SoCs
During the opening keynote delivered by AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su at Computex 2024, AMD finally lifted the lid on their highly-anticipated Zen 5 microarchitecture. The backbone for the next couple of years of everything CPU at AMD, the company unveiled their plans to bring Zen 5 in the consumer market, announcing both their next-generation mobile and desktop products at the same time. With a tight schedule that will see both platforms launch within weeks of each other, today AMD is taking their first step with the launch of the Ryzen AI 300 series – codenamed Strix Point – their new Zen 5-powered mobile SoC. The latest and greatest from AMD, the Strix Point brings significant architectural improvements across AMD's entire IP portfolio. Headlining the...
GLBenchmark 2.5 Performance on Modern Android Smartphones & Tablets
For quite a while now, GLBenchmark has been a regular test in our smartphone, tablet, and SoC reviews. As GPU performance has steadily increased, GLbenchmark 2.1.x started hitting vsync...
47 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 7/31/2012Qualcomm's Quad-Core Snapdragon S4 (APQ8064/Adreno 320) Performance Preview
If you've been following our SoC related coverage, you'll probably have come across our coverage of Qualcomm's upcoming SoCs in their Mobile Development Platforms (MDPs). It's an interesting way...
35 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 7/24/2012Windows Phone 8 Adds support for Multi Core SoCs, Higher Resolutions, microSD, and NFC
We're at the Windows Phone 8 summit, where Microsoft just made support for a bunch of new WP8 features official. The rumors were true, and the platform is moving...
5 by Brian Klug on 6/20/2012TI Joins the Windows RT Demo Fray
Not one for being left out, TI had a demo of Windows RT running on its OMAP 4470 reference tablet. Microsoft instructed its partners not to show off anything...
14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/8/2012Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Running Windows RT
Last night we saw NVIDIA running Windows 8 RT via ASUS' Tablet 600, and today we got a glimpse of Qualcomm doing the same. Qualcomm's reference tablet features an...
9 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/5/2012Samsung Galaxy S III Performance Preview: It's Fast
Earlier today Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S III, at the heart of which is Samsung's new Exynos 4 Quad SoC. Fortunately we got a ton of hands on time...
94 by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/3/2012Exynos 4 Quad 1.4 GHz 32nm HKMG Announced for Next Galaxy Smartphone
Just a week before its Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012 event where it will announce "the next galaxy smartphone," Samsung has officially announced what SoC will be inside. The answer...
44 by Brian Klug on 4/25/2012NVIDIA Plots Mobile SoC GPU Performance, Surpassing Xbox 360 by 2014
Qualcomm was the first to tell us that it expects to offer console level GPU performance in the not too distant future, generally hinting that its Adreno 3xx GPUs...
51 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/19/2012Apple's iPad 2,4 also uses 32nm A5 S5L8942 SoC
Through Chipworks, we recently learned that Apple's revised A5 SoC (S5L8942) is built on a 32nm Samsung HKMG process. While its presence in the Apple TV (3rd generation) which...
28 by Brian Klug on 4/11/2012Apple TV A5 SoC is 32nm, Harvested dual-core A5
The 3rd generation Apple TV ships with what Apple tells us is a single-core A5 SoC. After delayering the chip to the transistor gate layer in the new Apple...
10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/11/2012The Apple iPad Review (2012)
It has a display resolution that dwarfs most high-end desktop displays. The panel also puts a real emphasis on quality, not just resolution. For a computing device targeted squarely...
234 by Vivek Gowri & Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/28/2012Apple TV 3 (2012) Short Review - 1080p and better WiFi
The iPad (3) took front row during the recent launch extravaganza, however Apple also refreshed their Apple TV with a new model sporting a single core A5 SoC and...
37 by Brian Klug on 3/21/2012Apple's A5X Floorplan
Apple's A5X SoC Today has been pretty exciting. Not only did we confirm the die size of Apple's A5X SoC (162.94mm^2) but we also found out that it's still built...
18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/16/2012Apple A5X Die Size Measured: 162.94mm^2, Samsung 45nm LP Confirmed
Contrary to what we thought yesterday based on visual estimation of the A5X die, Chipworks has (presumably) measured the actual die itself: 162.94mm^2. While the A5 was big, this...
46 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/16/2012Apple's A5X Die (and Size?) Revealed
iFixit saved us all a whole lot of trouble and performed a teardown of the new iPad announced last week. The internals were mostly what we expected, down to...
45 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/15/2012TI Brings OMAP 5 to MWC
A month ago we saw weeks old OMAP 5 silicon running at CES. Earlier this week we got a chance to see TI's OMAP 5 reference platform playing back...
10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/29/2012The Portland Group Announces OpenCL Compiler for ST-Ericsson ARM-Based NovaThor SoCs
Amidst all the major hardware announcements at MWC2012 there are also some announcements coming out of the software side. The Portland Group (PGI) sent word this afternoon that their...
2 by Ryan Smith on 2/28/2012Apple iPad 3 Event Scheduled For March 7th In San Francisco
It's not like we weren't expecting it, but Apple's now made it official. The event is scheduled for March 7th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in...
52 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 2/28/2012ST-E Will Have FD-SOI Based U8540: 35% Lower Power, Much Higher Frequencies
There's a close relationship between process technology and performance/power consumption, and it's about to get even more important in mobile. We've already seen that with the transition to 40nm...
4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/28/2012