Samsung and TI are only sampling A15 chips and both state availability late 2012 or early 2013. Qualcomm's S4 Krait is different enough from an A15 to not be counted. Let's face it - the only reason people are trying to sneak the S4 chip in is so they can somehow take away Apple's thunder at being first to market with an A15.
The fact that Apple is releasing a new iPhone (and has likely already produced millions for next weeks launch), shows they are way ahead of Samsung or TI and must have been sampling and testing way back at the beginning of the year.
I am not trying to take anything away, but it probably deserved a mention. I am not sure the devices that have the S4 are really relative to the overall smartphone market. They are there and pretty similar. AI can slip on the technicality
Samsung and TI are only sampling A15 chips and both state availability late 2012 or early 2013. Qualcomm's S4 Krait is different enough from an A15 to not be counted. Let's face it - the only reason people are trying to sneak the S4 chip in is so they can somehow take away Apple's thunder at being first to market with an A15.
The fact that Apple is releasing a new iPhone (and has likely already produced millions for next weeks launch), shows they are way ahead of Samsung or TI and must have been sampling and testing way back at the beginning of the year.
Yes, apple is way ahead of TI or Sammy. But when it comes to SoC ( systems on chips) qualcomm seems to be a little ahead of Apple. The Krait is an a15 class chip and its been out for 3 months.
Agreed, but it still seems dishonest to completely exclude the Krait. I guess thats why is appleinsider.com and not smartphoneinsider.com
I think it's more likely that it was overlooked since it's still a Cortex-A9-like base with some Cortex-A15-like features.
Personally, if others are just now sampling Cortex-A15 for mass productions in their own plants I don't see how Apple could be using Cortex-A15-like chips in their products. I think this A6 is most likely a Krait-like chip that is built on a 32nm process which allows it to be clocked higher and have some Cortex-A15-like features that also help performance.
Note that I keep writing "-like" since Apple's A-chips are not Cortex anything since they use ARM reference designs that are more stripped than what ARM calls Cortex. It's like buying a corvette chassis and drivetrain and then building your own car around it. You can say it's Corvette under the hood for simplicity sake but if you get technical it's not a Corvette.
I also think Apple would have noted the significance of this ASIC coming to market and I don't recall they did that for that component.
Why are you trying to make it more difficult than it is.
If you know of another product thats using A15cores right now, then post a link to it here. If not.. then what the hell are you trying to prove?
I'm not trying to make it more difficult. As I've tried to say many times now, the article is poorly written and seemed to contradict itself. Read the article:
Quote:
While Apple hasn't revealed much technical detail of the specifications behind iPhone 5 and its components, its new A6 processor is reportedly using next generation ARM Cortex A15 cores, making it the first to market with the technology.
According to a report by Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech, the performance gains Apple reported for the new A6 chip and other factors means that "it looks like Apple has integrated two ARM Cortex A15 cores on Samsung's 32nm LP HK+MG process."...
... Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual pairs two ARM Cortex A15 cores with two ARM Mali GPU cores, while Apple's A6 likely uses the same quad core SGX543MP4 GPUs as the new iPad's A5X...
... Samsung's Exynos 5, TI's OMAP 5 series and Nvidia's Tegra 4 also use ARM Cortex-A15 cores. Broadcom and LG have also announced plans to license ARM's Cortex A15 cores. Qualcomm's S4 Snapdragon also implements a "Krait" architecture similar to the Cortex-A15.
First the article says iPhone 5 is first to market with A15. Then it says Samsung's Exynos 5 uses A15 similar to Apple's A6, giving the impression that Samsung is making chips similar to Apple's first to market before Apple has even released their phone. Finally it says Samsung, TI, and Nvidia use A15, and Broadcom and LG plan to license A15 later. This infers 3 companies are currently producing chips (presumably for unnamed products, why else produce them) with two more companies on the way.
So one could easily come to the conclusion that Samsung, TI, and Nvidia are already making A15 chips for shipping products. If the article had simply stated that all those others chips were announced but unreleased, it wouldn't seem like the article was contradicting itself. That's all I'm trying to say!
Umm.. the HTC one x has the krait core for all phones sold in the USA since June of this year, including the EVO LTE (my current phone).
Still waiting for you to provide evidence to back your claim.
