How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU • Hacker News Board

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#21

Post by ownagefool » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #10

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and the integrated GPUs, at least the entry level ones, do suck. My Acer netbook is barely able to play 360p videos, 720p if you're lucky and 1080p - no hope. My cheap smartphone can play 1080p without a single dropped frame.

On neither of those platforms is the GPU doing the video decode. On your phone there's a dedicated DSP. On your netbook the CPU is pulling up the slack. There's a lot of serial work in decoding videos (like huffman decoding) that doesn't translate to standard GPUs without a little extra silicon.

An entry level AMD apu will give you a dedicated video decoding unit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobcat_%28microarchitecture%29

I've never had an APU but on paper they sound really nice. Intel probably has similar but you may have to be more careful picking your CPU because of market feature segregation.

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#22

Post by greggyb » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 7:49 PM UTC

ownagefool wrote: post #21

monocasa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On neither of those platforms is the GPU doing the video decode. On your phone there's a dedicated DSP. On your netbook the CPU is pulling up the slack. There's a lot of serial work in decoding videos (like huffman decoding) that doesn't translate to standard GPUs without a little extra silicon.

An entry level AMD apu will give you a dedicated video decoding unit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobcat_%28microarchitecture%29 I've never had an APU but on paper they sound really nice. Intel probably has similar but you may have to be more careful picking your CPU because of market feature segregation.

AMD tends to dominate the GPU half of the APU battle. Intel has made great strides, and I'm interested in their newest pieces, but from what I've seen so far, AMD still wins this niche.

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#23

Post by luckydude » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 8:47 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #17

rwmj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not missing anything -- the article is dumb. Of course we're eventually going to integrate everything, for the same reason that no one uses separate interrupt controllers or separate Northbridges. We have too many transistors we don't know what to do with. Edit: I think the interesting question is what won't be integrated? RAM and Flash because they use different processes. GPU? Intel and ARM integrate it, but…

Makes me wonder if we will see a return of backplanes.

Unless things have really changed, there is a significant performance hit for going off chip. Rather than backplanes, I'd predict that they figure out how to put ram right on the chip. I'm pretty sure embedded CPUs already do that.

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#24

Post by pmorici » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 8:54 PM UTC

luckydude wrote: post #23

digi_owl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder if we will see a return of backplanes.

Unless things have really changed, there is a significant performance hit for going off chip. Rather than backplanes, I'd predict that they figure out how to put ram right on the chip. I'm pretty sure embedded CPUs already do that.

PoP "Package on Package" which puts the memory directly on top of the CPU has been around for a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_on_package

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#25

Post by thoughtsimple » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

revelation wrote: post #11

This is a bit silly. A9X and other mobile SoC are in absolutely no way comparable in performance, on any metric, with desktop CPUs. You do not get 150W performance from a 10W chip, particularly not when you are lagging in process node.

I don't think there is much lagging in the node size with the A9 family in comparison to Intel's mobile chips. A9 is a 14-16 nm FinFET design. Not much different than Intel's 14 nm FinFET for core-M. The A9X is clocked at 2.26 GHz compared with a Skylake core-m7 clocked at 1.2-3.1 GHz.

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#26

Post by joezydeco » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #24

luckydude wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless things have really changed, there is a significant performance hit for going off chip. Rather than backplanes, I'd predict that they figure out how to put ram right on the chip. I'm pretty sure embedded CPUs already do that.

PoP "Package on Package" which puts the memory directly on top of the CPU has been around for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_on_package

PoP is nice, but what's really hot is SRAM right on the die. I've been playing with a Renesas part (RZ/A1H) that has 10MiB snuggled up to the A9 core. Doesn't solve everything, but when your app heap and stack are in there it's a great jump in performance for the price. It can also mmap external QSPI flash, you can create a system with no external SDRAM at all if you wanted.

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#27

Post by bch » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 9:08 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #20

bch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site says "Designed for use and service in Europe only.", but regardless of what it was designed for does it work with any North American carriers?

http://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone2.html#technical-specific... That lists the various bands for the mobile radios.

I saw that, but it's strange that they'd make it w/ a capable quad-band radio and -still- declare it's only designed for Europe. I'm not a cellular expert -- are there other considerations outside the frequencies that it supports ? If not, it seems like a good global phone, no ?

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#28

Post by mcbain » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 9:11 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #15

sz4kerto wrote: post #9

"Apple A9X SoC offers 64 bit desktop-class computing enabling a handheld tablet to go toe-to-toe with a state-of-the-art laptop CPU from Intel" Yes and no. Most of the innovation in top-end x86 CPUs goes towards multicore and multi-socket scalability. My desktop is almost 10x faster than an A9X -- and nobody manufactures an ARM SoC that has 100 W thermal envelope but delivers the same speed as a Xeon v3. Intel manufa…

> Intel manufactures different state-of-the-art laptop CPUs. Apple SoCs can compete with the ultra-low voltage Intels, but not with high-end i7 HQ/MQ series. I think his point was that a $15 Apple chip crushes a $150 Intel Core M. Core M chips have extremely little bang/buck value, as do the new "Celerons" and "Pentiums" that are dressed up $110+ Atom chips.

That $15 vs $150 comparison is stupid - where I can buy a A9 for $15?

The A9 is a great jump forward by Apple - and I'm impressed by my iPhone 6s - but I'm yet to see the "crushing" benchmark, except for those that are skewed by SHA results.

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#29

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #14

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #8

This seems like a silly title. I interpret it as 'How the CPU, when packaged with a bunch of other stuff, is displacing the CPU.' Or am I missing something?

You're not missing anything -- the article is dumb. Of course we're eventually going to integrate everything, for the same reason that no one uses separate interrupt controllers or separate Northbridges. We have too many transistors we don't know what to do with. Edit: I think the interesting question is what won't be integrated? RAM and Flash because they use different processes. GPU? Intel and ARM integrate it, but…

Also I would like to know how much die space is wasted on IBM PC backwards compatibility crap in Intel systems (think A20, cascading interrupt controllers, 8086 support, legacy boot, etc)

Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU

#30

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Nov 21, 2015, 9:17 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

digi_owl wrote: post #4

One should also note that the x86 platform has taken on some SoC like structures over the years, with AMD as a driving force. For example they lumped the memory controller onto the CPU die with the Athlon 64, and then a GPU on their A series.

Yeah, and the integrated GPUs, at least the entry level ones, do suck. My Acer netbook is barely able to play 360p videos, 720p if you're lucky and 1080p - no hope. My cheap smartphone can play 1080p without a single dropped frame.

There's something seriously wrong with your install to not be able to play 360p videos. Really

I would check video drivers, DMA enabled on drives, excess ram or cpu usage by another process(es)

My 7 year old notebook (the one I retired already) had absolutely no problem with videos of this size.