Samsung unveils 20nm octa-core Exynos 5430 processor

[Nineshadow]

Samsung made the Galaxy Alpha official yesterday, and apart from being the first metallic Android smartphone from the Korean manufacturer, the Galaxy Alpha is also the first to be powered by Samsung’s Exynos 5430 SoC. Today, Samsung has released details on its new mobile processor. As expected, the Exynos 5430 is an octa-core chip (with four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz, four Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 1.3 GHz, and the Mali T628MP6 GPU), but it’s distinct from existing Exynos chips as it is the first to be built on Samsung’s new 20nm process, which the company says offers up to 25 percent less power consumption compared to SoCs built on a 28nm process while not compromising on performance.

 

The Exynos 5430 also supports big.LITTLE HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) processing – in simple terms, this means that all the eight cores of the processor can be active at the same time, and can also be individually turned on and off as and when required. Furthermore, the Exynos 5430 supports display resolutions of WQHD (2560×1440) and WQXGA (2560×1600) – the Galaxy Alpha might have an average resolution of 1280×720, but it looks like Samsung’s newest Exynos chip won’t be left wanting for power on high-resolution devices (it’s too bad the Galaxy Tab S is powered by the older Exynos 5420, resulting in a somewhat laggy experience.)

 

Samsung hasn’t published full specifications of the latest Exynos chipset, though you can hit up the source link for all the official details that are available as of now. Before someone asks, we should point out that the upcoming Galaxy Note 4 will be powered by the Exynos 5433 processor, and the Exynos 5430 will likely be reserved for devices that fall a tad below Samsung’s flagship phones and tablets.

 

Source <- Check the original Samsung link

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Interesting.

[Deletive]

This should sell more units than the s5.

[Clyne]

I wonder what will next year phones will be like since the note 4 will a octa core cpu?

[Sonefiler]

Fucking hell, they're the people that TSMC is prioritizing. That's why we don't get 20nm GPU's this year

[Deletive]

Fucking hell, they're the people that TSMC is prioritizing. That's why we don't get 20nm GPU's this year

Nvidia can wait... Apple and Samsung cannot... anyways samsung isn't even using TSMC, they have their own production line.

[Bsmith]

please change the text colour(or color for that matter) for dark theme users.

also, why the heck do you need a octa core in a tablet/phone?

[SuperfastJellyfish]

please change the text colour(or color for that matter) for dark theme users.

also, why the heck do you need a octa core in a tablet/phone?

 

I'm probably wrong, but I remember reading a while ago that it's not technically a true octacore. The SoC is two quad cores together, one being more powerful, and ergo more power hungry than the other. The two different CPU's are used interchangeably when the user is doing different tasks to improve battery life. There is no way that Android could make use of more than 4 cores at any given time, I don't think.

[steffen_anywhere]

Fucking hell, they're the people that TSMC is prioritizing. That's why we don't get 20nm GPU's this year

 

Well, money rules the world. The first 20nm processors from TSMC were shipped to Apple... Then, all the other mainstream mega-corporations will follow. It is the way it works, unless Nvidia cares to get into semiconductor manufacturing which is VERY unlikely.

 

EDIT: And yes, not everyone uses TSMC. Apple does...Samsung doesn't. Neither does Intel...

[LAwLz]

I'm probably wrong, but I remember reading a while ago that it's not technically a true octacore. The SoC is two quad cores together, one being more powerful, and ergo more power hungry than the other. The two different CPU's are used interchangeably when the user is doing different tasks to improve battery life. There is no way that Android could make use of more than 4 cores at any given time, I don't think.

Your post is correct that it is two quad core clusters glued together. I don't see how that doesn't make it a "true octacore" though. The OS can scheduled tasks to all 8 cores at the same time. There is nothing stopping a single program for using all of the cores.

The first few Exynos Octa chips used what's called "cluster migration" which was "you're either using the 4 low power cores, or the 4 big performance cores". This is HMP which means that all cores are always available to the OS scheduler, and the OS knows about the different properties of each cluster.

 

 

Oh and speaking about TSMC, they have actually already provided Samsung with some 20nm parts. Samsung has their own fabs for the Exynos stuff, not the Snapdragon 805 is manufactured by TSMC and it has a 20nm modem in it.

 

 

 

Woho it has hardware accelerated HEVC decoding! I love seeing it get more and more support. Hopefully we will see release groups start encoding in it.

There is quite a serious lack of other data on the SoC though. Oh well... I am not that interested anyway. It's only like half a year left until we will see Cortex A53 and A57 chips and they will most likely blow this out of the water in terms of performance and power efficiency. It will be very interesting to see how the move to 20nm will affect battery life though. The 25% claim from Samsung sounds good, but I'd rather see real world numbers.

[Bsmith]

I'm probably wrong, but I remember reading a while ago that it's not technically a true octacore. The SoC is two quad cores together, one being more powerful, and ergo more power hungry than the other. The two different CPU's are used interchangeably when the user is doing different tasks to improve battery life. There is no way that Android could make use of more than 4 cores at any given time, I don't think.

 

Your post is correct that it is two quad core clusters glued together. I don't see how that doesn't make it a "true octacore" though. The OS can scheduled tasks to all 8 cores at the same time. There is nothing stopping a single program for using all of the cores.

The first few Exynos Octa chips used what's called "cluster migration" which was "you're either using the 4 low power cores, or the 4 big performance cores". This is HMP which means that all cores are always available to the OS scheduler, and the OS knows about the different properties of each cluster.

