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  • MikhailT - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    > Ultimately, the fact that Qualcomm has come up with a custom ARMv8 CPU architecture in such a short time continues to show just how quickly Qualcomm can respond to changing market conditions, something that we first saw with the Snapdragon 810.

    Short time in relative to what? Definitely not to 810, didn't they release 810 because they needed more time with Kryo?
  • JoshHo - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    To our knowledge, Qualcomm did not have an ARMv8 CPU core planned when Cyclone was first announced with the iPhone 5s.
  • MikhailT - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    1. ARMv8-A was announced around October 2011.
    2. Cyclone back in 2013 with A7 by Apple
    3. Samsung just announced 14nm ARMv8 CPU shipping in S6 next month.
    4. Qualcomm releases Kyro in late 2015/early 2016.

    What exactly is so impressive about Qualcomm's turnaround if they're 1-3 years behind everyone else and Samsung managed to get ahead of them?
  • Klug4Pres - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Well, to be fair, Samsung are just using ARM's off-the-shelf core designs, which Qualcomm has also done with SD810. Qualcomm doesn't fab its own SoCs, so it can't guarantee to match Samsung's process technology.

    But I am not impressed by Qualcomm - it was blind-sided by the move to ARMv8, which is very embarrassing.
  • R3MF - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    that matters only if zeroth on arrival performs significantly faster than exynos7, and only then if samsung haven't already transitioned to a product sporting Arm A72 based cores...
  • TheJian - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Denver isn't off the shelf and K1 has been with us for a while, and we'll be seeing it again this xmas in whatever follows X1. So qcom is what probably a year and a half behind Nexus 9 with 64bit CUSTOM denver cores right? And yes, I believe it was always on the map, the just didn't know others would beat them to the punch. So I don't think anything turned around quickly. Socs rev yearly and are on maps way before this (even if hidden internally). The Denver in the xmas chip may even be enhanced from the first rev (they had another year to upgrade some details).

    I'm not impressed by qcom and even less impressed by anandtech for talking up a total failure to recognize where the market was going and this is at least the 2nd time they've acted like qcom is a nimble company here. Denver will be in (nexus 9) and out (X1) and back in devices (xmas 14nm from samsung will have Denver or denver2 or whatever they call it) before we see an 820 device...LOL.

    Levizx, you etc are all correct. NV just did a stopgap themselves for time to market with X1 going off the shelf for 20nm. They didn't push anything up, this is qcom's schedule for years. Are they going to add a comment saying nvidia is super nimple and quick to react too? LOL.

    When Jen stepped out to announce T3, he said they were simultaneously working on T4/5/6. I'd be shocked if a company with 10x earnings (qcom 6B income 1.5x NV's total revenue...LOL) doesn't do the same thing or even more at once.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Note that Denver has been in development since 2011 (and possibly even earlier). Whereas indications are that Kyro wasn't a full project until after the iPhone 5s was introduced in September of 2013.

    Which would be as much credit to QC on getting something ready in such a short period of time as it is the realization that they were behind the curve on CPU development in 2013 and were unprepared for Cyclone. Just because you can pull off a crash course program doesn't mean it's a good thing...
  • sonicmerlin - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    I think Apple's move to ARMv8 was a little premature. 64 bit apps use up 30% more RAM, which is still at a premium with iDevices. I would personally prefer my Air 2 was using a 32 bit processor if it could free up more RAM. I doubt I would notice the slight performance drop with the 32 bit CPU.
  • name99 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    The sooner you move to 64-bit, the sooner you can drop 32-bit, which means simpler SW and HW development. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple are shipping a 64-bit ONLY core before the rest of the ARM ecosystem has fully switched over to 64-bit. The advantage of such a core is not that the 32-bit decoder is expensive, but that being forced to support 32-bit code paths constrains how you can design the rest of the CPU (eg you probably have to have a permanent shift stage stuck in the integer pipeline, and you need to play weird games with the registers to support all the v7 interrupt modes); and the 32-bit legacy is a whole lot verification for not much value.

