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  • abufrejoval - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    While extending all that prefetching seems such a great thing for performance, it also expands the attack surface of side-channel attacks. So I wonder if the public awareness came to late in the game for this design for the team to review or even correct for that.
  • SaberKOG91 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    And I suppose we should stop using branch prediction too because anything speculative is inherently insecure? /s

    We've known about prefetch side-channel attacks for quite awhile now, as well as developed techniques to mitigate many of them. Do you really think ARM are so unaware of these issues?
  • rahvin - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Although side-channel attacks have been known about for a long time, the first viable attack wasn't developed until last year and there has been a steady stream of additional viable attacks since the first. In fact it's arguable that the severity of the attacks is going up with each discovery.

    They called it Spectre for a reason, they figured it was going to haunt computer design for the foreseeable future. Side channel attacks are here to stay and they aren't done finding new ones. Though we can't abandon speculative execution, any company that didn't take into account this attack method in future designs was foolish.
  • SaberKOG91 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    I don't disagree with any of your statements. I was annoyed by their ignorant attitude towards the importance of speculative features of modern CPU design. We need them for the sake of performance and there shouldn't need to be a steep trade-off between security and performance in order to keep these features. It's clear that AMD were able to design a more secure core that isn't affected by many of the side-channel attacks that Intel are vulnerable to, without a huge performance tradeoff. I doubt that ARM would willingly repeat these mistakes now that these attacks are known.
  • rocky12345 - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link

    Just a question I guess wasn't Spectre just what they called it when they found that someone could exploit the CPU like that. Up until then and I do not think there has been any real attacks that came out of this yet. My point is what if they did not make Spectre public and just fixed it behind closed doors. Then neither us or the attackers would have been clued in to it all. Also then there would not have been all these other finds for maybe attacks as well since then. I guess what I am saying sometimes us the public do not need to know some of these things because it just might also inform the low life's that like to do these exploits. Just my 2 cents worth and opinion on it all.
  • syxbit - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    I know you brought up Apple multiple times, but I really wish it got brought up even more. Every Q&A with ARM should say "Hey, stop boasting until you catch up to Apple"
    It's frustrating as an Android user to have seriously inferior SoCs....
  • Nozuka - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Even more frustrating to have one of these SoCs, but nothing actually uses its power...
    Unless you count bragging rights
  • Wilco1 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Define inferior. Phone SoCs are not just about maximum single threaded performance. And Apple users found out the performance cannot be sustained by batteries...

    Android users get better power efficiency and lower cost phones due to lower die size of SoCs. As Andrei has shown, simply chasing high benchmark scores (like Samsung did with their custom cores) does not seem to work out so well.
  • syxbit - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Lower cost phones?
    Flagships from Google and Samsung cost the same as an iPhone, and the iPhone trounces them in performance.
  • Wilco1 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    There are plenty high-end Android phones which cost about half of an equivalent iPhone. Eg. OnePlus 7 Pro is $699 with 256GB flash vs $1249 for a similar spec Xs Max.
  • Retycint - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    This isn't 2012 anymore. A 30% better performance (for instance) isn't going to lead to any real world differences, especially given the fact that most consumers use their phones as a camera/social media machine
  • jackthepumpkinking6sic6 - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link

    How foolish to actually sit there and act as if that's the only option. First of not only are those not the only high end option but they clearly said lower cost. Meaning any segment. Even mid and low range. Use your brain before commenting.
    Not to mention that despite being similarly priced and having insignificantly different benchmark scores those devices are overall better and more worthy the price.... Though none are worthy of such prices. Just some are more worth it than others.
  • alysdexia - Monday, December 30, 2019 - link

    performance -> speed
    Anandtech never explain how they get their power figures; I saw one mention of regression testing under the iPhone XS review but still no work. The figures look more like shared power or peak power than average CPU power as they conflict with general runtime or battery drain tests which suggest 2 watts sustained; I recently took Notebookcheck's loads of power figures to revise my list of the thriftiest CPUs where I found the equivalent TDP somewhere between the load and idles and implied screen, GPU, and memory powers; another way to estimate is to subtract the nonCPU from the power adapter rating which for iPhones is 5W, screen 1W to 2W. I had to throw out Anandtech's SPEC2006 powers.

