Marvell Intros Quad-Core SoC With Auto Roaming

[exfileme]

Marvell's new quad-core SoC supports all global broadband standards.

Marvell Intros Quad-Core SoC With Auto Roaming : Read more

 

[blazorthon]

Is there really any advantage in having a quad-core Cortex A7 SoC over something like a dual-core Cortex A9 or single-core Cortex A15? I've now seen several announcements for quad-core Cortex A7 SoCs and now I'm starting to wonder what's up with them.

 

[lpedraja2002]

I bet Tony Stark's version is way better.

 

[soulbleeds]

A7s should roughly be equivalent to A9s, but if they wanted the 4 to match 2 A9s they could run them at half the clock speed and save on power requirements. They are already more efficient then A9s or A15s at lower power workloads.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]soulbleeds[/nom]A7s should roughly be equivalent to A9s, but if they wanted the 4 to match 2 A9s they could run them at half the clock speed and save on power requirements. They are already more efficient then A9s or A15s at lower power workloads.[/citation]

Huh. I wonder why AMD and Intel (Also, AMD/Ati and Nvidia if we count GPUs) can make their designs faster and more efficient between generations even on the same process technology regardless of workload, yet ARM seems to make each faster design less efficient.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Huh. I wonder why AMD and Intel (Also, AMD/Ati and Nvidia if we count GPUs) can make their designs faster and more efficient between generations even on the same process technology regardless of workload, yet ARM seems to make each faster design less efficient.[/citation]
Perhaps because they're approaching chip design from different sides: The PC side already had high performance, now they're targeting efficiency; ARM had efficiency but they can't compete in terms of raw performance. They're chasing performance now, and i think the efficiency of their chips is hitting a wall, thus the need for big.LITTLE.

Actually i don't think ARM was ever efficient, their chips just weren't doing much. As in, ARM chips were/are efficient in terms of clock cycles per watt, while the PC side is efficient in terms of performance per watt.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]Perhaps because they're approaching chip design from different sides: The PC side already had high performance, now they're targeting efficiency; ARM had efficiency but they can't compete in terms of raw performance. They're chasing performance now, and i think the efficiency of their chips is hitting a wall, thus the need for big.LITTLE.Actually i don't think ARM was ever efficient, their chips just weren't doing much. As in, ARM chips were/are efficient in terms of clock cycles per watt, while the PC side is efficient in terms of performance per watt.[/citation]

My point was that even if we go into the stuff such as Intel's Atom and AMD's competition, both AMD and Intel continue to plow ahead of ARM in performance and efficiency even as they hit similar or even lower power consumption too. ARM seems like they have trouble increasing performance while dropping power consumption instead of getting one or the other.