Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

In the traditional PC market, the chip war has weakened. Intel consolidated its lead in technology and performance, bringing it close to monopoly, while AMD helped keep prices low. But as this week's Mobile World Congress showed, the battle to power billions of mobile devices will only intensify in the coming years. Chip makers are scrambling to add more cores to implement 64-bit computing, support higher-resolution display and better cameras, and integrate faster 4GLTE wireless.

Intel also discussed in detail the Atom Z35xx quad core, called Moore Field, which will be released later this year. In addition to doubling the kernel and cache, Moorfield will also run under 2.3GHz with enhanced Power VR graphics cards and faster memory support. Morfield will also work with XMM7260, the xmm 7260, Intel's first multimode demodulator to support LTE's advanced 6-level speed. At Mobile World Congress, Intel demonstrated that XMM7260 can achieve data rates of downlink 300Mbps and uplink 50Mbps. XMM7260 will go public in the second quarter. However, Intel still does not have a single chip, which has both an application processor and a baseband modem. To solve this problem, it plans to release a 22nm chip with Silvermont core and integrated 3G modem later this year, and then release a version with 14nm Airmont core and 4GLTE sometime next year.

These are all important steps taken by Intel in mobile, but there is still one thing missing: the main design wins. At the Mobile Word conference, Intel did not announce any specific design victories for Merifield, although it promised to acquire equipment from several companies in the second quarter. XMM7160 is already in use in some versions of Samsung's Galaxy Tab3. At Mobile World Congress, Asustek announced an update to Fonepad7, with its LTE chip used in conjunction with the old clover Trail processor. Acer, Dell and Lenovo are also developing devices with LTE modems, Intel said. The company also announced multi-year agreements with Asustek, Dell, Foxconn and Lenovo to use its chips to develop smartphones and tablets, but did not provide details.

What's even more surprising is that nothing seems to have happened so far, Bay Trail, which first launched in the third quarter of last year, won about 140 design awards. There are not many Bay Trail tablets running the Windows operating system, especially Acer, Dell and Lenovo, but to my surprise, we haven't heard more about Android tablets this week. Intel has previously said that Android tablets will not be available until the second quarter because Bay Trail was originally targeting Windows, but even so, I expect to hear more so far. Intel is also wrong as the Android market shifts to low-cost tablets. Cherry Trail is the 14nm version of Bay Trail, Bay Trail is the new core product of Airmont, and Intel graphics cards will be updated later this year, which will help reduce manufacturing costs.

The situation of Qualcomm is very different. It dominates the mobile chip market, and its Snapdragon processor integrates 3G and 4GLTE wireless. The company needs to defend its territory at the high end of the market, high-end markets such as Intel, Samsung and Nvidia, and the low end of fast-growing chip designers in Asia such as MediaTek, Spreadtrum and Allwinner.

At the high end, Qualcomm announced a small update to Snapdragon800. The 801 is manufactured by the same 28nm process and has the same 32-bit Krait 400 quad-core CPU, epinephrine 330 graphics card and integrated 150MbpsLTE. But the CPU runs at 2.45G Hz,GPU maximum output 578MHz, and the memory bus is faster. Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2 announced this week that they will use Snapdragon801 smartphones. Qualcomm previously announced Snapdragon805, which has a more powerful graphics card, but the chip won't be available until later this year.

At the low end, Qualcomm announced the launch of two 64-bit chips for mid-range smartphones. Snapdragon610 has four Cortex-A53CPU cores and Snapdragon615 has eight A53 cores divided into two clusters. Little handle. This is different from Qualcomm in several ways. First, in addition to the lowest-end chips, the company usually designs its own CPU kernel instead of using ARM design. Second, Qualcomm openly doubts many of its functions, including 64-bit computing, eight-core CPUs and large CPUs. Little handle. But now, in the fastest-growing part of the smartphone market, time to market and lower design costs may outweigh the value of the customized core. Qualcomm can still distinguish its chips by its adrenaline graphics, especially its integrated long-term evolution modems. Qualcomm previously announced its first 64-bit chip, the low-end Snapdragon410. All three chips should be sampled in the third quarter of 2014 and displayed in the device in the fourth quarter. During the exhibition, Microsoft's Joe Bell Fio announced that this spring's Windows Phone update will add support for the entire Snapdragon series, including 200s and 400s, which will lead to lower-cost models.