    Androids do not get thriftier chips; iPhones idle better than the average (Use the comparison tool under any Notebookcheck review) and their huge cache seems to save power. (iPhone 11 has 33MB vs. S10 5MB. This makes A13 over 4fold as good as 9820.)

    W CPU/(CPU+GPU): select core–unit CPUmark [mobile/60] (Gn/s) {Mp/s/10; LZMA-D Mp/s/10}, Geekbench 5, UserBenchmark Int 2019 Dec: /W, /$
    ~1·2: Cortex-A77 A13, [11145] (29·3), 1330–3422, : [~9288], ; , ; , Lightning-Thunder
    ~2: Cortex-A76 A12X, [12591] (45), 1114–4608, : [~6296], ; ~2304, ; , Vortex-Tempest
    ~1·7: Cortex-A76 A12, [8006] (27), 1111–2869, : [~4709], ; ~1688, ; , Vortex-Tempest
    ~1·5: Cortex-A73 A10X, [6475] (19·5), 832–2274, : [~4317], ; ~1516, ; , Hurricane-Zephyr
    ~2: Cortex-A75 A11, [7267] (26·3), 919–2372, : [~3634], ; ~1186, ; , Monsoon-Mistral
    ~2: Cortex-A76-A55 485, [4429], 767–2715, : [~2214], ; ~1358, ; , Kryo
    ·003: Cortex-M0+ 1.8V 64MHz, {9}, , : {2870}, ; , ; ,
    ~2: Cortex-A75-A55-M4 9820, [4298], 762–2148, : [~2149], ; ~1074, ; , Exynos
    ~2: Cortex-A76-A55 990, [4078], 761–2861, : [~2039], ; ~1431, ; , Kirin
    ~2·2: Cortex-A73 A10, [4748] (12·6), 744–1333, : [~1976], ; ~606, ; , Hurricane-Zephyr
    ·012: M14K, {29}, , : {2500}, ; , ; ,
    1·7: Cortex-A73-A53 280, [<3031] (), 387–1448, : [<1783], ; 852, ; , Kryo
    2? ~(40/53): Cortex-A53 625, [2604], 260–773, : [1725?], ; 387?, ; , Apollo
    2·5: Cortex-A75-A55 385, [3940] (), 514–2191, : [1576], ; 876, ; , Kryo
    ~2: Cortex-A53-M2 8895, [>3031] (), 373–1497, : [>1516], ; ~749, ; , Exynos
    ~2: Cortex-A57-A53 A9X, [3000] (10·5), 3097–5284, : [~1500], ; , ; , Twister
    ~1·5: Cortex-A53-A57 A9, [2200] (12·7), , : [~1467], ; , ; , Twister
    ·001: Cortex-M0+ SAM L21 12MHz, {2}, : {1929}, ; , ; ,
    ·0033: Cortex-M0 1.8V 50MHz, {6}, , : {1920}, ; , ; ,
    ·09: SH-X4, {172}, , : {1856}, ; , ; , SH-X4
    ·000825: Cortex-M4 STM32L412xx 8MHz, {15}, , : {1852}, ; , ; ,
    ·013: Cortex-M3, {24}, , : {1790}, ; , ; ,
    ·15: 24K, {235}, , : {1600}, ; , ; ,
    ~1·8: Cortex-A57-A53 A8X, [2032] (10·6), , : [~1129], ; , ; , Typhoon
    ·15: 34K, {232}, , : {1455}, ; , ; ,
  • alysdexia - Monday, December 30, 2019 - link

    dammit can't edit:

    15 ~3/5: i5-1035G7, : ~, Ice Lake
    15 ~11/14: i7-10710U, 13107: ~1112, 30 Comet Lake
    15 ~16/19: i5-10210U, : ~, Comet Lake
  • Findecanor - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    I wonder what the difference would be if ARM removed AArch32 support like Apple did.
  • RSAUser - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    We might see it with next gen as Google is dropping 32bit app support on the Play Store. If there is a performance advantage/cost or power saving, they'll probably implement it.
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    However with android you also get the performance at half the price. What these charts don't show is the actual size of the chip and apple SOCs are large and hence more expensive.
  • michael2k - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link

    ARM isn't competing with Apple and doesn't need to compete with Apple.

