ARM 20 nm Processors Expected to Arrive Next Year

[Guest]

The chip manufacturing race is heating up and Intel could be facing more pressure down the road.

ARM 20 nm Processors Expected to Arrive Next Year : Read more

 

[psikaikai]

Yay competition with the Intel monopoly

 

[TheBigTroll]

hopefully, arm will become the new amd

 

[Guest]

If Atom's gains going to 22nm are as trivial as the gains from Sandy to Ivy, then 22nm Atoms still won't be competitive with Tegra 3, let alone Tegra 6 or whatever will be out then.

Process technology is a crutch, if 22nm is this pointless, 14nm is going to be bad times for Intel.

 

[nocteratus]

Going to 22nm or smaller will lower power consumption and heat!

A tablet with 1 or 2 more hours of battery life will be better. And smartphones won't get hot while talking.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]process_or[/nom]If Atom's gains going to 22nm are as trivial as the gains from Sandy to Ivy, then 22nm Atoms still won't be competitive with Tegra 3, let alone Tegra 6 or whatever will be out then.Process technology is a crutch, if 22nm is this pointless, 14nm is going to be bad times for Intel.[/citation]

Intel's 22nm process worked excellently for Ivy Bridge. It lowered power consumption substantially and that was the point of it. Intel skimped on overclocking by replacing the fluxless solder that is usually between the IHS and the CPU die with poor quality paste, but that has nothing to do with the 22nm process itself. Ivy also isn't much faster than Sandy, but Ivy was just a die shrink. Die shrinks don't increase performance much at all. They never do. Shrinking the die gives room for a better architecture. The 22nm tock for Intel will be Haswell. Haswell is supposedly going to have substantial performance improvements like the previous tocks have had and it will do it all on the 22nm node.

22nm isn't pointless. It did exactly what it was supposed to do (lowered power consumption) and it did it well. 14nm will probably do it again too.

 

[kronos_cornelius]

Great to see competition back in the CPU market. My bet is on ARM given that it has a better business model. Intel, like Microsoft is weighted down by its own legacy and one could argue the arrogance of past success. But we consumers benefit if there is a long protracted battle between the two architectures and business models.

 

[tomfreak]

So when is the day I can get a half day of smartphone battery life by playing games?
when is the day Smartphone can kill media player industry? cheap

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]So when is the day I can get a half day of smartphone battery life by playing games?when is the day Smartphone can kill media player industry? cheap[/citation]

Get an extended battery for your smart phone phone if there is one available. I recently got an extended battery for my older HTC Evo 4G and battery life increased incredibly.

 

[bison88]

[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]So when is the day I can get a half day of smartphone battery life by playing games?when is the day Smartphone can kill media player industry? cheap[/citation]

First Answer: When there is a revolutionary re-design of the battery. Things can only get so small and consume so little wattage before eventually things will need to re-shift focus back to the power source itself.

Second Answer: Not quite sure what you're referencing specifically, but I'd say never. Smart Phones like many other computing devices are just accessories. There is no substitute, and I'd liken never will be a substitute, to the desktops performance, accessibility, and expandability. If this "cloud" crap keeps going the way it is, I see the desktop being the equivalent of the households server/supercomputer that takes care of all the heavy lifting for other devices used on the local network. Can't see any device out there now or in the near future that will make the desktop irrelevant, therefore why not use it in a cloud like environment to offload the more powerful energy draining tasks.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]bison88[/nom]First Answer: When there is a revolutionary re-design of the battery. Things can only get so small and consume so little wattage before eventually things will need to re-shift focus back to the power source itself.Second Answer: Not quite sure what you're referencing specifically, but I'd say never. Smart Phones like many other computing devices are just accessories. There is no substitute, and I'd liken never will be a substitute, to the desktops performance, accessibility, and expandability. If this "cloud" crap keeps going the way it is, I see the desktop being the equivalent of the households server/supercomputer that takes care of all the heavy lifting for other devices used on the local network. Can't see any device out there now or in the near future that will make the desktop irrelevant, therefore why not use it in a cloud like environment to offload the more powerful energy draining tasks.[/citation]

I think that Tomfreak meant when can phones kill off MP3 players, iPods, etc.

Also, expand-ability of a desktop might be unbeatable, but several laptops can most certainly compete in performance. These laptops don't when in price for the performance, but they are portable without lacking the performance of a desktop. There are several X58 and X79 laptops that support the workstation i7s (even up to the 6 core EEs) and up to 16GB or 32GB of RAM. A Laptop with two Radeon 7970Ms could have gaming performance ahead of the Radeon 7970.

 

[shafe88]

[citation][nom]TheBigTroll[/nom]hopefully, arm will become the new amd[/citation]
How will ARM become the new AMD, when arm can't even compete in the x86 market. The only company that has a chance to become the new AMD is VIA which is highly unlikely. As long as AMD has their APU and value, I don't think any one has a chance of becoming the new AMD.

