Do remember that 10nm SoCs are some 5 months ahead so if Mate 9 launches next month, still 4 months to go. TSMC said last week (check the Q3 call transcript on their site) "We have transferred our 10-nanometer from R&D to production in third quarter this year. Our first 10-nanometer customer product has been produced with reasonable yield. Defect density and device performance continue to improve in much the same way as we did at the ramp-up stage of every leading edge technology node So far we have received five production tapeouts for high-end mobile products. We are preparing capacity for 10-nanometer production ramp up by the end of this year and expect shipment in first quarter next year." You make it sound like we don't know much about TSMC's timing, had to fix that.
Y-day Honor x6 launched with Kirin 655. It's a minor upgrade over 650 but could get a mention.
Was expecting this one at 2.6GHz, maybe they bump the clocks next year when other launch 10nm.
Are you guys covering ARM TechCon next week? I'm curious about this keynote: Tuesday, October 25 | 10:15am - 10:35am Moore's Law: Where are we and which way are we going? Speakers: Greg Yeric (ARM)
Hopefully he talks monolithic3D, neuromorphic and other cool things.
The only missing bit from kirin950 was the GPU. Now that kirin 960 fixed it, adding cat12 and UFS2.1, I don't see how Samsung and Qualcomm can catch up without using 10nm ;)
"Scrolling is mostly GPU nowadays" Not "mostly". At least not on Android. iOS is getting more relatively CPU bound lately (compared to what it was before).
This sounds kinda trivial and obvious, but Apple introduced it only fairly recently. (Even so, every year they kept tweaking the iOS scrolling API features and details.)
My point is, this may be an area where the Android APIs are still lagging those of iOS somewhat. I don't have any idea how Android handles this sort of thing, but I would certainly imagine there are some cases where the stuttering in scrolling is in fact not GPU but is the result of not enough time to hit the file system for example.
I am fairly certain Chrome and Android have been doing this for years. The thing is -- iOS is MUCH more efficient at RAM utilization and so the effect works better. If you have an android phone with 4+GB of RAM there is very little stuttering. I am so stoked for the 6/8GB flagships coming out soon!
Now I would only need to trust Huawei's software divisions to actually be able to consider their products.
SW Updates, security updates and how do I know that there are no Chinese backdoors built into the phone? Chinese manufacturers are known for adding suspicious certificates to their products etc.
My Honor 8 has received security updates currently on September 2016. Received a few software updates, and trust it more than most apps on the store. It would be bad business to include backdoors.
"...(Qualcomm in integrated and discrete modems, Intel with discrete, Mediatek with VIA-based integrated)..."
Mediatek with VIA-based modem. Intel bought VIA Telecom's CDMA assets last year. I didn't even know VIA Telecom was so far ahead with CDMA technology. Sad to see VIA totally falling apart.
We're not sure about the current arrangements with Mediatek and Intel, however MTK has produced chipsets with CDMA support which are in the market. Depending on the licensing details, that may have stopped on the sale to Intel or something else.
Well they fixed the issues with the chipset that were holding me back from buying a P9, now if they can just calibrate the screen properly and don't increase the size for the P10, I'm pretty sure it will be my next phone.
"The mention of higher maximum power consumption comes with rather mixed feelings as the reasonably low GPU power was one of the aspects of the Kirin 950 that we especially praised when compared to other SoC designs"
Anyone who complained about too low GPU performance in Kirin 950 should be pleased with thermal throttling now. There's no free lunch in chip design, and high peak performance always costs power. When the SoC reduces its GPU speed to match the phones sustained cooling abilities it will work more efficiently with the wider GPU, i.e. the throttling shows you this actually works.
Kirin made the jump from eMMC 5.0 to UFS 2.1, which is certainly a big deal for storage benchmarks. Apart from that: we know from SSDs that the controller matters a lot and each SoC has a different one.
HiSilicon is very quick in adopting new high end cores. I wonder why they don't switch to A35 for the small cluster, especially since they gain efficiency with A73, i.e. can afford to use them in a broader frequency range.
This slide is...Interesting? They show some Android phones coming very close to the read, and outright beating the write speeds in sequential, of the iPhone 7, while this sites tests show nothing remotely close to the iPhone 6s or 7.
It means the Kirin 960 doesn't just want to be an SoC that only follows others ("me too" have blah blah technologies other SoC already have). Instead, it want to deliver something better or not available by others.