    ARM licenses out it's implementation to those who also cannot compete with Apple.

    You get the benefit, as compensation for lower performance, of a cheaper phone.

    If you really want something that is as high performance you're going to have to buy from a company willing to invest the money into designing such a CPU, and that requires a different budget than licensing ARM's SoC/CPU designs.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    ARM's cores matched Apple for efficiency with A76 (a breakthrough design), alongside sufficient performance.

    With large increases with IPC per generation we're seeing from ARM, I don't think it will be long before the absolute performance gap is closed either -- if SoC manufacturers choose to equal Apple's peak power draw. They may well not, and nobody will mind.
  • markiz - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link

    Out of curiosity, what is it that you want to do on your phone that you feel is too slow on e.g. S855 phone?
  • raptormissle - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    >The A76 delivered on all of Arm’s promises and ended up being an extremely performance core,

    should be:
    The A76 delivered on all of Arm’s promises and ended up being an extremely performant core,
  • PixyMisa - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    "Performant" is not a word.
  • rpg1966 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    1. You're wrong.
    2. You're wrong.
  • futrtrubl - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Check again, or more probably for the first time.
  • hescominsoon - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d...
  • Santoval - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/englis...
  • raptormissle - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Yeah, it actually is:

    According to the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries it is:
    https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/perfo...
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/englis...

    Maybe you should, um, Google it next time.
  • GlossGhost - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    As much as I would like to see those typo issues addressed, you clearly haven't read their Exynos review, it's littered with typos and probably many other articles are as well. And since you're clearly showing major elitism here, I would like to say that pointing out a single typo isn't going to help anyone.
  • raptormissle - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    So helping the author correct some errors is now a sign of major"elitism"? How ridiculous. Perhaps you should help out the author and suggest the corrections to his Exynos article instead of just being a consumption puppet.
  • nico_mach - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    I don't think its elitist to help the author improve, as long as people are polite. Usually news media have had ways to provide feedback, going back more than a century. It's an asymmetric information medium, but not completely unidirectional.

    FYI, the expression is "Delve Deeper" not "Dwell deeper".
  • Valis - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link

    Yeah, it's because he is a white male, probably hetero also. :P
  • raptormissle - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    So it looks like the SD 865 is finally going to break the 4000 geekbench single core score and probably score 12000+ in multi core. ARM has finally leveled the playing field with Apple as I really don't expect major gains from the A13 as they've likely blown their wad.
  • GC2:CS - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    There were big gains from going from 16/14 nm in 2016 to 7 nm in 2018.
    While performance gains were impresive in that time, no shrink like that coming any time soon.

    76 was a big performance jump, but that was after many regular releases where ARM had overestimeted or even regresed on their performance metrics in reality (Or so i think... Am I right ?).
    And Apple does not make promises, but they are expected (based on like 5 (how many ?!?) generations of big performance jumps) to deliver something crazy, which they can fail.

    Honestly I would happily take the same performance with lower power. And cut/cap the peak power as well... not planing to buy a fan equped phone.
  • Wilco1 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    There is a 7+nm shrink coming this year and then another huge one with 5nm next year. So big shrinks are continuing at least at TSMC.

    And performance has increased hugely with each generation since Cortex-A57. The smallest gain was with Cortex-A73, but that still improved sustained performance and efficiency considerably.

    Many phones support battery saving modes which limit the frequency of the big cores (or switch them off). So you can already get what you want if battery life is your goal. I find these modes very useful but you clearly notice the performance loss while browsing.
  • Santoval - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    "or even regresed on their performance metrics in reality (Or so i think... Am I right ?)."
    Indeed, the A73 core was usually slower than the A72 core, or at best just as fast, though it was supposed to be the successor core.
  • blu42 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    CA73 was not exactly 'usually slower' than CA72 -- former was usually slower at asimd workloads, but it was going better at spaghetti code (even with the narrower frontend), of which there's more in this world. We now have CA57s, CA72s and CA73s all in affordable SBCs (finally!), so people can check for themselves.