 

[Guest]

It could come out as early as late 2013. Jeez that statement has a lot of ifs ands and buts. It could also come out sometime in 2014 which seems far more likely and with a lot less ifs ands and buts. I think they are just trying to generate excitement and interest by making bold boasting claims. Is there a 20nm manufacturing process in place? Is TSMC and Global Foundries fabbing up for 20nm? I would put my money on Intel being at 14nm before those guys get to 20nm. Also, what are the yields going to be like? I hear GlobalFoundries/IBM is going gate last for the next process. This is no easy transition and wouldn't doubt if they were behind doing this. TSMC already has gate last, but no 3D/finfet, and their yields are scary bad. That problem isn't going to be solved at 20nm and in fact may worsen. Anyway, lets just say I am skeptical at best. 2014 will be interesting though if ARM does get 20nm out and competing against Intel at 14nm. We will see some serious low power performance CPUs.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]process_or[/nom]If Atom's gains going to 22nm are as trivial as the gains from Sandy to Ivy, then 22nm Atoms still won't be competitive with Tegra 3, let alone Tegra 6 or whatever will be out then.Process technology is a crutch, if 22nm is this pointless, 14nm is going to be bad times for Intel.[/citation]
FYI, the present 32nm Atom is a die shrink of the Core 2 arch. So basically jumping to 22nm Haswell/Ivy next year would be like going from Core 2 to Ivy/Haswell. Big gains there, not pointless.

 

[tomfreak]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]I think that Tomfreak meant when can phones kill off MP3 players, iPods, etc.Also, expand-ability of a desktop might be unbeatable, but several laptops can most certainly compete in performance. These laptops don't when in price for the performance, but they are portable without lacking the performance of a desktop. There are several X58 and X79 laptops that support the workstation i7s (even up to the 6 core EEs) and up to 16GB or 32GB of RAM. A Laptop with two Radeon 7970Ms could have gaming performance ahead of the Radeon 7970.[/citation]thanks to clarifying.

1. The thing is now we got these media players like WDTV which is basically allow the user to play back 1080p movies.
2.We have reach 32-64GB flash memory, so having 256-512GB flash memory isnt far off. We WILL likely to be staying on 1080p for quite a while. With 512GB storage I can store almost 50 1080p .mkv movie titles.
3. If I recall we already have smart phone capable to playback 1080p.
4. Now, the only problem is these hardware are expensive, battery life arent going to keep up for at least half a day on movie playback/gaming.
5. If the smartphone company able to bring down cost to $150 @ those kind of spec, and making the battery life last half a day. Smartphone can easily kill of the media player market.

Think about this, all I need is to store 50 movie titles and bring it to hotel/my friend's home and plug it into HDTV for full playback/gaming etc and play at least half a day without additional batteries + recharging.

 

[rantoc]

[citation][nom]nocteratus[/nom]Going to 22nm or smaller will lower power consumption and heat!A tablet with 1 or 2 more hours of battery life will be better. And smartphones won't get hot while talking.[/citation]

You wont get that much, the shardholders and board however will when they can save cost on the batteries!

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]FYI, the present 32nm Atom is a die shrink of the Core 2 arch. So basically jumping to 22nm Haswell/Ivy next year would be like going from Core 2 to Ivy/Haswell. Big gains there, not pointless.[/citation]
I don't think so. If that was the case, AMD's "90% performance of K8" Bobcat APUs wouldn't be beating it clock-for-clock. As far as I remember, Atom is still in-order as well.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]I don't think so. If that was the case, AMD's "90% performance of K8" Bobcat APUs wouldn't be beating it clock-for-clock. As far as I remember, Atom is still in-order as well.[/citation]

It's a somewhat cut down version, likely at least partially due to much smaller amounts of cache and having only one core in most current designs, among a few other reasons... However, it is a variant of the Core 2 arch.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]thanks to clarifying. 1. The thing is now we got these media players like WDTV which is basically allow the user to play back 1080p movies. 2.We have reach 32-64GB flash memory, so having 256-512GB flash memory isnt far off. We WILL likely to be staying on 1080p for quite a while. With 512GB storage I can store almost 50 1080p .mkv movie titles. 3. If I recall we already have smart phone capable to playback 1080p. 4. Now, the only problem is these hardware are expensive, battery life arent going to keep up for at least half a day on movie playback/gaming.5. If the smartphone company able to bring down cost to $150 @ those kind of spec, and making the battery life last half a day. Smartphone can easily kill of the media player market.Think about this, all I need is to store 50 movie titles and bring it to hotel/my friend's home and plug it into HDTV for full playback/gaming etc and play at least half a day without additional batteries + recharging.[/citation]

We're quite a ways off from that happening. That would mean that a very multi-purpose device (the smart phone) has to not only increase in storage size almost exponentially, but also do it while becoming several times cheaper for that much storage so that it can beat a deice that is designed for that purpose.

