How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
medium.com
How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#2For anyone else wondering what "SoC" means, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#3I'm really, really longing for one of these "modular" phones where I can exchange and upgrade components at will...
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#4One 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.
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#5I'm really, really longing for one of these "modular" phones where I can exchange and upgrade components at will...
Fairphone 2 is shipping now, iirc.
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#6One 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.
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#7One 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.
I suspect that could be a driver/software issue.
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#8This 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?
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#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 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.
Re: How the SoC Is Displacing the CPU
#10One 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.
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.