    BTW, CA73 was a successor but it was not meant to be a performance improvement, rather than an efficiency improvement, and there it delivered, IMO
  • ZolaIII - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    A73 is a two instructions wide vs A72 three instructions wide OoO design. While performance all together whose the same the gain in performance per W whose 30~33% & per mm² 27~28%.
  • name99 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    The A10 was based on 16nm, just like the A9. But came with a substantial improvement...

    You guys are way too ignorant of the role of micro architecture in performance. Apple’s speed boosts so far (since A7) are pretty much exactly split 50% micro-architecture and 50% frequency (so process).

    The A13 based on 7nm is still capable of large improvements; firstly from micro-arch improvements, second from having a chance to optimize what’s already there (like, as I said, the A10 as second pass through 16nm).
  • galdutro - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Given ther track record, I would be surprised if the A13 had the same performance as the A12X. YES, this is crazy! But it is what they actually have been able to achiave in the past couple of generations.
  • galdutro - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    typos: their* wouldn´t** achieve***
  • peevee - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    " ARM has finally leveled the playing field with Apple"

    With Apple's almost 3 y/o cores you mean. Because A13 is about to be released, even before SD865.
  • name99 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    “as I really don't expect major gains from the A13 as they've likely blown their wad“
    Based on what? The fact that you want it to be true?
  • jackthepumpkinking6sic6 - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link

    Clearly the one who wants something to be true is you. They just made a simple statement they felt was correct.

    Youre the one that flew in rude out of butthurt
  • Meteor2 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    I wouldn't bet on Apple not delivering big gains with A13. They have an incredible track record (because they can afford the best brains, and appear to be well managed). They'll run out of road eventually, but there's no sign that's happening yet.
  • raptormissle - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    > For the Cortex-A77, things should me a lot more straightforward to project as we won’t see major process node changes in the next generation 7nm SoCs.

    should be:

    For the Cortex-A77, things should be a lot more straightforward to project as we won’t see major process node changes in the next generation 7nm SoCs.
  • 0iron - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    So A77 is a 'US origin technology' and will be affected by an export ban?
  • ZolaIII - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Neither ARM nor Softbank are US origin, just plane stupid. Part of resurch labour & design teams are. The A76, A77 are from Ustin (Texas) based team.
  • rahvin - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Pretty much any microprocessor you can think of is going to contain US origin technology. ARM might technically be incorporated in the UK but it's got US origin tech littering both it's architecture and it's individual designs.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    I'd like to see evidence of that; ARM is international now but for their first twenty-odd years they were wholly based in the UK.
  • wilsonkf - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Most probably, but maybe also too late. Design stage should be mostly completed.
  • Lodix - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Andrei, are you still expecting HiSilicon to launch a Kirin SOC using ARM IP later this year with all that is happening ? It is very sad the current situation.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    The SoC certainly is ready to go to manufacturing. What happens with devices is another question.
  • Violet Giraffe - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    You find it said that a certain company finally has to pay for its practice of stealing and selling IP they do not own? I don't.
  • a94 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    You know that Huawei always pay the royalty for licensing ARM IP to make their Kirin right? If not, how did they announce that a version of Kirin was based on Cortex something without ARM suing them? Maybe, Huawei did steal some IP from another company, but to be banned of access to a product they always pay(ARM) is ridiculous
  • colinisation - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Hi Andrei,

    Can you comment at all on the possibility of an A55 refresh? I realise A55 recently replaced A53, but I wonder where ARM go from here. It seemed with the Neoverse E1/A65 out there, we would see a relatively quick replacement. In your opinion is this on the cards or does the move to out of order execution mean too high a power penalty currently with that design.

    Thanks
  • Santoval - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    On average a new "small" ARM core is launched with every third "big" ARM core. A55 was not launched very recently, it launched along with the A75 core in 2017. Since the A77 cores are also intended to be paired with the A55 cores, the successor of A55 should be launched along with the A78 core -assuming it is called that way- which currently has the codename Hercules.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    The A65 won't be seen in mobile because SMT doesn't make sense in mobile, it's not energy efficient.