I provided a link showing that the EVO LTE is only using an A8.
Of course, with Android phones, it's hard to tell because they so frequently use the same name for unrelated phones, but it IS clear that you've never provided a shred of evidence that anyone is already shipping an A15 phone. So where's the evidence?
Read it.... The Htc one series use the S4 with a Krait core. Then read the previous posts. The krait is a a15-class core or a15-like core.
AI should not have grouped the Krait into the same line as the upcoming sammy and TI A15 core SoC's. The Krait has been in smartphones since june but the Ti and the Sammy core are not in any phone to date.
Still waiting for you to provide evidence to back your claim.
I provided a link showing that the EVO LTE is only using an A8.
Of course, with Android phones, it's hard to tell because they so frequently use the same name for unrelated phones, but it IS clear that you've never provided a shred of evidence that anyone is already shipping an A15 phone. So where's the evidence?
As stated by other members, your link showed the INSTRUCTION SET that the Krait uses NOT the core reference design. Big difference.
No, the article isn't really clear about anything! It speculates the iPhone 5 is the first product(?) or smartphone(?) to ship with an A15-based core architecture, however it only points to a different article that speculates the same thing as proof. Next, the article later says that Samsung, TI, etc. are making A15-based chips too. It does NOT say those companies have only announced those products with mass production scheduled for a later (which seems not to be true from other sources), invalidating the article's entire premise.
The die sizes add up given a 32 micro proces, 543MP4 and dual A15. Quad A9 would be bigger.
It will be interesting to see what they did. They could have just speed doubled it. Dual core at 1.8 GHz.
Fair enough. Then you just have to get into the hairsplitting in the article. The Krait is not an A15 core. Does it matter? No, not really. The article is still correct, but who really cares.
Agreed. It doesnt matter, apple has proven time and time again that any OS performance is more reliant on implementation than CPU performance. This is coming from a current android user (I own a small-biz with 9 sprint lines, 4 are iphones and 5 androids, i personally have used both and am typing on a Macbook Air 11).
My Krait-core EVO Lte seems much slower than my wifes Iphone 4s. Im sure I have much more RAW processing power than her but its all about apples IMPLEMENTATION.
That stupid 3.5" inch screen is a deal breaker for me.
The responses on here are HILARIOUS. No one has bench marked Apple's version of the A15, nor do we know the specs, but what can be said about it, it should be better than the A9 right?
Of course, but I'm not sure how much.
If history is a guide, and it is, Apple's version won't be the best processor on the market.(They constantly underclock to improve battery life). My money would be on Qualcomm, they have been killing the market for the past couple of years in designing quality low power consumption mobile chips. Their SoC technology, "Krait" is phenomenal to say the least.
Samsung also has an A15 chip being released in the new Galaxy Nexus and possibly the Galaxy Note 2; the Exynos 5 Dual 5250. However, will either one of these chips outperform the S4 in real world applications? We'll see.
The Galaxy SIII U.S. versions have the Snapdragon S4 btw.
Is the Krait even relevant to this discussion? What phone is it in? I can find several that are coming but none that will ship before next Friday... The article only claims it will be the first A15 core shipping in a phone. Which part of that do you dispute?
Umm.. the HTC one x has the krait core for all phones sold in the USA since June of this year, including the EVO LTE (my current phone).
If it uses the S4, it should be named the HTC four x.
What phone is it in? I can find several that are coming but none that will ship before next Friday... The article only claims it will be the first A15 core shipping in a phone. Which part of that do you dispute?
I know of no A15 based cell phone that is actually shipping.
Unfortunately this thread has become side tracked and unfortunately has started out based on speculation. Hopefully we will get some solid info soon.
There is one thing that most here have not considered, this chip could be highly modified ARM architecture. Apple has all of the talent In place to customize the ARM architecture so that it is tailored to the task at hand. In stead of a straight up A9 or A15, we could be seeing Apple branching off in its own direction in the same way Qualcomm has.
The die sizes add up given a 32 micro proces, 543MP4 and dual A15. Quad A9 would be bigger.
It will be interesting to see what they did. They could have just speed doubled it. Dual core at 1.8 GHz.
