwidth provided by the 32-bit DRAM interface.

Another major factor is that, despite being a relatively performance-oriented chip, it is manufactured using TSMC's relatively economical and low-performance 28LP process (also used for Snapdragon 400/410), which limits clock rates and power efficiency. Other chips, like the Snapdragon 800 series and most of MediaTek's mid-range solutions like MT6752 are manufactured using the higher-performance 28HPM process at TSMC, which provides significantly better performance (higher clock rates) and lower power consumption.

Reduced cost and die size lowers wafer requirements

By migrating part its performance-mid-range SoC offerings from the Snapdragon 800 series to Snapdragon 615, Qualcomm is effectively reducing its wafer requirements at TSMC (especially for HPM), because Snapdragon 615 is likely to have a much smaller die size than the relatively large Snapdragon 801 (the total area for the CPU cores is much smaller, despite there being twice as many cores) and more chips can be manufactured on a single wafer. Qualcomm also saves a significant amount of cost this way (although in the past, Qualcomm's patent royalty leverage has meant that the chip margins were not as important as they might be for other companies).

Reviews and benchmark scores show mediocre battery life and power efficiency

Contrary to initial expectations from the use of power efficient Cortex-A53 CPU cores in a pseudo big.LITTLE configuration, Snapdragon 615 does not appear to be very power efficient, resulting in mediocre battery life in end devices. The Snapdragon 615-based Oppo R5 shows poor battery life in a review by GSMArena, partly because of the high resolution 1080p AMOLED screen. The SoC is likely to be less efficient with resolutions of 1080p and higher.

In the GFXBench long-term performance benchmark for the HTC Desire 820, GPU performance is sustained close to the maximum level, but with a relatively mediocre battery lifetime score of 153 minutes, which is lower than almost all other modern smartphones. A review of the same device by Android Central noted that battery life was reasonable although not spectacular. The HTC model uses a 720p resolution which is likely to result in more acceptable battery life than devices running at 1080p.

Part the reason for the relatively high power consumption is likely to be the use of the less efficient 28LP semiconductor process at TSMC, in conjunction with a relatively powerful GPU with a relatively large die size (which is however limited by memory bandwidth). The Cortex-A53 cores may also perform worse, with higher power consumption, when compared with implementations using the 28HPM process such as MediaTek's Cortex-A53-based designs.

Is Cortex-A53 less power-efficient than expected?

Based on its similarities with the very power efficient Cortex-A7 core, one would expect Cortex-A53 to be a relatively power efficient CPU core, and in that sense the power efficiency of the Cortex-A53-only Snapdragon 615 might be considered disappointing. However, in the case of Snapdragon 615, there are important factors that reduce the power efficiency of the implementation. The 28LP process is a major factor, as well as presumably the relatively high-powered GPU . The 32-bit memory interface in conjunction with the relatively powerful multi-core CPU and GPU can cause memory bus contention due to insufficient bandwidth, resulting in relatively heavy DRAM access patterns.

Another factor could be the r0p1 revision of the Cortex-A53 core; progressive revisions of the core show indications of increased performance and efficiency. MediaTek uses revision r0p2 in its MT67xx family, as well as using the more efficient 28HPM process at TSMC. Samsung has already been shipping the 20 nm-manufactured Exynos 7 Octa (5433) for several months which also uses Cortex-A53 to good effect as the power efficient part of its CPU configuration.

The bandwidth-saving techniques of the Mali-T760 GPU (used by both MediaTek and Samsung) and other ARM IP blocks is likely to contribute to reduced power consumption. Battery life benchmarks and reviews for the MT6732 and MT6752, when they become available, will help clarify whether an octa-core Cortex-A53 with a 32-bit memory interface can in fact provide low power consumption and long battery life.

Sources: Wikipedia (Snapdragon page), Qualcomm (Snapdragon processor page), GFXBench results browser, GSMArena, Android Central

Updated January 2, 2015.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Another symmetric octa-core CPU-based SoC announced (HiSilicon Kirin 620)

Huawei has just announced a new SoC, Kirin 620, with an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU. The chip is the latest in a series of newly introduced octa-core Cortex-A53-based SoCs from companies such as MediaTek and Qualcomm as well as other players.