    Likewise in the OS/frameworks.
  • MikhailT - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    It really depends on what you need more memory for.

    If you're asking for more memory on Air 2 that has 2GB of memory, it's not the 64-bit CPU that's the fault. You're using an app that is leaking memory badly and iOS 7/8 itself isn't optimized that well. Safari is the worst of them all, it'd eat up a lot of memory, regardless of 32-bit/64-bit.

    Majority of the apps on the app market does not use more than 100-300mb of memory, even as a 64-bit app. Also, the 64-bit app does not eat up 30% more by default, it varies depending on the app itself.

    In addition, 64-bit apps are actually finishing tasks much faster than a 32-bit CPU would, that's a fact because of the other improvements based on the ARMv8 improvements not related to the 64-bit.

  • MikhailT - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Holy crap, I pressed submit before proof-reading first

    64-bit apps are using anywhere from 1-30% more, that's it.

    ARMv8 is more than just 64-bit support but rather wider register set, simplified and modernized ISA, and so on.
  • eanazag - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link

    I'm not knocking Apple for switching to 64 bit prematurely. My gripe is that when they did they didn't raise the internal RAM beyond 1GB. They finally did for the Air 2, but no others. I have Apple devices and would like to see more RAM for Safari. I am a heavy tab user and Safari loves its RAM - otherwise it is frequent page reloads and app crash.

    The big thing that the 64 bit makes possible is that it is now feasible to make a desktop or laptop based on an ARM CPU for Apple. Have they done it yet? No. It could open up for an in between priced device from iPad to MacBook Air. I would expect a device like that to ship with 4-8 GB of RAM. A 32 bit Apple ARM device would suck for desktop/laptop usage.
  • tipoo - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link

    The binaries use 30% more RAM, not the whole app, which includes things like image assets and sound. The binaries are relatively small.
  • JoshHo - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    I agree that Qualcomm should've never fell behind to begin with, but their ability to recover and push out new products is somewhat impressive.
  • levizx - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    That's bull. You seriously think it's even remotely possible to design a CPU core in under 2 years? A late 2015 release for its in-house 64-bit SoC was ALWAYS the goal for Qualcomm, 810 is just a stop gap solution and didn't take much time away from their primary design team as there's virtually nothing to design.
  • Krysto - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Apple did it with Swift and Cyclone.
  • Frenetic Pony - Sunday, March 8, 2015 - link

    Apple bought some magic assed CPU design house and are feeding them nothing but Meth and Speed to get them to put out a significant new design change every year :P
  • eiriklf - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Are you saying they were making a 32 bit replacement for krait?

    It seems quite clear to me that they had to be planning to replace krait in about a year from now regardless of what apple was doing.
  • dragonsqrrl - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    "Are you saying they were making a 32 bit replacement for krait?"

    That was the rumor in late 2013, and apparently it was fairly far into development too.
  • name99 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    I think they operated under the same delusion as Intel when it came to x64.
    Both QC and Intel imagined that, because they were the king, they could control the speed of change, in such a way as to best meet their schedules (which meant, among other things, dragging out the transition as long as possible).
  • Krysto - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Wow, that's astonishingly bad. Kryo is already arriving in 2016. Are you saying that if Apple didn't already announce Cyclone a year earlier before everyone else, Kryo wouldn't have arrived at least until 2017?

    What the hell, Qualcomm? This is why monopolies are bad. It seems Qualcomm intended to enjoy every little moment of its monopoly once it would reach that point. Thank god, it didn't work that way for them.
  • dragonsqrrl - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    I guess it depends on when they started work on Kryo. If it really did start around the same time as the introduction of Cyclone then that would be a very short time. Rumors floating around at the time pointed to Qualcomm scrapping their followup to Krait in response to Cyclone and the A7, which from what I heard would've still been an ARMv7 32-bit arch planned for a 2014 launch.
  • jjj - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    "the fact that Qualcomm has come up with a custom ARMv8 CPU architecture in such a short time continues to show just how quickly Qualcomm can respond to changing market conditions, something that we first saw with the Snapdragon 810."