This is the thing, iPhone runs at some plane between 800 and 900 MHZ so at the bottom they would only need to hit 1.6 GHz to double performance. This is very possible even for A9 cores at sub 32nm processes. A few improvements here and there for the memory subsystem and GPu and you have a chip that runs twice as fast.
Is A6 based on Cortex A15? I don't know nor does anybody else at this point. This thread though is pretty long already considering it is based on speculation from another web site.
Yes, apple is way ahead of TI or Sammy. But when it comes to SoC ( systems on chips) qualcomm seems to be a little ahead of Apple. The Krait is an a15 class chip and its been out for 3 months.
You keep throwing this out in the hope that you become correct. If the Krait uses the A15 instruction set (the term "A15-class chip" is just a BS term) - which you acknowledge - then it is by definition NOT an A15 chip. It's someone's implementation of the A15 instruction set, which you could replicate with a breadboard and a soldering iron - but you would not have an A15 chip. The article remains correct in that the iPhone 5 has the first shipping A15 processor - it is not, apparently, the first phone/processor to use the A15 instruction set. The article claims the former and not the latter. I don't know why you are still arguing this point.
Samsung has the exact chip listed on its website. I wouldnt exactly call it beating samsung since samsung did make it. They just gave them priority over its own phones.
Apple designs their own chips. Samsung gets the blueprints and uses their advanced 32nm tech to manufacture the chips. Then, a few months after getting the blueprints they start producing their own.
Samsung, for example, does't have a flagship phone that sells in the same quantities, and doesn't have an equivalent to the iPod touch or Apple TV. It doesn't even use the same chips across its smartphone lines. Of course, it doesn't even use the same OS across its smartphone lines.
Um, Samsung have a whole ramp of different smartphones, the Galaxy SIII is selling in the tens of millions just like the iPhone.
I would love for the A6 to be Cortex A15 based, but the only concrete suggestion of this is that A4 used Cortex A8, and A5 and A5X were Cortex A9 chips, so A6 must be the next Cortex up, the A15.
Equally the 2x CPU performance could have been gained from using faster clocked A9s (1.6GHz isn't a problem for a 32nm manufacturing process) or quad A9s (won't use up much space on a 32nm process).
Am I missing something or is the Qualcomm S4 with the Krait core also an A15 based chip and already shipping in the Evo one x? The S4 has been shipping since June of this year. I think AI needs to check its facts.
Krait is an in-house custom design that happens to be ISA compatible with the A15 (ARM V7a). In terms of performance it is closer to the A15 than the A9.
iPhone 4S used dual-core 800MHz Cortex A9s. The iPhone 5 could use dual-core ~1.2GHz Cortex A15s, or dual-core ~1.6GHz A9s, or quad-core ~1GHz A9s to achieve the performance increase suggested in the keynote.
Comments
I am not trying to take anything away, but it probably deserved a mention. I am not sure the devices that have the S4 are really relative to the overall smartphone market. They are there and pretty similar. AI can slip on the technicality
Quote:
Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee
Samsung and TI are only sampling A15 chips and both state availability late 2012 or early 2013. Qualcomm's S4 Krait is different enough from an A15 to not be counted. Let's face it - the only reason people are trying to sneak the S4 chip in is so they can somehow take away Apple's thunder at being first to market with an A15.
The fact that Apple is releasing a new iPhone (and has likely already produced millions for next weeks launch), shows they are way ahead of Samsung or TI and must have been sampling and testing way back at the beginning of the year.
Yes, apple is way ahead of TI or Sammy. But when it comes to SoC ( systems on chips) qualcomm seems to be a little ahead of Apple. The Krait is an a15 class chip and its been out for 3 months.
I think it's more likely that it was overlooked since it's still a Cortex-A9-like base with some Cortex-A15-like features.
Personally, if others are just now sampling Cortex-A15 for mass productions in their own plants I don't see how Apple could be using Cortex-A15-like chips in their products. I think this A6 is most likely a Krait-like chip that is built on a 32nm process which allows it to be clocked higher and have some Cortex-A15-like features that also help performance.
Note that I keep writing "-like" since Apple's A-chips are not Cortex anything since they use ARM reference designs that are more stripped than what ARM calls Cortex. It's like buying a corvette chassis and drivetrain and then building your own car around it. You can say it's Corvette under the hood for simplicity sake but if you get technical it's not a Corvette.