New Kirin 620 chip appears to target cost-sensitive segment

HiSilicon shows some smart design choices with this chip. It is clearly designed to be relatively cheap to manufacture (with a relatively limited chip die area) while still providing good performance for low/mid-range devices.

In the past, HiSilicon has been using CPU cores with a relatively large die area such Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15, which do not result in a particularly cheap or power-efficient chip. However, the Cortex-A53 is the direct successor to the very power-efficient and extremely small Cortex-A7 core, which means even with eight cores the chip will still be relatively small as well as power-efficient.

The maximum CPU clock speed of 1.2 GHz is significantly lower than most other announced Cortex-A53-based SoCs, illustrating that the chip is intended for the cost-sensitive segment. Possibly, it is manufactured on TSMC's relatively economical 28LP process technology, which limits maximum performance.

Compared to MediaTek’s and Qualcomm’s new octa-core Cortex-A53-based chips, the Mali-450 MP4 GPU is notable because it does not support the OpenGL ES 3.0 API. However, OpenGL ES 2.0 is still the standard in the mobile market, and HiSilicon can probably improve cost and performance this way (especially since Mali-T62x and Mali-T760 are not cheap in terms of die size). Mali-T760 would have been faster and more power-efficient, but Mali-450 MP4 saves cost while still providing reasonable performance.

The new chip has several similarities with MediaTek’s MT6592, which is almost a year old, and has eight Cortex-A7 cores instead of Cortex-A53 and also a Mali-450 MP4 GPU.

Octa-core Cortex-A53 core CPU provides benefits for performance/Watt and performance/dollar

Because the Cortex-A53 (like its predecessor, the Cortex-A7) has a very small die size in comparison to higher-performance cores like Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A15, the use of eight cores instead of four does not very significantly raise the cost of the chip, while greatly increasing multi-core performance. Although not quite true for HiSilicon's chip due to the relatively low clock speed, several other Cortex-A53-based chips are also clocked at a relatively high frequency (in excess of 2 GHz for MT6795), resulting in respectable single-core performance as well, and making such a configuration suitable for the performance segment.

An octa-core configuration can provide real benefits in practice in a multi-threaded OS such as Android. Applications that can readily take advantage of eight cores include the Chrome browser and software video decoding and encoding libraries, all of which can improve the user experience. Because the eight cores are usually physically split into two clusters with a separate L2 cache, there is also room for further optimizations by the kernel scheduler in order to maximize performance and power efficiency.

For example, it might be possible for the scheduler to disable one of the two clusters of four CPU cores and its associated L2 cache during normal operation (when the load is not high), resulting in low power consumption. When more CPU power is needed, the second cluster comes online. Even when there are only a few threads, the scheduler might be able to detect the need for more L2 cache memory in a particular workload and move one or more threads to the second cluster. MediaTek's CorePilot technology, with which it has had experience since the MT6592, probably involves heuristics of this kind.

Overview of symmetric octa-core Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53-based SoCs

The following table shows an overview of currently announced octa-core Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53-based SoCs, starting with MediaTek's MT6592 which has been available for about a year.


(Click to enlarge)

Note that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 is not really a symmetric octa-core because it uses a pseudo-big.LITTLE configuration with four Cortex-A53 cores clocked higher and four cores clocked lower.

Performance comparison of octa-core Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53-based SoCs

The following tables show CPU performance (using a representative Geekbench subtest result) as well GPU performance based on GFXBench for relevant SoCs and devices for which benchmark data is available. It includes both octa-core Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53-based SoCs, as well as other existing SoCs from different market segments, for reference.

(Click to enlarge)

The first few columns of the table show a description of the SoC with CPU configuration, the name of a representative device model using the SoC and the maximum CPU clock speed. Then comes the Geekbench JPEG Compression benchmark test, both single-core and multi-core. This Geekbench subtest has been found to be relatively sensitive to CPU performance without being very sensitive to other factors such as L2 cache size.

The rightmost columns show information about the GPU. First listed are the GPU type and off-screen performance for the GFXBench T-Rex (OpenGL ES 2.0) and Manhattan (OpenGL ES 3.0) benchmarks. The offscreen tests always render into a 1920x1080 off-screen buffer, making results comparable between devices with different screen resolutions. The actual resolution used on the device comes next, followed by on-screen T-Rex benchmark benchmark performance and information relevant for battery life and long-term performance (which is affected by thermal throttling). This includes average long-term performance of the T-Rex on-screen benchmark, the battery size of the device and the battery life in minutes when running T-Rex on-screen long-term.

