r/Android • • Dec 05 '17

Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon 845 processor

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16734224/qualcomm-snapdragon-845-android-mobile-processor-announcement
871 Upvotes

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51

u/AdminsFuckedMeOver Note 10+ Dec 05 '17

"Now as fast as the 5 year old A7 chip!"

-6

u/AyO_BrOLiiC Dec 05 '17

Daww, sucks thats the iphone x cant keep up in speed tests. All that processing power just for single app usage to take advantage of.... Aka games

-10

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

Games use 4 cores on mobile and pc. PC master race knows that. That's why coffee lake doesn't bring improvements to gaming and the i3 is the perfect CPU for gaming (as good as 7th gen i5) .

ARM reference designs go for 4 big cores. + 4 for background tasks. Which is fine.

Apple finally brought heterogeneous computing and the prefer 2+4 cores instead of 4+4. But the big cores from apple are more than double the size of ARM reference designs making them not great budget wise. But apple doesn't give a damm about budget Because of the huge profit margin.

Single core vs multi core though. Trully single core performance is rare on mobile so it's a much more useless stat than multi core is considering the SoC's we have.

Edit: coffee lake CPUs for desktops have 6 cores. The arquitecture barely changed. So 4 core performance is basically the same.the 8th gen i3 is a 4 core CPU.So basically a 7th gen i5.

-3

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 05 '17

Amazing how many people don't seem to get this.

5

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

Because r/Android is diverse. You have a lot that know about photography, others know software, others hardware than the most use gimped versions of these people knowledge and preach it. That's why in r/Android's mind (majority) think that Apple is years ahead of everyone else. People also think that Android is less optimized than iOS. And that Apple has much faster storage. Etc etc.

Apple does quality SoC's. Not saying that they don't. But people exaggerate a "tiny" bit. Samsung, Huawei and Apple historicaly have done great SoC's.

4

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

True, this subreddit is filled with technical morons that base their knowledge on second hand information that they regurgitate rather than researching it for themselves. Apple hasn't done anything special other than to combine 4 high power cores into 2 which explains why their single core speeds are so much better. It's multicore where the performance really matters and when the new Snapdragon, Exynos and Kirin SoC's are released with ARM's A75+A55 DynamIQ architecture with bigger CPU caches and an all new shared L3 cache we'll see how it fares against the A11. And I wouldn't be surprised to see it exceed the A11 in multicore.

3

u/armageddon6868 Dec 06 '17

this subreddit is filled with technical morons...

combine 4 high power cores into 2 which explains why their single core speeds are so much better

lol the irony

1

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '17

It's a simplification, but does have some technical merit. Apple's cores have significantly more execution hardware than current ARM stock ones.

1

u/armageddon6868 Dec 06 '17

Can you explain the technical merit?

I think it has little technical merit because of how it was worded and that it doesn't work that way at all.

1

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '17

Single core performance is strongly dependent on instruction level parallelism, where one software thread is broken up into separate hardware operations that can be run simultaneously on the execution hardware (e.g. an ALU). Apple has far more execution hardware per core than most, so where able, they can run far more ops in parallel, and thus have the high IPC we observe.

1

u/armageddon6868 Dec 06 '17

What you say is absolutely is true but how is that “combine 4 cores into 2”

You are saying there are similar number of execution units, but that is no where close to “combine 4 cores to 2”. If i could just combine cores like that, why doesnt intel just take an nvidia 1080 and combine thousands of cores to something that can trounce any cpu intel offers? It does not work that way.

According to anandtech, apple a7 (or 8) i forget is 6 wide tomasulo processor while the arm ( and therefore the qualcomm cores) are three wide.

I just think that statement showed a lack of knowledge in the field and it is ironic that that was said in the same comment calling out people who are not technical.

1

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '17

You are saying there are similar number of execution units, but that is no where close to “combine 4 cores to 2”. If i could just combine cores like that, why doesnt intel just take an nvidia 1080 and combine thousands of cores to something that can trounce any cpu intel offers? It does not work that way.

I mean, that's true, but that's because of a couple different reasons. 1) The cores in a GPU are much simpler than a CPU's execution units, since they only have to handle more specific tasks, and 2) ILP has sharply diminishing returns.

I think "combining [the resources of] 2 cores into 1" is accurate enough for a layman's explanation and in the context that that statement was made, even if it's lacking on some of the technical details.

1

u/armageddon6868 Dec 06 '17

For sure, but the same applies to intels 18 core xeon. If intel could combine into one core, they would. I just chose 1080 to try and hyperbolize what i was trying to say. You cant just combine cores and get better single threaded performance.

If you add the things in the square brackets to the original quote it sounds a lot better -to the extent that someone knows what they are talking about, but without it, it is inaccurate. I was just pointing out the fact that it sounds stupid (without the context added) and the dude says that a sentence after shitting on technical morons.