I also think Apple would have noted the significance of this ASIC coming to market and I don't recall they did that for that component.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daekwan
Why are you trying to make it more difficult than it is.
If you know of another product thats using A15cores right now, then post a link to it here. If not.. then what the hell are you trying to prove?
I'm not trying to make it more difficult. As I've tried to say many times now, the article is poorly written and seemed to contradict itself. Read the article:
Quote:
While Apple hasn't revealed much technical detail of the specifications behind iPhone 5 and its components, its new A6 processor is reportedly using next generation ARM Cortex A15 cores, making it the first to market with the technology.
According to a report by Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech, the performance gains Apple reported for the new A6 chip and other factors means that "it looks like Apple has integrated two ARM Cortex A15 cores on Samsung's 32nm LP HK+MG process."...
... Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual pairs two ARM Cortex A15 cores with two ARM Mali GPU cores, while Apple's A6 likely uses the same quad core SGX543MP4 GPUs as the new iPad's A5X...
... Samsung's Exynos 5, TI's OMAP 5 series and Nvidia's Tegra 4 also use ARM Cortex-A15 cores. Broadcom and LG have also announced plans to license ARM's Cortex A15 cores. Qualcomm's S4 Snapdragon also implements a "Krait" architecture similar to the Cortex-A15.
First the article says iPhone 5 is first to market with A15. Then it says Samsung's Exynos 5 uses A15 similar to Apple's A6, giving the impression that Samsung is making chips similar to Apple's first to market before Apple has even released their phone. Finally it says Samsung, TI, and Nvidia use A15, and Broadcom and LG plan to license A15 later. This infers 3 companies are currently producing chips (presumably for unnamed products, why else produce them) with two more companies on the way.
So one could easily come to the conclusion that Samsung, TI, and Nvidia are already making A15 chips for shipping products. If the article had simply stated that all those others chips were announced but unreleased, it wouldn't seem like the article was contradicting itself. That's all I'm trying to say!
Still waiting for you to provide evidence to back your claim.
I provided a link showing that the EVO LTE is only using an A8.
Of course, with Android phones, it's hard to tell because they so frequently use the same name for unrelated phones, but it IS clear that you've never provided a shred of evidence that anyone is already shipping an A15 phone. So where's the evidence?
http://www.anandtech.com/tag/krait
Read it.... The Htc one series use the S4 with a Krait core. Then read the previous posts. The krait is a a15-class core or a15-like core.
AI should not have grouped the Krait into the same line as the upcoming sammy and TI A15 core SoC's. The Krait has been in smartphones since june but the Ti and the Sammy core are not in any phone to date.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Still waiting for you to provide evidence to back your claim.
I provided a link showing that the EVO LTE is only using an A8.
Of course, with Android phones, it's hard to tell because they so frequently use the same name for unrelated phones, but it IS clear that you've never provided a shred of evidence that anyone is already shipping an A15 phone. So where's the evidence?
As stated by other members, your link showed the INSTRUCTION SET that the Krait uses NOT the core reference design. Big difference.
The die sizes add up given a 32 micro proces, 543MP4 and dual A15. Quad A9 would be bigger.
It will be interesting to see what they did. They could have just speed doubled it. Dual core at 1.8 GHz.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wovel
Fair enough. Then you just have to get into the hairsplitting in the article. The Krait is not an A15 core. Does it matter? No, not really. The article is still correct, but who really cares.
Agreed. It doesnt matter, apple has proven time and time again that any OS performance is more reliant on implementation than CPU performance. This is coming from a current android user (I own a small-biz with 9 sprint lines, 4 are iphones and 5 androids, i personally have used both and am typing on a Macbook Air 11).
My Krait-core EVO Lte seems much slower than my wifes Iphone 4s. Im sure I have much more RAW processing power than her but its all about apples IMPLEMENTATION.
That stupid 3.5" inch screen is a deal breaker for me.
The responses on here are HILARIOUS. No one has bench marked Apple's version of the A15, nor do we know the specs, but what can be said about it, it should be better than the A9 right?
Of course, but I'm not sure how much.