Mali-T760 appears to be highly efficient

Notable is that GPU performance of the MT6752 with Mali-T760 MP2 GPU as represented by the Lenovo A70-A entry in the GFXBench database is comparable with the Snapdragon 615-based HTC Desire 820, despite the latter's higher low-level pixel processing performance (such as evident in the ALU and Alpha Blending scores) provided by the Adreno 405 GPU.

This strongly suggests that ARM has made a big leap in terms of performance efficiency with the Mali-T760 GPU core in conjunction with compression-based bandwidth optimization technologies such as ARM Framebuffer Compression, Transaction Elimination and Smart Composition as well as good integration with the Cortex-A53 CPU architecture (which already shows memory performance improvements).

Based on GFXBench power efficiency data, none of the listed SoCs appears to be particularly power-efficient with a full GPU load with the complex T-Rex benchmark, but data for the Mali-T760 MP2-based MT6752 has yet to come in. However, the best battery life entries in the GFXBench database for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 with Mali-T760 MP6-based Exynos 7 Octa shows the ability to run the on-screen T-Rex benchmark for more than 300 minutes with reasonable sustained performance on the very high resolution screen of the Note 4, which is compatible with relatively high power efficiency of the Mali-T760 GPU.

Note that power efficiency is likely to be better for typical GPU applications that are less demanding than GFXBench's T-Rex benchmark (this affects lower-end SoCs/GPUs more than higher-end ones).

Sources: CNXSoftware (Kirin 620 announcement), GFXBench results database, Geekbench browser

Updated December 25, 2014 (Correct memory interface information for Snapdragon 615).

Monday, December 1, 2014

Analysis of GPU performance of mobile SoCs based on GFXBench results

In this post, I am analysing the GPU performance of different GPUs and SoCs based on the results database of GFXBench, one of the leading mobile GPU benchmarks. Apart from providing a GPU performance comparison for different SoCs, GFXBench results provide sufficient detail to get an impression of metrics like fill rate, triangle rate and shader performance, allowing one to draw conclusions about what the bottleneck is in a particular implementation.

GFXBench results table for mobile SoCs

The folowing table show detailed GFXBench 3.0 results for a large number of mobile SoC platforms and devices. The results are grouped by smartphone and tablet devices, and further grouped for similar chips (smartphone table) or in alphabetical order by chip (tablet table).

For a high-resolution version, view/copy/save the image above using the browser.

The same table is shown below, but sorted on the T-Rex Offscreen benchmark score in descending order, which provides a reasonable device-independent indication of GPU performance.

For a high-resolution version, view/copy/save the image above using the browser.

Top-performing SoCs: Apple A8/A8X, Snapdragon 805, NVIDIA Tegra K1 and Exynos 7 Octa

Apple's A8 and A8X SoCs, NVIDIA's Tegra K1 (both the Cortex-A15/A7-based version as well as the NVIDIA Denver-based version) as well as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 805 lead the pack for mobile GPU performance. What most of these chips have in common is a large number of GPU pixel processing cores and a wide DRAM interface (especially in the case of the Apple A8X and Snapdragon 805) to achieve high memory bandwidth. The Apple A8X has been reported by AnandTech to contain an eight cluster PowerVR Series 6 GPU, twice the number of clusters of the GPU inside the Apple A8.

In the OpenGL ES 2.0-based T-Rex offscreen benchmark, the Apple A8X as used in the iPad Air 2 leads, closely followed by the respective versions of Tegra K1 in the HTC Nexus 9 and the NVIDIA Shield Tablet. The Apple A8 and Snapdragon 805 show significantly slower but comparable performance in the T-Rex offscreen benchmark (although still very fast for most purposes), although Snapdragon 805 shows significantly higher low-level metrics such as fillrate, alpha blending bandwidth and shader processing throughput. Snapdragon 805 (with Adreno 420 GPU) has an effective 128-bit memory interface (similar to Apple A8X), which suggests the Apple A8 (with 64-bit memory interface) has greater efficiency within the limitations of the lower memory bandwidth, probably helped by the use of large on-chip caches (including the L3 cache). Samsung's Exynos 7 Octa (Exynos 5433, with Mali-T760 MP6) is somewhat slower than Apple A8 and Snapdragon 805, and so is the slowest of the high-performance processors in terms of GPU power (while being near the lead in terms of CPU performance).