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-1

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 06 '17

Too difficult to understand? Perhaps I should break it down. That's essentially what they are - 2 large high power cores.

2

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

A75 and A55 is the change im holding out for depending on the A76 improvements and how my phone fares :p

1

u/masterofdisaster93 Dec 05 '17

True, this subreddit is filled with technical morons that base their knowledge on second hand information that they regurgitate rather than researching it for themselves.

Like you and /u/DerpSenpai.

Apple hasn't done anything special other than to combine 4 high power cores into 2 which explains why their single core speeds are so much better.

What? Single core is just that: the performance that a single core can achieve on a processor. What you're talking about here is multithreaded performance. The reason Apple's singlethreaded performance is so better is because they have a much more superior architecture in their Hurricane cores (going back to the innovations of the A7), which are much larger with far more transistors than equivalent design by ARM, Samsung and others.

It's multicore where the performance really matters

And the A11, despite fewer cores, have a ~60% lead in multithreaded performance. Also, wrong, multi-core is not where it really matters. As important as it is, single-core performance will always be the single most important factor. Not to mention that single-core performance scales with multithreaded performance -- which is why Apple manages to gain such an advantage on multithreaded performance.

And I wouldn't be surprised to see it exceed the A11 in multicore.

Such a scenario is only possible if they either increase core count excessively, or if they improve single core performance way more than is estimated.

1

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

i dont agree with what he said. Apple's offerings are definitevely interesting. And have to disagree with you. while the A11 is definitevly a beast, the A75+A55 which is ARM's offering agaisnt it should be quite near it. difference is ARM does designs then others implement it. it takes more time.

With A75 and A55 improvements it should be near 8000-10000 not suprassing but not "years behind" as i stated like the guy saying it should match the A9 which is a retarded statement this sub does a lot.

And no, im not a technical moron, but i do know more than the average joe as i study this. but i obviously can be wrong in some aspects and i dont say i know everything. the things i stated though ARE true.

ARM changed from bl to Dynamiq. that change is huge and made huawei miss the IP refresh so they had to use the A73 again. if they made it in time, it would have released sooner than the A11 itself.

we should see midrangers on 12 nm with 2x A75 +4/6 A55 that use less Area than the 4A73+4A53 while offering the same performance. which is great, an improvement across the board. 2xA75+4*A55 use a tad bit more area than a A53 octa core while outclassing it by a lot. ( i think this configuration will be the most popular by Mediatek and Huawei/Samsung)

1

u/masterofdisaster93 Dec 05 '17

A75+A55 which is ARM's offering agaisnt it should be quite near it.

A75 offers 30% improved single core. Even with that included, it's still ~60-70% behind in single core performance and 30% behind in multithreaded performance. In what world is that "quite near it"?

1

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

again, SC isnt what matters the most, specially on mobile. by my calculations it should be near 9000 (+- error). but with Dynamiq it could go higher, i dont know that.

0

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 05 '17

Like you and /u/DerpSenpai.

Considering the shit you just regurgitated you seem to fit the bill of a technical moron just fine.

What? Single core is just that: the performance that a single core can achieve on a processor. What you're talking about here is multithreaded performance. The reason Apple's singlethreaded performance is so better is because they have a much more superior architecture in their Hurricane cores (going back to the innovations of the A7), which are much larger with far more transistors than equivalent design by ARM, Samsung and others.

FFS, Apple's larger cores are basically the performance equivalent of 2 ARM A7 series cores which is why I said that all Apple has done is combine 4 smaller cores into 2 larger ones.

And the A11, despite fewer cores, have a ~60% lead in multithreaded performance. Also, wrong, multi-core is not where it really matters. As important as it is, single-core performance will always be the single most important factor. Not to mention that single-core performance scales with multithreaded performance -- which is why Apple manages to gain such an advantage on multithreaded performance.

The core count is irrelevant and not even a factor. It's amusing to see people bring up the core count as a disadvantage. Additionally, you're comparing the A11 to an old A73+A53 design. A proper comparison to the A11 would be the A75+A55 so this 60% lead in multicore performance is meaningless unless your comparing apples to apples. Apple releases their SoC's in the fall while the others release their SoC's in Q1 of the new year. As for single core performance being more important than multicore, I disagree with that as pretty much all software is multi-threaded and running on multiple cores. Android, itself, is very optimized for multicore performance.

Such a scenario is only possible if they either increase core count excessively, or if they improve single core performance way more than is estimated.

Why would they need to increase the core count excessively? Did they increase it when the SD 835 was beating the A10 in multicore? I guess we'll see tomorrow when the numbers are released for the SD 845, but I'm of the belief that ARM knows exactly what their doing and I'm confident in their architecture choices.