Tag Archives: big.little

MediaTek launches world’s first true octa-core mobile chip, first devices due end of year

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Qualcomm's nightmare has finally come true. Earlier today, MediaTek officially introduced the world's first true octa-core mobile processor, MT6592, and the first devices to feature it are expected to arrive as soon as end of year. This 28nm chip packs eight low-power Cortex-A7 cores, and courtesy of the Heterogeneous Multi-Processing use model on top of ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, all eight cores can operate simultaneously -- at up to between 1.7GHz and 2GHz, depending on the bin.

MediaTek pointed that Chrome can already make use of all eight cores, and likewise with some map apps, video players plus multi-window function. According to the company's figures, the MT6592 manages to beat what appears to be the quad-core Snapdragon 800 in benchmarks, power consumption (as low as 40 percent) and temperature. You can see the full detail in this article's gallery. %Gallery-slideshow122456%

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Exynos 5 Octa demos 8 cores working at once and other feats of CPU strength (video)

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Exynos 5 Octa demos 8 cores working at once, GPU assist and energy efficiency video

Just in case yesterday's news that Samsung is ready to enable new features on its Exynos 5 Octa chips wasn't clear, ARM has published a few demo videos to show what it can do. All three are embedded after the break, and the first one highlights how the Exynos 5 Octa 5420 can activate some or all of its 8 cores to maximize responsiveness while launching and using Quickoffice. As you can see above in the screenshot, all eight cores are activated while launching the app, then unused ones switch off for more efficiency. Another video shows how it runs Angry Birds Rio on just the four Cortex-A7 "LITTLE" side of the CPU, rarely activating any of their more power-hungry A15 friends. The last demo video shows how its Mali-T628 GPU activates to process images faster and more efficiently than the CPU alone can.

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Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa CPUs will be able to use all eight cores at once in Q4

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Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa CPUs will be able to use all eight cores at once in Q4

We'll have to change our terminology for Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa mobile chips now. We've been calling them "not-quite" eight core CPUs since they can't actually use all eight at once, but the company's new Heterogeneous Multi-Processing solution is going to change that. Once it's available in Q4 it will let devices access both sides of the big.LITTLE ARM configuration simultaneously, which it claims will increase both performance and efficiency. While software threads with high priority use the "big" A15 core, lower priority tasks can run on the "small" A7 without needing to switch back and forth. Samsung isn't the only one running this setup however, as MediaTek announced an implementation for its MT8135 back in July. There are more details included in the press release (after the break) but we're not seeing any confirmation if this will ever be enabled on existing / announced devices like some flavors of the Galaxy S 4 or the Meizu MX3. Either way, the folks at Qualcomm might want to put together another video.

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Source: Samsung

MediaTek’s MT8135 SoC does dual-core big.LITTLE MP, packs PowerVR Series6 GPU

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MediaTek's MT8135 SoC does bigLITTLE with dual CortexA15 and dual CortexA7

It'll be a while before MediaTek's true octa-core SoC makes its glorious arrival, but for the time being, the company's unveiling something just as interesting -- and perhaps more practical. The new MT8135 announced today is a "quad-core" SoC aimed at "the middle- to high-end tier of the tablet OEM market." We quote "quad-core," because it actually consists of two clusters: dual Cortex-A15 cores and dual Cortex-A7 cores. But the good news is that unlike the original big.LITTLE configuration where only one cluster can operate at any given time (depending on how heavy the workload is), MediaTek's confirmed that it has implemented big.LITTLE MP ("MP" as in heterogeneous multi-processing) in the MT8135, meaning both the A15 and the A7 clusters can operate simultaneously.

Another highlight of this MT8135 is that it'll be one of the first SoCs -- alongside LG's H13 (which we've seen first-hand), Renesas' APE6 and Renesas' R-Car H2 -- to come with Imagination Technologies' almighty PowerVR Series6 GPU. Specifically, this is the PowerVR G6200 which, as part of the MT8135, can apparently deliver "up to four times more ALU (arithmetic logic unit) horsepower" than the Series5XT GPU on the cheaper, quad-A7 MT8125. And unsurprisingly, the MT8135 gets the same Miracast wireless video goodie given to the MT8125; though it's also worth noting that the latter only supports LPDDR2 RAM instead of the more powerful LPDDR3.

Sadly, there's no further information regarding availability, but you can kill some time by checking out more technical details in the video (with benchmarks) and press releases after the break.

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Source: Imagination Technologies

MediaTek confirms true octa-core processor in the works

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MediaTek confirms true octacore processor in the works

Earlier this month there was a whisp of octa-core colored smoke coming from MediaTek. Today it's more of a roaring camp fire, with the chip-maker going official -- fully announcing its new octa-core processor ambitions. The firm stops short of giving us the actual nitty-gritty specifications that many of you will be waiting for, instead taking the chance to remind us that Arm-based chips will be true eight-cores-at-once processing, and none of this big.LITTLE dallying. The word is these will float around the 2GHz mark on arrival, which last we heard was pegged for November. We're not suggesting the timing of this announcement was planned, but it looks, for now, like 8 is the current lucky number.