In the OpenGL ES 3.0-based Manhattan benchmark (offscreen, so that the results are largely independent of screen resolution), the Apple A8X and NVIDIA Tegra K1 provide comparable performance (a score just above 2000), while the Snapdragon 805 follows at a considerable distance with a score of about 1200, similar to the score achieved by the Apple A8 inside the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Samsung's Mali-T760 MP6-based Exynos 7 Octa (as represented by the Exynos-based version of the Galaxy Note 4) follows with a score of about 1100.

High-end: Snapdragon 801, Exynos 5 Octa, Apple A7

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801 with Adreno 330 GPU has been widely used in performance-oriented devices for some time and provides relatively high performance for the segment. Part of the reason for the wide adoption of the high-powered Snapdragon 801 is that Qualcomm has not had a convenient SoC offering intermediate between the Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 400 (between which exists a large performance and cost gap), and through its control over the high-performance smartphone market through its patent royalty leverage has been able to convince customers to use the Snapdragon 801 in a wide range of devices (as it did previously with the Snapdragon 800), with the SoC providing more performance than really necessary in many cases.

In the OpenGL ES 2.0-based T-Rex (offscreen) test, Snapdragon 801 scores approximately the same as Apple's previous generation Apple A7 SoC. Samsung's recent Exynos 5 Octa (Exynos 5430, with Mali-T628 MP6) used in the Galaxy Alpha also score about the same. The results for the OpenGL ES 3.0-based Manhattan benchmark are also comparable for these three SoCs.

PowerVR's Rogue Han (G6200) GPU with two clusters inside MediaTek's recent MT6595 does not match the performance of the other high-end chips mentioned above, although still providing perfomance clearly above current and upcoming mid-range solutions. This GPU is also implemented in Allwinner's A80 chip, which shows somewhat lower scores in a benchmark entry for an A80 OptimusBoard development board.

Cost-sensitive SoCs: Snapdragon 410 vs Snapdragon 400 vs MT6582

Rather than showing an evolutionary improvement in GPU performance, the quad-core Cortex-A53-based Snapdragon 410's Adreno 306 GPU actually shows 10% to 20% lower GPU performance than the Adreno 305 in Snapdragon 400 based on metrics like fillrate and the offscreen T-Rex benchmark. This provides evidence that Snapdragon 410 is also a cost-reduction effort in comparison with Snapdragon 400, with a smaller die size for the GPU to reduce cost. This also helps to explain why Qualcomm has aggressively pitched the Snapdragon 410 for low-end 4G smartphones as well as somewhat higher segments, with Snapdragon 410 reported to be Qualcomm's current main volume driver.

When looking at previous generation chips, the Adreno 305 in Snapdragon 400 scores higher than MediaTek's MT6582 in the offscreen T-Rex benchmark (approximately 40% better), while some low-level metrics are slower than MT6582. For example, GFXBench's Driver Overhead score is relatively low for both Snapdragon 400 and Snapdragon 410, reflecting mediocre performance when rendering lots of small objects. The fillrate benchmark is also a little lower than MT6582. The higher T-Rex benchmark performance is probably due to a more optimized and larger cache memory subsystems used in Snapdragon 400 and 410. Exactly how Snapdragon 400/410 compares with the MT6582 and other solutions in other benchmarks and games is beyond the scope of this article.

The next generation of efficient Cortex-A53-based mid-range SoCs: Snapdragon 610 and 615, MT6732 and MT6752

Several new chips for the mid-range performance segment are emerging that use a quad or octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU configuration. The use of Cortex-A53 cores at a relatively high clock frequency is promising to significantly improve power efficiency and cost for this segment (which might previously have required the use of more costly SoCs such as Snapdragon 801). This CPU configuration provides adequate single-core performance and (in the case of an octa-core CPU) great multi-core performance.

Both Qualcomm and MediaTek have introduced SoCs in this class, which also introduce new GPU architectures. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 610 (quad-core Cortex-A53) and Snapdragon 615 (octa-core Cortex-A53) utilize the new Adreno 405 GPU, while MediaTek's quad-core MT6732 and octa-core MT6752 utilize a Mali-T760 MP2 GPU (Mali-T760 has also been adopted by Samsung and others).