Samsung announces two new Exynos processors for smartphones and tablets

The device. Exynos5422 is an updated version of its existing 8-core chip (Exynos5420), which combines four 2.1GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.5GHz Cortex-A7 cores. Small unit heterogeneous multiprocessing configuration-means that any combination of up to eight cores can be used at once according to the task. It uses the same Mali-T628MP6 graphics. Exynos5260, which has six total CPU cores (two 1.7GHz A15 and four 1.3GHz A7s), also has heterogeneous multiprocessing, which is a more interesting because it should provide a good performance and power balance on cheaper devices. But both are largely incremental using Samsung's current 28nm manufacturing process and ARMv732-bit core, although Samsung has told CNET it will have 64-bit chips later this year. Exynos5422 will be used for some versions of Galaxy S5, while Exynos5260 will be used for Galaxy Note3Neo.

After a high-profile CES, Nvidia was relatively calm at Mobile World Congress. TegraK1 is the first mobile processor it uses in PC graphics with a Kepler architecture, and it didn't launch until later this year. The company added i500LTE Category 3 modems to the Tegra Note7 tablet design and announced that Wiko Mobile, a French mobile phone company, will be the first to deliver smartphones with Tegra4i, the first chip of Nvidia, with an integrated version of the i500. LG said it would also use Tegra4i in its version of G2Mini for South America. But these are relatively small announcements. Last year, Nvidia seemed to focus on entering mainstream smartphones, delaying the launch of Tegra4 to develop Tegra4i rapidly. Recently, the company said that the Tegra, which started with "super phones", is now aimed at tablets, set-top boxes and smart TVs, as well as cars, and that mainstream phones are a "non-focus".

Competitor ImaginationTechnologies used the show to reveal in a detailed blog post that its top PowerVR GX6650 graphics will have 192 cores-just like TegraK1-and claim that PowerVR will provide better performance and power efficiency. Since neither is available, we will have to wait for a while to see how they are really stacked. Also keep in mind that both companies refer to the graphics core, not the CPU core, and the definition of being the graphics core varies from company to company.

MediaTek unveiled its first 64-bit chip. MT6572 and MT6732 both use the same Cortex-A53 multicore CPU, support heterogeneous multiprocessing, Mali-T760 graphics and integrated 150Mbps 4GLTE.. The difference is that MT6572 has 8 A53 cores of 2.0GHz and MT6732 has 4 A53 cores of 1.5GHz. These won't be available until the end of the year, but MediaTek has another 8-core processor, 32-bit MT6595, which should be launched in the first half of this year.

All the winners also announced a 32-bit eight-core chip, UltraOctaA80, which combines four Cortex-A7s and four Cortex-A15s with Imagination's Power VRG6230 graphics. All the winners said devices using the A80 would be available "in the coming months". Marvell announced its first 64-bit processor, which integrates LTE multi-mode modulator ArmadaPXA1928, which uses four A53 cores, such as MediaTek's MT6732. Finally, Spreadtrum announced a chipset, SC681, which it said would make the $25 smartphone run Mozilla's Fire fox operating system.

From a technical point of view, the benefits of eight-core processors or 64-bit computing in tablets are unclear. After all, iPadAir does a good job of using dual-core chips. Google has not even released a 64-bit version of Android (Android)-although this may change at Google I Android O in June-32-bit applications will be available for a long time. But what the specification is in mobile sales, as long as this is the case, the chip war will continue.

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