News Arm takes aim at client PCs with new 3nm compute subsystems, offering pieces of its IP to its customers for desktops, laptops, and tablets

[Admin]

Arm greatly simplifies development of Arm-based processors for client PCs with CSS packing Cortex-X925 CPU and Immortalis-G925 GPU core.

Arm takes aim at client PCs with new 3nm compute subsystems, offering pieces of its IP to its customers for desktops, laptops, and tablets : Read more

 

[bit_user]

The big question is who will be using this in SoCs for mass market laptops or mini-PCs? Mediatek? Rockchip? I guess we'll have to wait until Computex.

I wonder if these new X cores can manage to narrow the gap between ARM's cores and Apple/Qualcomm. It seems the next couple years will be really interesting, in the CPU domain.

P.S. Somehow, I missed that they aligned their X-series naming with their A-series, but I'm actually glad they did. It saves me the trouble of having to keep a mental mapping. It does feel a little redundant to have the X9 prefix vs. just X, but it matches the A3, A5, and A7 prefixes they use further down the range.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

If this outperforms Qualcomm's Elite X chips in performance, ARM did them dirty with the launch window.

Guess this is their best way of collecting royalties for their IP...

 

[DS426]

If this outperforms Qualcomm's Elite X chips in performance, ARM did them dirty with the launch window.

Guess this is their best way of collecting royalties for their IP...

Right!? Sometimes, having a timely lateness to the party can be a real winner. Still, I have to give Qualcomm props for taking the lead and big risk on their investment; this at least appears as though ARM is doing it as reactionary rather than already having planned it prior to Q's announcements.

Whatever the case, it's REALLY heating up in the Windows client CPU space, and I'm likin' it! AMD and Intel will be forced to compete even harder, so you bet I'm getting my popcorn ready. If Intel stays on track throughout this year and AMD delivers more on Zen 5 than what we're seeing in leaks and limited tested right now (recall that Zen 4 was mainly the platform change [AM5 socket, DDR5, etc.] and not a huge architecture change from Zen 3 while Zen 5 was supposed to be a larger architecture i.e. perf uplift).

 

[DS426]

The big question is who will be using this in SoCs for mass market laptops or mini-PCs? Mediatek? Rockchip? I guess we'll have to wait until Computex.

...

Almost certainly yes on Mediatek and a fair possibility on Rockchip as well. I'd also be surprised if Broadcom didn't want a slice of the pie as well.

 

[Notton]

Okay, so how fast are the reference models they compared their new design against?
Is it M1 fast, or A14 bionic fast?

 

[bit_user]

Okay, so how fast are the reference models they compared their new design against?
Is it M1 fast, or A14 bionic fast?

The second bar, "2023 Best-in-class", would seem to refer to whatever was the latest Apple core launched last year:

Source: https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/7761/arm-launches-next-gen-flagship-cortex-x925/
​

P.S. No love for ARM's infamous unitless graphs that apparently don't even start at zero, this time.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

I am guessing Samsung will bake the Exynos variant in their own fabs for their Galaxy book series.

 

[dehjomz]

I wonder how these standard ARM 3nm chips will compare with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite? I also wonder if/when we will see these chips in a miniPC and/or a Raspberry Pi type of device. Like a Raspberry Pi Elite....

 

[bit_user]

I also wonder if/when we will see these chips in a miniPC and/or a Raspberry Pi type of device. Like a Raspberry Pi Elite....

Well, if it did, it would mark a major shift in Raspberry Pi's product strategy. But, maybe the cash infusion from their upcoming IPO would afford them the opportunity to try it.

Thus far, Raspberry Pi has always used older ARM cores on an older manufacturing node, in the interest of keeping costs low. The Cortex-A76 cores in the Pi 5 first appeared in phones about 4 years earlier. By comparison, their main competitor, the Rockchip 3588 SoC, launched over a year earlier, on a better node, and with an additional 4x Cortex-A55 cluster, a NPU, and a faster Mali GPU. I have yet to hear of a successor, but maybe someone else has?

I saw some news that MediaTek launched a Cortex-A78 -based IoT chip last year, but I have yet to hear of any Pi-class devices using it. Perhaps it's too expensive.

MediaTek Genio 1200 system-on-module powers Cortex-A78/A55 AIoT & robotics development kit - CNX Software

ADLINK MediaTek Genio 1200 Cortex-A78/A55 system-on-module powers the I-Pi SMARC 1200 development kit for robotics and AIoT applications.

www.cnx-software.com

 

[thestryker]

While I'd like to see more CPU competition as that's what pushes innovation I don't really see these being a thing real soon. Qualcomm has a good number of design wins, especially the Surface line, which is great for the foothold and now it will just take more options hitting the market. Hopefully this will drive more of a middle ground in Arm CPUs where we get better overall connectivity than a phone SoC, but without the higher cost of something enterprise.

 

[Amdlova]

Can we have 64 pcie lanes? Another 32 from chipset?

 

[bit_user]

Can we have 64 pcie lanes? Another 32 from chipset?

In a workstation or server CPU, sure. You can by workstations with Ampere Computing-made ARM-based CPUs today, if you want.