T-Rex offscreen performance of Snapdragon 615's Adreno 405 GPU (as represented by an entry for a Lenovo device) with a score of about 850 clearly puts the chip in the performance-oriented segment, since Snapdragon 400 and 410 score not much more than 300 in this benchmark. The OpenGL ES 3.0 Manhattan offscreen benchmark score is similarly significantly higher (about three times higher than Snapdragon 400/410). Low-level metrics are all fairly high for a mid-range device, with only fillrate being limited by the 32-bit DRAM interface.

MediaTek's MT6752 with Mali-T760 MP2 (as represented by a Gionee device entry) shows scores for T-Rex and Manhattan that are comparable with Snapdragon 615. Raw low-level metrics such as ALU, Alpha Blending and fillrate are clearly lower than Snapdragon 615, with only Driver Overhead being superior, suggesting that new ARM optimization technologies such as ARM Framebuffer Compression, Smart Composition Transaction Elimination are already having a positive effect on real-world performance, especially within the bounds of a 32-bit DRAM interface, keeping device cost down.

In terms of cost, the ability of MediaTek's MT6752 to provide good performance for a mid-range device, comparable to Snapdagon 615, with an economical 32-bit DRAM interface, make the chip look very attractive. This also provides evidence that ARM has made somewhat of a breakthrough in terms of performance efficiency with Mali-T760 and the associated optimization techniques mentioned above, mostly based on compression techniques, which will revolutionize performance for economical devices with a 32-bit memory interface that have limited memory bandwidth.

MediaTek's quad-core MT6732 (as represented by an Asus device entry), which also has a Mali-T760 MP2 GPU (but clocked lower than in the MT6752) scores lower but still very respectable (especially for the real-world T-Rex and Manhattan benchmarks) for a mid-range device. There have been reports though suggesting that the Mali-T760's efficiency benefits come at the cost of a relatively large chip die size for a cost-sensitive device, so that a chip such as the MT6732 is not suitable for the high-volume entry-level 4G market (for which Snapdragon 410 is likely to be much more suitable). MediaTek is addressing this with its upcoming MT6735 with cheaper Mali-T720 GPU, which does not appear to offer the bandwidth optimization techniques of the Mali-T760.

MT6592 still has competitive GPU performance

MediaTek's octa-core MT6592 smartphone chip (which was released almost a year ago) with a T-Rex offscreen score in excess of 700 has GPU performance that roughly matches that of the upcoming mid-range chips described above, which are addressing approximately the same segment. The high GPU clock speed of the Mali-450 MP4 GPU probably drives the high scores.

The disadvantages of the MT6592 are a lack of OpenGL ES 3.x support and a likely greater memory bandwidth bottleneck when running at high screen resolutions such as 1920x1080, which also impacts power efficiency. GFXBench's battery life benchmarks when running T-Rex long-term are mediocre for most MT6592-based devices, including devices using a 1280x720 resolution, although it is likely that less demanding 3D applications exhibit better battery life. The Cortex-A7 CPU cores (typically clocked at 1.7 GHz) are also slower than the eight Cortex-A53 cores inside a chip like the MT6752 (but still provide plenty of performance).

RK3288's Mali-T764 GPU: Exact nature unclear

Rockchip's RK3288 is a relatively high performance SoC intended primarily for tablets but currently mainly implemented in devices such as media boxes and development boards. For a long time, Rockchip has advertised its RK3288 SoC as featuring an ARM Mali-T764 GPU. This is confusing because ARM has never announced a GPU with that name. ARM's Mali-T760, also used in new SoCs from other companies such as Exynos 5433 (Exynos 7 Octa) and several new MediaTek SoCs, comes close, and one could assume Rockchip means a Mali-T760 MP4 configuration.

However, in the GFXBench results database, all device entries (mainly representing Android TV box devices, but also including tablets such as the Teclast P90HD) for the RK3288 show a set of GL_EXTENSIONS that is identical to that of devices with a Mali-T628 or Mali-T624 GPU. In particular, the GL_EXT_disjoint_timer_query, GL_EXT_sRGB and GL_EXT_sRGB_write_control extensions, which seem to be associated with Mali-T760-class devices, are missing. Whether this means that the RK3288 actually does not contain a Mali-T760-class GPU but instead an older generation Mali-T62x GPU, or this simply reflects non-optimal drivers, is unclear, but there certainly is a suggestion that the GPU inside the RK3288 is actually of an older (Mali-T62x generation) type.