If history is a guide, and it is, Apple's version won't be the best processor on the market.(They constantly underclock to improve battery life). My money would be on Qualcomm, they have been killing the market for the past couple of years in designing quality low power consumption mobile chips. Their SoC technology, "Krait" is phenomenal to say the least.
Samsung also has an A15 chip being released in the new Galaxy Nexus and possibly the Galaxy Note 2; the Exynos 5 Dual 5250. However, will either one of these chips outperform the S4 in real world applications? We'll see.
The Galaxy SIII U.S. versions have the Snapdragon S4 btw.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WESALLEN
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wovel
Is the Krait even relevant to this discussion? What phone is it in? I can find several that are coming but none that will ship before next Friday... The article only claims it will be the first A15 core shipping in a phone. Which part of that do you dispute?
Umm.. the HTC one x has the krait core for all phones sold in the USA since June of this year, including the EVO LTE (my current phone).
If it uses the S4, it should be named the HTC four x.
We finally got our A15-based "A6" chip in the "iPhone 5". Amazing engineering, beautiful design. I'll be getting two within 30 days.
I know of no A15 based cell phone that is actually shipping.
Unfortunately this thread has become side tracked and unfortunately has started out based on speculation. Hopefully we will get some solid info soon.
There is one thing that most here have not considered, this chip could be highly modified ARM architecture. Apple has all of the talent In place to customize the ARM architecture so that it is tailored to the task at hand. In stead of a straight up A9 or A15, we could be seeing Apple branching off in its own direction in the same way Qualcomm has.
Kraut has nothing to do with ARMs A15 IP. Frankly it is a bit dishonest to bring it into the discussion.
This is the thing, iPhone runs at some plane between 800 and 900 MHZ so at the bottom they would only need to hit 1.6 GHz to double performance. This is very possible even for A9 cores at sub 32nm processes. A few improvements here and there for the memory subsystem and GPu and you have a chip that runs twice as fast.
Is A6 based on Cortex A15? I don't know nor does anybody else at this point. This thread though is pretty long already considering it is based on speculation from another web site.
You keep throwing this out in the hope that you become correct. If the Krait uses the A15 instruction set (the term "A15-class chip" is just a BS term) - which you acknowledge - then it is by definition NOT an A15 chip. It's someone's implementation of the A15 instruction set, which you could replicate with a breadboard and a soldering iron - but you would not have an A15 chip. The article remains correct in that the iPhone 5 has the first shipping A15 processor - it is not, apparently, the first phone/processor to use the A15 instruction set. The article claims the former and not the latter. I don't know why you are still arguing this point.
Exactly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by majortom1981
Samsung has the exact chip listed on its website. I wouldnt exactly call it beating samsung since samsung did make it. They just gave them priority over its own phones.
Apple designs their own chips. Samsung gets the blueprints and uses their advanced 32nm tech to manufacture the chips. Then, a few months after getting the blueprints they start producing their own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corrections
Samsung, for example, does't have a flagship phone that sells in the same quantities, and doesn't have an equivalent to the iPod touch or Apple TV. It doesn't even use the same chips across its smartphone lines. Of course, it doesn't even use the same OS across its smartphone lines.
Um, Samsung have a whole ramp of different smartphones, the Galaxy SIII is selling in the tens of millions just like the iPhone.
I would love for the A6 to be Cortex A15 based, but the only concrete suggestion of this is that A4 used Cortex A8, and A5 and A5X were Cortex A9 chips, so A6 must be the next Cortex up, the A15.
Equally the 2x CPU performance could have been gained from using faster clocked A9s (1.6GHz isn't a problem for a 32nm manufacturing process) or quad A9s (won't use up much space on a 32nm process).
Quote:
Originally Posted by WESALLEN
Am I missing something or is the Qualcomm S4 with the Krait core also an A15 based chip and already shipping in the Evo one x? The S4 has been shipping since June of this year. I think AI needs to check its facts.
Krait is an in-house custom design that happens to be ISA compatible with the A15 (ARM V7a). In terms of performance it is closer to the A15 than the A9.
iPhone 4S used dual-core 800MHz Cortex A9s. The iPhone 5 could use dual-core ~1.2GHz Cortex A15s, or dual-core ~1.6GHz A9s, or quad-core ~1GHz A9s to achieve the performance increase suggested in the keynote.