    LMAO you are acting like V8 came out of nowhere overnight.
    You really need to revise your objectivity when it comes to Qualcomm, you keep praising them when there is nothing to praise.
    In this cycle, if anything, Qualcomm has shown that they are vulnerable with their entire line lagging behind one competitor or another. The timing to mess up was no ideal either since it's right when others started pushing LTE and it might costs them significant market share.

    Anyway, hopefully Kryo is fast , wouldn't mind something exciting in mobile and ,maybe server - i assume Kryo is the entry point in server for them.
  • Klug4Pres - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    "LMAO you are acting like V8 came out of nowhere overnight.
    You really need to revise your objectivity when it comes to Qualcomm, you keep praising them when there is nothing to praise."

    Completely agtree. This is just embarrassing fluff from Anandtech - Qualcomm was caught napping, and has now fallen behind not just Apple but Samsung.
  • sonicmerlin - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    What is the advantage of a 64 bit chip? Who cares?
  • hlovatt - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Why have Qualcomm fallen behind Samsung? They were both caught out by Apple equally, they both rushed through an off-the-shelf 64 bit, now Qualcomm are developing their own 64 bit, no word on Samsung's own 64 bit.
  • name99 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Samsung don't claim to be a CPU designer. They have an architecture license (I believe) but have never promised a design; so they can't be faulted for lack of timely delivery.

    Are you going to bitch about how long it takes MS to deliver an ARM chip? They ALSO have an architecture license you know (god knows what for...)
  • name99 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    We have been through this a dozen fscking times. The value of ARMv8 consists in the new ISA which is designed for higher performance implementations without the constraints imposed by backward compatibility.
  • Blassster - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Please be in the next Nexus :)
  • TheJian - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    I'd rather have 14nm NV chip fabbed at samsung in the next nexus this xmas. I'd rather have NV drivers if I intend to game at all, which is my only purpose past training vids in bed/on the go...LOL.

    If they want to push forward in gaming, google needs to use NV at least in tablet or gaming devices. If you talking phone, ok maybe. But if NV gets a samsung modem usage out of the gpu IP suit, I'll still take NV in a phone then too. Samsung has cat11 too. NV certainly doesn't want to help qcom by using their modem (they make gpus, where samsung doesn't yet), so this will probably end up being part of some deal they make over the lawsuit (along with cheap fabbing for a while or something, or maybe samsung using NV gpu IP for years etc).
  • tuxRoller - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    I think that everyone knows who is your preferred provider of ip...
  • Laststop311 - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Said it from the start the very first day i heard about the 810 not using custom cores that QC was jus using this to throw 64 bit out there and it will not b worth buying and wait for their custom 64 bit core.
  • tuxRoller - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    I wonder if this is going to continue the trend of Qualcomms custom solutions being, clock for clock, slower than ots arm solutions.
    Also, let's hope that the next adreno is a redesign.
  • bartoni - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link

    Qualcomm 820 is likely Samsung 14nm, ramping 4Q15.
    Next Samsung SoC with their own custom ARMv8 core is coming too.
  • Zhongrui - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link

    Glad to see "Qualcomm is moving away from big.LITTLE with the Snapdragon 820.". big.LITTLE is a very stupid idea, just like Newton opened a big hole for big cat and at the same time open a small hole for small cat. LITTLE is totally unnecessary. If one really wants to save energy, you can shut down some big cores and tune down their frequency. They should use the space of LITTLE cores to increase more caches (especially L0/L1) for the big cores.
  • ahmedwolf - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link

    Sd820 benchmark on geekbench 1732 single core performance @3Ghz compered to exynos 7420 a57 core 1486 @2.1Ghz and sd 620 a72 core 1512 @1.8Ghz it like modified a53 core can perform the same @3.5or 3.6Ghz

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