Earlier, Rockchip was not exactly forthcoming about the exact CPU cores inside the RK3288, which have been proven to be Cortex-A12 instead of Cortex-A17, even though ARM later helped Rockchip by declaring that Cortex-A12 will be also referred to as Cortex-A17 (even though it is technically a different core for which Rockchip was one of the few known customers), and CPU performance from benchmarks such as Geekbench suggests the version of the Cortex-A12 core inside the RK3288 does not quite perform as fast as a real Cortex-A17, clock-for-clock.

While RK3288 does support OpenGL ES 3.0 (as do both Mali-T62x and Mali-T760), GFXBench does not allow the OpenGL ES 3.0 Manhattan benchmark to run on this chip for several TV box devices, which one would normally expect to be possible even if the GPU is technically Mali-T62x class. However, the Teclast P90HD tablet entry does show Manhattan benchmark results, which are consistent with a Mali-T62x MP4 GPU (or perhaps Mali-T7xx) configuration, while also showing reasonable sustained GPU performance and power efficiency.

Note about T-Rex benchmark and cost-sensitive GPUs

Because GFXBench's T-Rex benchmark targets a fairly detailed and advanced level of rendering that requires a reasonably high-end GPU for good results, the T-Rex benchmark is likely to understate practical GPU performance for low-end devices. Part of the reason for this is the much lower L2 cache associated with low-end GPU like Mali-400 MP2 and especially Mali-400 MP, which is not likely to be enough to satisfy the T-Rex benchmark's relatively large textures and other demands, resulting in much more expensive external RAM access and a relatively low benchmark score. More typical, less demanding GPU applications of the Angry Birds and Temple Run-type are likely to perform better in relative terms on these platforms (although there will still be variation between chips), and GFXBench's low-level benchmarks provide some information on this.

GFXBench's battery life benchmark is also likely to understate practical battery life for devices such as Mali-400 MP and probably Mali-450 MP because of its higher than typical rendering complexity and relatively large texture working set, with battery life for less demanding GPU applications likely to be significantly better.

Sources: GFXBench results database

Updated December 4, 2014 (Make corrections and add comments about Snapdragon 615's 64-bit memory interface vs MT6752's 32-bit memory interface), add section about T-Rex benchmark's complexity negatively affecting low-end CPU scores.
Updated December 25, 2014 (Correct Snapdragon 615 memory interface width).
Updated December 26, 2014 (Provide slightly updated, sorted GPU benchmark results tables).

Monday, November 10, 2014

MediaTek Q3 results: Affected by transition to 4G, but high level of shipments maintained in Q3 and Q4

Recently, MediaTek released its Q3 2014 financial results, and revenues for the month of October 2014 have also come in. Although MediaTek has lost some market share to due the transition to 4G, its forecast for Q4 is somewhat better than expected by financial markets and it expects to maintain a high level of smartphone SoC unit shipments.

Lateness of integrated 4G solutions impacts results, but high level of unit shipments maintained

MediaTek reported sequential revenue growth for Q3 2014 of only 6% compared to Q2 2014, a relatively low increase given normal seasonal trends. In its Q3 results conference call, MediaTek cited the transition from 3G to 4G smartphones as a reason for the relatively low growth, since MediaTek has not yet ramped production of SoCs with integrated 4G baseband and currently still relies a two-chip solution to provide 4G. Competitor Qualcomm has already been selling SoCs with integrated 4G for some time and dominates that segment, providing a threat to MediaTek's market share. I believe that a lack of wafer production capacity at TSMC was also a major contributor to MediaTek's low growth in Q3 2014, which the company has not publicly commented on.

Even though 4G growth in markets such as China has been lower than expected, the lack competitive 4G solutions means that MediaTek has lost some market share as 4G adoption grows, as was already apparent when looking new product lines from major MediaTek customers in China such as TCL (Alcatel One Touch), Coolpad, Lenovo and ZTE, whose 4G models mostly use Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. Some loss of market share in China is corroborated by a market share report for smartphone SoCs in China in Q3 2014 from DigiTimes Research, although MediaTek still held greater than 50% of the market.