    We should expect a new small core along with the next major refresh from the Sophia team after A78/Hercules in 2 years.
  • name99 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    The slow cadence for small cores is REALLY delaying the pickup of ARM extensions. How long till ARM proper is shipping PAE and the SPECTRE-instructions in 8.5?
    They’ve got to see that this is no longer a sensible strategy!
  • peevee - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Given that even A76 has about the same perf/W as A55, do A55s even make any sense now?
    And SMT is a much cheaper way to take advantage of large back-end than a very complex OoO we have now.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Maybe at the top-end, but does A76 match A55 at lower power levels? Which is what A55 is optimised for?
  • saylick - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    All this hype about the large cores... Where's the love for an improved A55 with better perf/W without considering process benefits?
  • Wilco1 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Since the performance gap with the big cores widens so quickly, increasing performance of the little cores seems more important than further increasing perf/W. Note this years's 7+nm and next year's 5nm will help perf/W already.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    The smaller cores sit in the background doing background stuff. Work/energy is the key metric for them, and A55 is the best. It's tough to improve; A76 and A77 only match A55 on that score, at best
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    While I get the focus of the article and the comments here on what this means for smartphones, I think this is even bigger for efforts by Qualcomm and Huawei to break into the ultraportable market. I think that's what the 3 GHz target frequency ARM mentioned is for. The A76-based large Snapdragon chip is already a promising alternative to Intel's low-power lineup, so the evolutionary step up of the A77 likely makes it even more attractive. As for Huawei, it'll depend on how much of the tech has already been transferred from ARM, and how badly China will want a "home grown" (of sorts) alternative to Intel.
  • pugster - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Unless there is some settlement in the trade talks where Huawei can work with ARM again, I don't think Huawei will release an SOC with an A77 in it. Since Huawei has an architecture license from ARM already they could release optimized ARM soc that could rival the A77.
  • GTan - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    "Qualcomm has proclaimed a 45% leap in CPU performance compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 855 with Cortex-A75 cores, the biggest generational leap ever."

    There is a typo. It's the Snapdragon 845 with the Cortex A-75 cores, not the Snapdragon 855.
  • NetMage - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Perhaps the typo is A-75 should be A-76?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Yes, corrected.
  • ksec - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    So basically A77 7nm SoC will be about as fast as an 10nm A10 from Apple.

    Or in other words, if Apple discontinued iPhone 7 this year and lower the iPhone 8 price as their entry model, the iPhone 8 will as fast or faster than 99% of the Android Phones on the market.
  • Wilco1 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Cortex-A77 will match or beat A11. Cortex-A76 already scores around 3600 on GB4, so an extra 18% gives around 4300, right at the top end of A11.
  • Thala - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    An "A77 7nm SoC" would consist of 4 A77 cores, while "10nm A10" consists of 2 high performance Fusion cores - making the A77 SoC much faster than A10.

    You cannot use single core performance to reason about SoC performance without taking the number of cores into consideration.
  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    I wonder why do people make these pointless comparisons. You have an OS that doesn't allow you to do half the things you can do on an Android system, so what exactly is the use of a super high powered soc?

    Can you copy music and movies directly into your flash memory?
    Can you attach external memory using OTG?
    Can you use USB OTG peripherals like gamepads and keyboards?
    Can you install apps/software from outside of Apple's closed ecosystem?
    Can you get pointer support in iOS?
    Can you properly manage the files in your smartphone?
    Can your iphone seamlessly interface with your windows PC?
  • Phynaz - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link

    Did you know it’s 2019? 2007 wants their Apple hate back.
  • Valis - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link