Why is the 960 getting trounced by the Apple A10 in single core? Shouldn't it be sort of close for two CPUs released at roughly the same time by large companies using the same fab process? What is Apple doing differently?
Anyone who complained about too low GPU performance in Kirin 950 should be pleased with thermal throttling now. There's no free lunch in chip design, and high peak performance always costs power. When the SoC reduces its GPU speed to match the phones sustained cooling abilities it will work more efficiently with the wider GPU, i.e. the throttling shows you this actually works.
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jjj - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Do remember that 10nm SoCs are some 5 months ahead so if Mate 9 launches next month, still 4 months to go.TSMC said last week (check the Q3 call transcript on their site) "We have transferred our 10-nanometer from R&D to production in third quarter this year. Our first 10-nanometer customer product has been produced with reasonable yield. Defect density and device performance continue to improve in much the same way as we did at the ramp-up stage of every leading edge technology node
So far we have received five production tapeouts for high-end mobile products. We are preparing capacity for 10-nanometer production ramp up by the end of this year and expect shipment in first quarter next year."
You make it sound like we don't know much about TSMC's timing, had to fix that.
Y-day Honor x6 launched with Kirin 655. It's a minor upgrade over 650 but could get a mention.
Was expecting this one at 2.6GHz, maybe they bump the clocks next year when other launch 10nm.
psyside1 - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Andrei, can you please tell us what is the status on the 820 vs 8890 article? we are waiting for it so long, thanks!Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
It's been unfortunately dropped.jjj - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Are you guys covering ARM TechCon next week?I'm curious about this keynote:
Tuesday, October 25 | 10:15am - 10:35am
Moore's Law: Where are we and which way are we going?
Speakers:
Greg Yeric (ARM)
Hopefully he talks monolithic3D, neuromorphic and other cool things.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Ryan will be covering TechCon.saratoga4 - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Any chance you could share any measurements youve alluded to on the forums? Or is the data proprietary/confidential?barn25 - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Knew it, really sad to see the way the site is going. Anand leaving was a start.Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
:( that sucksGordonium - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
The only missing bit from kirin950 was the GPU.Now that kirin 960 fixed it, adding cat12 and UFS2.1, I don't see how Samsung and Qualcomm can catch up without using 10nm ;)
Eden-K121D - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
CPU performance is disappointing compared to A10 Fusion. Also scrolling on android while browsing drops a few frames which I hateGordonium - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Scrolling is mostly GPU nowadaysI have both A10 fusion and sd650, both perfectly smooth scrolling webs.
lilmoe - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
"Scrolling is mostly GPU nowadays"Not "mostly". At least not on Android. iOS is getting more relatively CPU bound lately (compared to what it was before).
name99 - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
There are also OS aspects to scrolling. I know that iOS (and OSX) "preload data" so that the non-GPU work (maybe network access, maybe file system access, maybe some computation) can be performed before it's absolutely necessary. There are some details about how these and other ideas work here:https://littlebitesofcocoa.com/241-uicollectionvie... and
https://littlebitesofcocoa.com/242-pre-loading-ima...
This sounds kinda trivial and obvious, but Apple introduced it only fairly recently. (Even so, every year they kept tweaking the iOS scrolling API features and details.)
My point is, this may be an area where the Android APIs are still lagging those of iOS somewhat.
I don't have any idea how Android handles this sort of thing, but I would certainly imagine there are some cases where the stuttering in scrolling is in fact not GPU but is the result of not enough time to hit the file system for example.
extide - Sunday, November 13, 2016 - link
I am fairly certain Chrome and Android have been doing this for years. The thing is -- iOS is MUCH more efficient at RAM utilization and so the effect works better. If you have an android phone with 4+GB of RAM there is very little stuttering. I am so stoked for the 6/8GB flagships coming out soon!WorldWithoutMadness - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
That's OS problem.Try google pixel?
lilmoe - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
How so? It's beating everyone else according to the all knowing Geekbench.shabby - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
On the s7 with the samsung browser its piss smooth, doesn't drop a frame, chrome/firefox/opera on the other hand drop frames.zepi - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Now I would only need to trust Huawei's software divisions to actually be able to consider their products.SW Updates, security updates and how do I know that there are no Chinese backdoors built into the phone? Chinese manufacturers are known for adding suspicious certificates to their products etc.