Q4 2014 forecast better than expected

Still, MediaTek maintained smartphone SoC solution unit shipments in the 90 to 100 million range in Q3 2014 and expects similar shipments in Q4 2014, somewhat better than expected by the market. The expectation that overall revenues for Q4 2014 (which also includes MediaTek's other diverse product lines) will fall in the range between a 6% decline and 2% growth from Q3 2014 is also better than expected by the market. For Q4 2014, MediaTek expects that more than 20% of its smartphone SoC shipments will be 4G (presumably mostly reflecting the start of shipment of new integrated solutions), representing about 20 million units, reaching a full year 2014 shipment target of 30 million units. MediaTek noted volatile movements in the ASP (average sellling price) of smartphone chips due to strong competition, with limited visibility for 2015.

MediaTek disclosed that for the whole year (2014), it expects to ship about 350 million smartphone SoC solutions (of which 30 million 4G), as well as 40 million tablet SoCs. For smartphone SoCs, although China is MediaTek's largest market, the export market (reflecting smartphone SoCs sold to companies in India and other countries, with a large proportion of low-end dual-core chips) is growing in importance, with its share growing from 30% of shipments in the first half of 2014 to 40% in the second half. The increased proportion of low-end dual-core smartphone chips in Q4 (although offset by the ramp of higher-end 4G solutions) is likely to contribute to MediaTek's slight revenue decline in Q4 2014 at similar level of unit shipments.

MediaTek will be more competitive in 4G performance segments, low-cost 4G solution to follow

Looking forward, MediaTek expects the ramp of its integrated 4G solutions in 2015 to result in a better product mix, which makes sense since new chips such as MT6752 and MT6795, both with octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, make MediaTek a lot more competitive for higher-performance segments. MediaTek has also indicated that its upcoming cost-reduced MT6735 and MT6735M SoCs, which will come to market in the first part of 2015, will improve its competitiveness for the low-cost 4G market.

In the near term, MediaTek only has the MT6732 to address the lower-priced part of the integrated 4G SoC market, but this chip is relatively expensive to manufacture for a low-cost solution, being more suited for the lower part of the mid-range segment. An important reason for the relatively high cost seems to be the use of an ARM Mali-T760 MP2 GPU, which although providing good performance and power efficiency, has a relatively large die area not suited for the low-cost segment. The upcoming cost-reduced MT6735 changes the GPU to a more cost-effective Mali-T720. The manufacturing process node may also play a role. Although information is scarce, it is likely that the MT6732 is manufactured using TSMC' s more expensive 28HPM process like MediaTek's higher-end SoCs, while the MT6735 will probably be manufactured using the more cost-effective 28LP process that is more suitable for cost-sensitive applications. In its conference call, MediaTek noted that the LP process is preferable for products for the entry-level segment.

Lack of production capacity likely to have affected MediaTek

Although not publicly discussed by Mediatek, I believe lack of wafer production capacity at TSMC (primarily earlier in the year) has significantly depressed MediaTek' s sales levels for recent quarters such as Q2 2014 and Q3 2014. In its Q3 2014 conference call, MediaTek noted that it needs to work with multiple foundry partners due to its size. Reports earlier in the year from sources such as DigiTimes provided hints that MediaTek has been facing a shortage of production capacity. It has been reported that MediaTek made a failed attempt to ramp production at GlobalFoundries in 2014, which would have affected its planned capacity. DigiTimes has also reported on planned MediaTek production ramps at UMC in the face of capacity tightness. Signs that MediaTek has not been able to satisfy demand for its chips are apparent in the tablet market, for which the company has several very competitive solutions that have not shipped in the volume (especially in China) that one would normally expect in an efficient market, opening up the opportunity to take market share for companies that do not rely on TSMC for production capacity such as Rockchip and Intel.

However, MediaTek's revenues for the month of October 2014 came in at NT$21.6 billion (US$706 million), representing an increase of 16.5% from the month of September, suggesting an improvement in its capacity situation. For November 2014, revenues dropped to NT$16.8 billion. MediaTek was already conservative about its Q4 revenues when October revenues were known, so the drop is likely to have been expected by the company. Factors involved could be seasonal declines in several product segments (including its legacy product segments), production transitions (such as from MT6592 to newly ramping mid-range SoCs with 4G), competition from Qualcomm and other players with low-end smartphone SoCs within integrated 4G (a segment for which MediaTek does not have a good solution in the near term), as well as being a reflection of the wafer shortage at TSMC that may have reached its peak a few months ago.

