As of today (August 2014);
there are a several smartphone options that the consumers have to choose from. However when it comes to making one of yours it is an uphill task. Fix a budget
of yours; search for the best possible deal for the best possible available configuration
can be a daunting task.
Based on the top
notch technology available in the market; I have listed below a few useful bits
of information that can be used as a reference while making a selection for the
top notch/mid-tier device. I have also tried to predict based on the current trend
as to where the market is moving:
Processor:
There are several
vendors that provide a viable option in terms of processing speeds to the
smartphone assemblers. There are the likes of Mediatek (MT), Qualcomm, nVdia
are some of the top notch players in this domain.
The latest powerful
processor amongst the lot (for smartphones) that is available is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset.
It is clocked at
2.5GHz and is a variant to the 800 processor. Now there is not much of a
difference between the 800 and 801 chipset except the fact that the 801 chipset
provides an enhanced support to the following:
- Additional MegaPixel support to the camera
- Higher post processing speed of the images
- Dedicated hardware for dual-sim
- Improved graphics by boosting the performance of Adreno 330GPU
To sum up, 801
offers a better performance boost of CPU, GPU, DSP, camera sensor and memory
components (higher SD speed support). It does utilize the low-power mobile
experience by switching on just the right desired processing engines. However
one can have a tradeoff between the performance vs proce as there is not much
to choose between the two.
Qualcomm:
The
801 chipset is based on the same ARMv7 architecture for the quadcore assembly
of CPU(Cortex-A9) and I think until the CPU is not upgraded to the ARMv8
architecture; there is hardly to choose between the 800 vs 801 (except for some
better performance and lower power requirements)
This
brings us to the future of this chipset. ARM has announced its latest processor
chips the Cortex-A53/57 chips which will have the 64-bit support. This means
added camera resolution support; better support for LTE; better power management techniques wherein
the cores not required at a particular time/moment can be momentarily turned
off thus offloading the idle processor. This is a bigger leap in terms of
performance and power improvements. Qulacomm's next generation chipset which
will be available starting Feb2015 will be based on this architecture and I
suppose it would be better to invest in devices having this chipset instead of
migrating from the 800 to 801. These chipsets with the arm v8 architecture
support will be termed as 808 and 810 chipset.
For
the mid-tier segment or rather for the lower end market; the Qualcomm
Snapdragon 400 Krait quad core chipset is a bet that the company offers. Many
of the OEM's like the Motorola rode high with its Moto G and Moto E having this
chipset on board. It is being clocked at 1.3GHz and usually coupled with 1GB
RAM.
Nvidia:
On
the other hand NVidia has come up with a Tegra k1 - 192 core chipset (based on
the nvidia Kepler architecture) which kind of blows away the Snapdragon 801
processor chipset. However, this is currently limited to only tablets as I
suppose the issue would be with the power management. One think to note here is
that the 192 core is for the GPU while the CPU cores remain at the quad core
assembly + 1 (the additional core acts as the battery saver core). This is
possibly the fastest chipset OEM available in
the market with the likes of Xiaomi MI-pad and the nVidia's homegrown
Tegra K1 SHIELD tablet using it. I think with some modifications to the
chipset; if NVidia can come up with a solution to tackle the power issues, I
think it can easily beat the Qualcomm's 800/801 chipset which has been gaining
lot of accolades. On the other hand,
some reports do suggest that it is the cost factor that is barring this beast
to be available under the hood for the smartphones. For installing the Tegra K1
chip; a device would need a perquisite of Icera 500 modem for LTE and 3G
connectivity which would add to the overall cost of the motherboard. Not sure
if Nvidia and its partners will bring it to smartphones or keep it limited to
tablets for now.
Conclusion:
Not
even comparing the MediaTek chipset as I am not a great fan of MediaTek since
even the octa-core assembly of MT chipsets lags the performance compared to its
Nvidia or Qualcomm's counterparts.
Speaking
about Smartphones, the current chipset available is the Qualcomm's 801 which is
shipped along with almost all the flagship devices from many of the OEM
partners. However if one is looking for a device which comes with a 800 chipset
at a lower proce point; I think it would be a better bargain as there is not
much of a difference between the two. Qualcomm's 805 chipset is a further
enhancement to the 801 but not many partneres have opted for it as I guess
probably the 808 and 810 chipset which will be avaiable later this year would
rule the markets for the next couple of years atleast unless Nvidia has some
other plans with their Tegra K1 chipset!
In
tablets however, the nvidia Tegra K1 is the best available option. However it
is now yet available with all the partners but currently only with the Xiaomi
MI pad and Nvidia's SHIELD tablet. But we should see more of it with other
players as well soon.
Future of Mobile Processors - A possibility explored:
The smartphones and
the tablets enjoy the fact that they do not have to go through the cycle of
evolution that the regular desktop PCs have went through. There is no need to
re-invent the wheel, but rather customize the already available technology
features according to the need. For example, the 64-bit architecture was
introduced much earlier by the AMD chipset in early days of 2000, whereas the
ARM v8 architecture which will be rolled out later this year or early next year
will now feature a 64-bit architecture. Ofcourse it has lot of additional
features like power management amongst the many; but the base remains the same.
From how the technology trend is moving; I think we will witness the desktop
and the mobile market to merge at some point within the next couple of years.
A step towards that
would possibly be with the use of FPGA's to offload the CPU for some
operations. As was recently announced by Intel that it's new Xeon processor
will feature a Xeon-FPGA combo. However,
the power consumption still poses a threat to the tie-up but with a tradeoff in
it in desktop and servers; I think the industry would soon see this merger in
the mobile domain as well as FPGA has the capability to improve the performance
by almost 10x in certain scenarios. Now
one can easily argue as to why not just keep adding the cores like the quad,
octa which are making the news currently for improving performance; but there
is a limitation to the number of cores that one can add to a ASIC chip. The
limitation is again the power consumption. The more the number of cores; the
more the power is drained from the battery. Thus we are witnessing multiple
innovations in various fields including improving the charge storage in
batteries; architectural aspect of the chipsets, etc. I still am not convinced that apart from some
gaming and video intensive applications there are other applications that do a
justice to the multi-core system. In short there are only a few apps that
require such a high configuration.
Instead I feel would
it be a better idea to add more RAM and improve the speed of the sluggish RAM's
which actually store all the information required?Adding more RAM certainly
does help in multi-tasking. When the processor seeks for this information; it
must be delivered at much greater speeds that it does currently?
With these advents I
am sure a powerful system at your fingertips is surely in the reckoning!!