    And 2007 wants its limited OS back. Not to mention the price for 720p devices.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    It's 2019, and iOS is still as restricted as it ever was.
  • jjj - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Will be interesting to see cloud providers adopting the server version. It's small,it's efficient, it's pretty fast, should be good business.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Server CPUs seem to take a lot longer to reach market; it's still only A72 and A73 stuff at the moment! Much less money for the necessary investment. But when A76 and A77 does reach the server (and maybe the desktop?) it's going to be very exciting.
  • Demaniax - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Can anyone tell me how to learn all of these things ? I mean how does a CPU made. What is a Pipeline ? What is branch prediction ? And all those things. I want to learn everything. But How ? Is there any online course ?
  • frenchy_2001 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cpu+design+class+free+online
    the links to edx and saylor.org would be interesting.
    It all depends on what your background is and how serious you are.
    You can find great resources online, but this is a big and very advanced domain, so you may need to follow intro level classes in digital circuits before being able to follow full architecture.
  • suvtab - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    A book on Computer Architecture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_architectur... will be a good start point. I personally recommend David Patterson's classical textbook "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach".
  • Santoval - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Quite frankly, moving from a 4-wide to a 6-wide(!) design in the front end doesn't sound as an "evolutionary" design to me. That's an incredibly wide front end, wider even than when the A76 moved from 3-wide to 4-wide. I never expected ARM to go that wide, not so fast anyway. I wonder if the thermals will be affected, while the clocks should normally be lower.
    The addition of a macro-op L0 cache and the reworking of the backend are also quite significant.
  • frenchy_2001 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    I think Andrei referred to it as an evolution compared to the huge jump from A75 to A76.
    But you are right, each generation since A72 has been fairly different from the previous one.

    The changes you pointed out also make more sense if you look at them for server/portable computers instead of phones.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Keep in mind that you can't just throw all those features in a core alone - the A76 was designed with A77 and Hercules in mind and in the pipeline.
  • peevee - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    "I wonder if the thermals will be affected, while the clocks should normally be lower."

    L0 MOP-cache eliminates 85% of the work here, so the new wide decoders will mostly sit idle, but quickly filling in the queue when a branch jumps out of L0 window.

    Main Sandy Bridge enhancement, finally. And makes total sense given that A8.2 became just about as huge as Sandy Bridge with its AVX1, necessitating huge power-hungry decoders. RISC my a$$...
  • Wardrive86 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Has Arm ever stated why they went back to an Architectural register file after using a physical register file for the A73 and A75? Its interesting that they get the performance they do with such a small one... relatively speaking
  • Wardrive86 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Not to double post but I wonder if it is just differing design philosophies between the Austin and Sophia teams.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Yes, it's an implementation/electrical engineering question between both teams.
  • blu42 - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Perhaps it could be more due to different design philosophies between Austin and Sophia design centres?
  • jcc5169 - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    It's so funny to me that Anandtech now goes out of its way to talk about everyone but AMD
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Beg your pardon?

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/14407/amd-ryzen-300...

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/14412/amd-teases-fi...

    And that's just in the last 36 hours.
  • Raqia - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Another interesting development in the big AX CPUs is that they've moved from a more complex cache hierarchy in the A10 to a 2 level hierarchy with a much bigger L2 since the A11 that had better bandwidth and latency; L1's were also further boosted in size and bandwidth in the A12. This likely accounts for the continuation of growth in single threaded benchmark scores but seems to indicate that the CPU complex is oriented toward client type workloads.

    ARM has gone full steam ahead with more multi-processing oriented cache designs with some SoCs sporting a further layer of L4 cache and server designs sporting sophisticated un-cores. Their ambitions seem rather different than Apple's and this year's A77's will likely be implemented into servers designs sometime soon.

    Apple's 3-wide OoOE little cores continue to be even more impressive than their big cores, and hold their own against the A73 in performance with much higher efficiency. One wonders if the 2-wide A73 or even the A75 could be tweaked and underclocked to be the "little" in future designs. It certainly fits the bill in terms of die area.
  • peevee - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    "The results is that the Kirin 980 as well as the Snapdragon 855 both represented major jumps over their predecessors. Qualcomm has proclaimed a 45% leap in CPU performance compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 855 with Cortex-A76 cores, the biggest generational leap ever."

    Wat?
  • peevee - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    "In the A77’s case the structure is 1.5K entries big, which if one would assume macro-ops having a similar 32-bit density as Arm instructions, would equate to about 48KB."