Sources: DigiTimes (DigiTimes Research smartphone AP shipments in China in Q3 2014), DigiTimes (MediaTek Q3 results), DigiTimes (MediaTek October 2014 revenues), MediaTek (Q3 2014 conference call)

Updated December 5, 2014.

Index

By Subject

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Features shared with Helio-X10

MediaTek migrating to big.LITTLE CPU configurations in new SoCs

Budget mid-range MT6753 reaches end-market

MT6753 has lower-performance GPU than MT6752

World modem support in new MediaTek platforms

Thursday, April 16, 2015

SoC is targeted at performance-oriented devices

Previous generation Mali-T628 MP4 GPU used

HiSilicon's new SoC line-up uses only Cortex-A53 CPU cores

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Cortex-A72 appears to be enhanced version Cortex-A57 optimized for next-generation processes

Benchmarks appear for MediaTek's MT8173

Single-core performance good, but not spectacular

Practical implications unclear

GPU performance of MT8173's PowerVR GX6250 GPU improves on G6200

Thursday, March 5, 2015

GFXBench 3.1 released for OpenGL ES 3.1, Snapdragon 805 does well

Basemark X is a useful alternative to GFXBench

Previous generation SoCs: MT6582 beats Snapdragon 400 in Basemark X

Snapdragon 410 performs worse than Snapdragon 400 in Basemark X medium-detail

Mid-range SoCs: Snapdragon 615 and MT6752 closely matched

Performance-oriented SoCs with Basemark X

Conclusion

Monday, March 2, 2015

MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones

High-performance MT8173 tablet SoC uses small big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A72

Other tablet SoCs not yet publicly announced by MediaTek

MT6795 renamed to Helio X10

Qualcomm gives preview of next-generation Snapdragon 820 SoC

Intel introduces tablet and smartphone SoCs with integrated modem

Intel announces first 14 nm Atom SoCs for tablets and all-in-ones

Sunday, March 1, 2015

New model implement several improvements

Quick ramp of 14nm FinFET process brings challenges to Samsung

Early benchmark performance impressive

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Rockchip announces octa-core Cortex-A53 tablet SoC

Allwinner announces low-cost quad-core Cortex-A53 tablet SoC

MediaTek announces Android TV and wearable device SoC platforms

Thursday, December 25, 2014

DRAM interface appears to be 32-bit after all

GPU appears to have strong pixel processing capabilities, but is limited by memory bandwidth

SoC design shows some signs of cost-reduction measures, including use of 28LP process

Reduced cost and die size lowers wafer requirements

Reviews and benchmark scores show mediocre battery life and power efficiency

Is Cortex-A53 less power-efficient than expected?

Thursday, December 4, 2014

New Kirin 620 chip appears to target cost-sensitive segment

Octa-core Cortex-A53 core CPU provides benefits for performance/Watt and performance/dollar

Overview of symmetric octa-core Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53-based SoCs

Performance comparison of octa-core Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53-based SoCs

Mali-T760 appears to be highly efficient

Monday, December 1, 2014

GFXBench results table for mobile SoCs

Top-performing SoCs: Apple A8/A8X, Snapdragon 805, NVIDIA Tegra K1 and Exynos 7 Octa

High-end: Snapdragon 801, Exynos 5 Octa, Apple A7

Cost-sensitive SoCs: Snapdragon 410 vs Snapdragon 400 vs MT6582

The next generation of efficient Cortex-A53-based mid-range SoCs: Snapdragon 610 and 615, MT6732 and MT6752

MT6592 still has competitive GPU performance

RK3288's Mali-T764 GPU: Exact nature unclear

Other tablet solutions

Note about T-Rex benchmark and cost-sensitive GPUs

Monday, November 10, 2014

Lateness of integrated 4G solutions impacts results, but high level of unit shipments maintained

Q4 2014 forecast better than expected

MediaTek will be more competitive in 4G performance segments, low-cost 4G solution to follow

Lack of production capacity likely to have affected MediaTek

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