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Via: Phone Arena

Source: MediaTek

Linux kernel 3.10 arrives with ARM big.LITTLE support

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Linux kernel 310 arrives with more efficient multitasking, ARM bigLITTLE support

Thanks to Linus Torvalds' figurative stroke of the pen, the Linux kernel 3.10 is now final -- paving the way for its inclusion in a bevy of Linux distributions, and even offshoots such as Android and Chrome OS. The fresh kernel brings a good number of changes, such as timerless multitasking, a new caching implementation and support for the ARM big.LITTLE architecture. In simplistic terms, the new multitasking method should help improve performance and latency by firing the system timer only once per second -- rather than 1,000 times -- when tasks are running. Meanwhile, users with both traditional hard drives and SSDs will find performance benefits from bcache, which brings writeback caching and a filesystem agnostic approach to leveraging the SSD for caching operations. Also of significance, Linux kernel 3.10 enhances ARM support by including the big.LITTLE architecture, which combines multiple cores of different types -- commonly the Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15 -- that focus on either power savings or performance. The full list of improvements is rather lengthy, but if you feel like nerding out with the changelog, just grab a caffeinated beverage and get to it.

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Via: Tech2.in

Source: Linus Torvalds (Linux Kernel Mailing List)

ARM unveils Cortex-A12 CPU and Mali-T622 GPU in expectation of a mid-range boom

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ARM unveils CortexA12 CPU and MaliT622 GPU in expectation of a midrange boom

Few trend-spotters would disagree with the following prediction from ARM, but it's worth laying it out anyway: Of the 300 million mobile devices sold in 2010, the majority cost over $400. Within the next two years, however, these "crazy money" products (as a spokesperson described them) may represent just 25 percent of the total mobile market -- still huge in absolute terms, since almost two billion phones and tablets are forecast to be sold in 2015, but a distinct minority relative to entry-level and mid-range options.

In an effort to convert these expectations into an even taller heap of gold, ARM has just announced a new mid-range core, the Cortex-A12, which is designed to replace the aging Cortex-A9 while offering a 40 percent boost in performance. This gain will likely come with the added advantage of better battery life, since the Cortex-A12 will initially be fabricated at 28nm instead of 40nm, and will be offered to manufacturers alongside a new Mali GPU (the Mali-T622) and video engine (Mali-V500) that promise further power savings of their own. The Cortex-A12 will also support big.LITTLE configurations, allowing it to be installed alongside Cortex-A7 cores that will take over for low-effort tasks in order make further power savings. Big.LITTLE hasn't really blown us away so far, at least not on the Octa-core Galaxy S 4, but its wrinkles may well have been ironed out by mid 2014, which is when the Cortex-A12 is due to land. Check out the PR for more technical details on each component.

Richard Lai contributed to this report.

Gallery: ARM unveils Cortex-A12 CPU and Mali-T622 GPU in expectation of a mid-range boom

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Samsung puts Exynos 5 Octa into production: guess who’s the first customer

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Samsung puts Exynos 5 Octa in mass production, no prizes for guessing where it shows up

That Galaxy S 4 isn't going to compute tasks through sheer force of will, you know. Just a day after Samsung unveiled the smartphone as its inaugural Exynos 5 Octa device, the company has confirmed that the not-really-eight-core ARM processor should be in mass production during the second quarter of the year, or between April and June. There aren't many more details to share beyond what the company mentioned at CES, but that doesn't diminish what could be a best-of-all-worlds processor: the automatic switching between four Cortex-A15 and four Cortex-A7 cores should give it a performance edge over many of its peers while reducing power consumption by up to 70 percent. We also know that the Octa's graphics performance has largely caught up to peers versus earlier Exynos 4 designs, as Imagination Technologies has confirmed that its PowerVR SGX544MP is providing enough muscle to double 3D performance over the creaky Mali-400 in the Exynos 4 Quad. About the only mystery left is whether or not many companies beyond Samsung will get a chance at some Exynos 5 Octa silicon, although there's one or two prospects.

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Source: Samsung, Imagination Technologies

Samsung puts latest Exynos 5 Octa chip into a prototype tablet, we go hands-on (video)

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Samsung puts its latest Exynos Octa chip into a prototype tablet, we go handson video

The Exynos 5 Octa was definitely one of the biggest things to come out of CES. Given how well the regular dual-core Exynos V performs in the Nexus 10 and Chromebook, devices containing the souped-up Octa version could be really special. As you probably know already, we're looking at four Cortex-A15 cores for when you need raw performance for gaming or media creation, and then four energy-saving Cortex-A7 cores for less demanding tasks like surfing or watching video. We've just seen how fast and fluid this big.LITTLE core-switching technology is, courtesy of a Samsung reference tablet on show at ARM's booth at MWC -- check it out for yourself after the break.

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Renesas announces big.LITTLE mobile processor with next-gen PowerVR Series6 graphics

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Renesas announces bigLITTLE mobile processor with nextgen PowerVR Series6 graphics

If Samsung likes an open playing field, it'll not be best pleased by this latest announcement from Japanese chip maker Renesas. Uncannily named the "APE6", it directly copies the same big.LITTLE design of ARM cores found in Sammy's Exynos Octa. The are four Cortex-A15s paired with the same number of Cortex-A7s, allowing a phone or tablet to switch between the two quad-core configurations depending on its workload. Interestingly, whereas the Exynos Octa's GPU has been rumored to contain a last-gen PowerVR Series5 GPU similar to that found in the iPad and PS Vita, the APE6 will come with a more future proof Series6 "Rogue" design. We've already spent some time with this GPU and it'll be a good day when we can finally try it out in a finished device and stack it up against a rival bearing Samsung internals.

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Source: Imagination Technologies