    You mean Kb, right? And of course this assumption is nonsense.
  • peevee - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    "web-browsing is the killer-app that happens to be floating point heavy"

    Why? Because ECMAScript has just one number type?
    I suspect WebAssembly would eliminate this problem.
  • ballsystemlord - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Spelling and grammar corrections:

    "Having less capacity would take reduce the hit-rate more significantly, while going for a larger cache would have diminishing returns."
    Extra word "take":
    "Having less capacity would reduce the hit-rate more significantly, while going for a larger cache would have diminishing returns."

    "...and again this imbalance with a more "fat" front-end bandwidth allows the core to hide to quickly hide branch bubbles and pipeline flushes."
    More extra words "to hide":
    "...and again this imbalance with a more "fat" front-end bandwidth allows the core to quickly hide branch bubbles and pipeline flushes."
  • sireangelus - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Are there any news or rumors regarding the succesor of the cortex a55? not even just working on reducing power consumption?
  • tuxRoller - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    "The combination of the brand-new microarchitecture alongside the major improvements that the 7nm TSMC process node has brought some of the biggest performance and efficiency jumps we’ve ever seen in the industry."

    Or, to paraphrase many a cynical AT commenter: same old incremental improvement, nothing exciting... where's my mr fusion?!!!
  • AshlayW - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link

    Can someone tell me how this stacks up to a high-performance X86 core, like Zen or Skylake please? If ARM is so powerful and efficient why are they not developing Desktop CPUs? Is it just because the software ecosystem is dominated by proprietary X86?
  • Wilco1 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    The IPC is higher than the latest x86 cores. There are Arm server CPUs which are competitive with Skylake and beat it on HPC applications in super computers. Currently you can buy desktops based on ThunderX2 and Ampere, see https://store.avantek.co.uk/arm-desktops.html .
  • Farfolomew - Thursday, June 6, 2019 - link

    I wish this were talked about more. As awesome as Zen2 is, and as cool as the story is regarding AMD finally getting on level playing field with Intel again (ie, circa 2004), in the back of my mind I find it a bit silly when all the while that's been happening, a better architecture in all regards has managed to catch up and pass x86. That should be where the computing industry focus is, and how Intel+AMD is planning on battling that threat.
  • Thala - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link

    For Windows it is a ecosystem and user perception problem. Many users and review websites expect ARM needs to beat x86 using x86 emulation to be viable - which is totally unrealistic. Instead they need to point out that ARM is already on level playing field regarding IPC with latest Intel/AMD cores while using significantly less power when they run proper native Win32 apps.
    In particular these new A77 cores should be able to trump Zen2 and Icelake when it comes to IPC.
  • adamo1139 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    Will you be covering Mali G77, which I think debuted with A77 according to ARM blog? OT: How I should pronounce Arm? Like an arm the limb or A.R.M?
  • adamo1139 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link

    Nevermind, I haven't seen that you already covered that lol
  • Raqia - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Thanks for your continued updates and excellent benchmarking work. I take it we won't see a >= 6-wide design until after Hercules?
  • ChrisGX - Thursday, June 6, 2019 - link

    "Arm promises energy efficiency of the A77 will remain the same as current-gen A76 SoCs."

    I do get the concern about elevated power usage while processing workloads but is that statement formally correct? Isn't the point of ARM's claims for its new chip that you get more work done for the same energy input? So, that means improved energy efficiency, unless I have missed something. The efficiency gain, in this case, doesn't take the form of a reduced rate of depletion of the battery but the reduced time it takes to complete processing workloads.

    Andrei certainly is right that the increased power draw of these new chips at peak performance is a real drawback. While processor designers must be after step improvements in that relationship - with peak performance maintained while knocking down power usage - no such improvements seem to be forthcoming in lieu of a silicon process shrink. And, even then, the improvements are pretty modest.
  • Javert89 - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Andrei as middle core in4+2+2confivs is the A77 better or A76 still a best option for middle?
  • AlyssaPatterson - Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - link

    Very well explained latest information about Arm’s new cortex- A77 CPU micro-architecture: Evolving performance. I am impressed with your post. I must say thank you for sharing wonderful update about CPU.
    - Alyssa
    http://www.secureassignmenthelp.com/economics-assi...
  • alysdexia - Monday, December 30, 2019 - link

    What is wrong with Anandtech? Can't even report spam.

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