Ariknowsbest - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
My Honor 8 has received security updates currently on September 2016. Received a few software updates, and trust it more than most apps on the store. It would be bad business to include backdoors.MrSpadge - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Not sure Chinese backdoors are any more dangerous than US backdoors.Michael Bay - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
I`m sure chinese backdor will at least try to hide its presence in the system.milli - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
"...(Qualcomm in integrated and discrete modems, Intel with discrete, Mediatek with VIA-based integrated)..."Mediatek with VIA-based modem. Intel bought VIA Telecom's CDMA assets last year. I didn't even know VIA Telecom was so far ahead with CDMA technology. Sad to see VIA totally falling apart.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
We're not sure about the current arrangements with Mediatek and Intel, however MTK has produced chipsets with CDMA support which are in the market. Depending on the licensing details, that may have stopped on the sale to Intel or something else.lefty2 - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Intel doesn't have CDMA. One reason that the new iPhone had to use Qualcomm modems for USA versionsmilli - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
They bought CDMA technology in 2015 but they haven't implemented it yet in their products.http://bit.ly/2e6x3kI
RdVi - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Well they fixed the issues with the chipset that were holding me back from buying a P9, now if they can just calibrate the screen properly and don't increase the size for the P10, I'm pretty sure it will be my next phone.MrSpadge - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
"The mention of higher maximum power consumption comes with rather mixed feelings as the reasonably low GPU power was one of the aspects of the Kirin 950 that we especially praised when compared to other SoC designs"Anyone who complained about too low GPU performance in Kirin 950 should be pleased with thermal throttling now. There's no free lunch in chip design, and high peak performance always costs power. When the SoC reduces its GPU speed to match the phones sustained cooling abilities it will work more efficiently with the wider GPU, i.e. the throttling shows you this actually works.
lolipopman - Friday, December 16, 2016 - link
You obviously haven't been keeping up. The A73+G71 combo is absolute best for countering throttling, even giving Apple a run for their money.ikjadoon - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
How did they get AndroBench running on Apple's A10?!And...why does the SoC choice change the random/read performance by 4x fold? Am I reading this graph incorrectly?
MrSpadge - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Kirin made the jump from eMMC 5.0 to UFS 2.1, which is certainly a big deal for storage benchmarks. Apart from that: we know from SSDs that the controller matters a lot and each SoC has a different one.MrSpadge - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
HiSilicon is very quick in adopting new high end cores. I wonder why they don't switch to A35 for the small cluster, especially since they gain efficiency with A73, i.e. can afford to use them in a broader frequency range.0iron - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Maybe to reach certain target score in Multi Core benchmark. With A35, it could score lower.tipoo - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
I had to run "Refuse me too" over in my mind a few times, lol. "Refuse 'me too'" was that slides meaning.The Hardcard - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
I missed your post when I posted. I may have a mental block. I don't get the "Refuse"tipoo - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
No h.265 eh. Bummer.lilmoe - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
It does, both encode and decode, 4k30pname99 - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
h.265 is often called (like on these slides) HEVC.The same happened with h.264 which was frequently called AVC.
tipoo - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
This slide is...Interesting? They show some Android phones coming very close to the read, and outright beating the write speeds in sequential, of the iPhone 7, while this sites tests show nothing remotely close to the iPhone 6s or 7.http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/5085/Kirin%2...
Sup with that? Is it just because they tested a 32GB?
The Hardcard - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Can someone explain, "Refuse ME TOO" in the second pic?ksthey - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
It means the Kirin 960 doesn't just want to be an SoC that only follows others ("me too" have blah blah technologies other SoC already have).Instead, it want to deliver something better or not available by others.
darkich - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Finally.. a complete package. The Mate 9 would be on my purchase list if it had a Note-like penJoeDuarte - Thursday, November 3, 2016 - link
Why is the 960 getting trounced by the Apple A10 in single core? Shouldn't it be sort of close for two CPUs released at roughly the same time by large companies using the same fab process? What is Apple doing differently?hapeid - Monday, March 27, 2017 - link
Anyone who complained about too low GPU performance in Kirin 950 should be pleased with thermal throttling now. There's no free lunch in chip design, and high peak performance always costs power. When the SoC reduces its GPU speed to match the phones sustained cooling abilities it will work more efficiently with the wider GPU, i.e. the throttling shows you this actually works.http://lagu.zone | http://downloadlagump3z.nextwapblog.com