Using an extended battery, battery life, even while watching movies, could theoretically last for much more than half a day.

 

[silverblue]

Very cut down. Going OoO should, at the very least, improve performance noticably.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]Very cut down. Going OoO should, at the very least, improve performance noticably.[/citation]

Pentium Dual-Core CPUs might be more comparable in performance to the Medfields at the same frequency given clock frequency with only one active core and the same memory bandwidth. These are cut-down versions of the Core 2 Duo CPUs, although probably not as cut down as Medfield considering that Medfield is only one or two process nodes away despite using more than an order of magnitude less power. Even only having a somewhat lower frequency and one core isn't enough to make that change.

 

[ojas]

Hmmm...from AnandTech, on Medfield:

The bigger and more valid comparison is to TSMC's 28nm process, which is what companies like Qualcomm will be using for their next-generation SoCs. It's unclear (and very difficult) to compare different architectures on different processes, but it's likely that Intel's 32nm LP process is more comparable to TSMC's 28nm LP process than it would be to any 4x-nm node.

See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones/3

 

[zhihao50]

[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]thanks to clarifying. 1. The thing is now we got these media players like WDTV which is basically allow the user to play back 1080p movies. 2.We have reach 32-64GB flash memory, so having 256-512GB flash memory isnt far off. We WILL likely to be staying on 1080p for quite a while. With 512GB storage I can store almost 50 1080p .mkv movie titles. 3. If I recall we already have smart phone capable to playback 1080p. 4. Now, the only problem is these hardware are expensive, battery life arent going to keep up for at least half a day on movie playback/gaming.5. If the smartphone company able to bring down cost to $150 @ those kind of spec, and making the battery life last half a day. Smartphone can easily kill of the media player market.Think about this, all I need is to store 50 movie titles and bring it to hotel/my friend's home and plug it into HDTV for full playback/gaming etc and play at least half a day without additional batteries + recharging.[/citation]


There will always be someone too poor to afford to own one of the smartphones and making do with a cheaper multimedia device. Unless you feel generous enough to get government to fix all the social inequality outthere.

 

[jwcalla]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]We're quite a ways off from that happening. That would mean that a very multi-purpose device (the smart phone) has to not only increase in storage size almost exponentially, but also do it while becoming several times cheaper for that much storage so that it can beat a deice that is designed for that purpose.Using an extended battery, battery life, even while watching movies, could theoretically last for much more than half a day.[/citation]

I don't know that it's that far off. Consider that the Galaxy S III can store up to 128 GB. Obviously if you're home you can just access the LAN through WiFi. For on-the-go you can always swap out SD cards for movies, if you really must have your whole collection in your wallet.

If one needs a phone anyway, it might be better to just spend the little extra and get rid of the media player. Though it can be done now, we're probably 1-2 years away from it being commonly accepted.

With MHL you can play movies while simultaneously charging the device.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]jwcalla[/nom]I don't know that it's that far off. Consider that the Galaxy S III can store up to 128 GB. Obviously if you're home you can just access the LAN through WiFi. For on-the-go you can always swap out SD cards for movies, if you really must have your whole collection in your wallet.If one needs a phone anyway, it might be better to just spend the little extra and get rid of the media player. Though it can be done now, we're probably 1-2 years away from it being commonly accepted.With MHL you can play movies while simultaneously charging the device.[/citation]

A new Gameboy can play video and such too and has WiFi and browsers and Flash support (in some cases), but it would be much cheaper than the new Galaxy S III. The main problem with this isn't that phones won't have the capacity and such to do it within the next two or three years; the problem is that no dirt cheap phone will. The S3 128GB probably costs upwards of six to eight hundred dollars (I'd have to check to be sure) and that is simply not affordable for this purpose.

Sure, you could also arguer that the S3 lets you do more than the Gameboy or some other device would and as a phone is also more of a necessity, but I could just get a dirt cheap Android and a second device with greater storage capacity (tiny hard drives that fit in some devices can have more than 100GB to over 300GB in some cases and at decent prices) for less money, even if it's less convenient. Or, I could just get a small netbook with a 250GB/320GB/500GB hard drive for $400 or something else like that and it can do the trick fairly well. Swapping out MicroSD cards would be cumbersome and still expensive.

What's the cheapest price that a 32GB MicroSD card goes for, maybe $20 if you find a good deal? To hold up to even 256GB would take eight of them and that would cost over $160. So, ad on another $160 to any phone and you have your price. It's still more expensive than reasonable right now and it doesn't look like prices will drop to reasonable areas too soon.