 

 

Oh and speaking about TSMC, they have actually already provided Samsung with some 20nm parts. Samsung has their own fabs for the Exynos stuff, not the Snapdragon 805 is manufactured by TSMC and it has a 20nm modem in it.

 

 

 

Woho it has hardware accelerated HEVC decoding! I love seeing it get more and more support. Hopefully we will see release groups start encoding in it.

There is quite a serious lack of other data on the SoC though. Oh well... I am not that interested anyway. It's only like half a year left until we will see Cortex A53 and A57 chips and they will most likely blow this out of the water in terms of performance and power efficiency. It will be very interesting to see how the move to 20nm will affect battery life though. The 25% claim from Samsung sounds good, but I'd rather see real world numbers.

 

so actually they are shitting on the audience by a nice name, while it actually isnt that way.

bloody companies these days.

[LAwLz]

so actually they are shitting on the audience by a nice name, while it actually isnt that way.

bloody companies these days.

How are they shitting on their audience?

[Bsmith]

How are they shitting on their audience?

 

talking about a octacore chip while it arew actually 2 chips wich work together as a single one, where it probarlly isn't possible to get acces to all 8 cores at the same time.

[ShadowCaptain]

talking about a octacore chip while it arew actually 2 chips wich work together as a single one, where it probarlly isn't possible to get acces to all 8 cores at the same time.

 

Erm did you even read @LAwLz post? clearly stating that all 8 cores can be addressed simultaneously  or as separate clusters depending on the application

[LAwLz]

Erm did you even read @LAwLz post? clearly stating that all 8 cores can be addressed simultaneously  or as separate clusters depending on the application

Exactly

There are three different ways of implementing big.LITTLE

 

Cluster migration - This is what Samsung used first. The OS only sees one cluster at any moment and the CPU decides which cluster is active. If you inspect the cores on for example a Samsung Galaxy S 4 (Exynos model) you will only see four cores at any moment. Once the CPU feels like it needs more power it will automatically switch to the high performance cluster. The only benefit of this is that it's very simple. The OS doesn't have to know about the properties of the different cores and it's the simplest to implement.

The Exynos Octa 5410 is this mode (which also had a broken and thus disabled bus between the clusters which should have been used to migrate the cache when a switched occurred. So instead the 5410 had to delete everything in the cache and then fetch it from RAM whenever it wanted to change cluster).

The Exynos Octa 5420 was released in this mode but the CCI (cache coherency interconnect) was fixed (and some other changes was made).

 

In-kernel switcher (also called CPU migration) - In this mode you end up with virtual cores. Let's use the Exynos Octa as an example. If you have four low power and four high power cores you would end up with four virtual cores. Each virtual core is made up of one high performance and one low performance physical core. So the OS will go "hey core 0, here comes a big thread" so the big core will be started. If the OS says "hey core 2, here comes a small thread" then the small core will be activated. However, just like with cluster migration, you can NOT have all cores active at the same time. In this mode you can only send threads to as many pairs of cores as you got. If each pair is made out of one little and one big core, and you got 8 cores in total then you can only have 4 threads active at any time.

The Tegra 3 and 4 uses a variation of this mode for the little companion core. It only has one small core and 4 big cores though so I am not quite sure how they are paired up.

 

 

Heterogeneous multi-processing (aka global task scheduling, aka MP, aka HMP) - The OS sees all cores and know their properties (low power or high performance) and it can mix/match however it wants. This new Exynos octa uses it so the OS can use 1 little core and 3 big cores if it wants. It can use 4 little cores and 2 big cores if it want. It can use only one little, or only one big core if it wants. It can use all 4 little cores and all 4 big cores if it want. It is just like a normal 8 core CPU but the different cores have different performance levels. This is by far the best version of big.LITTLE. I read somewhere that the Exynos Octa 5420 was updated to this mode but I don't know if any device with it actually got the update.

The ones that use this mode is:

(possibly) Exynos Octa 5420

Exynos Octa 5422

Exynos Hexa 5260

Exynos Octa 5430

 

Global task scheduling is a true octa core, and that's what this newly announced SoC uses.

[ShadowCaptain]

SNIP. lot of snip for a bit paragraph

 

That is really interesting to read

 

And here is me knowing fuck all about anything

[Fred Castellum]

-snip-

Dang you really know your shit when it comes to smartphones. Maybe I should consult with you in regards to phones lol.... 

[Bsmith]

Erm did you even read @LAwLz post? clearly stating that all 8 cores can be addressed simultaneously  or as separate clusters depending on the application

 

 

Exactly

There are three different ways of implementing big.LITTLE

 

Cluster migration - This is what Samsung used first. The OS only sees one cluster at any moment and the CPU decides which cluster is active. If you inspect the cores on for example a Samsung Galaxy S 4 (Exynos model) you will only see four cores at any moment. Once the CPU feels like it needs more power it will automatically switch to the high performance cluster. The only benefit of this is that it's very simple. The OS doesn't have to know about the properties of the different cores and it's the simplest to implement.

The Exynos Octa 5410 is this mode (which also had a broken and thus disabled bus between the clusters which should have been used to migrate the cache when a switched occurred. So instead the 5410 had to delete everything in the cache and then fetch it from RAM whenever it wanted to change cluster).

The Exynos Octa 5420 was released in this mode but the CCI (cache coherency interconnect) was fixed (and some other changes was made).

 

In-kernel switcher (also called CPU migration) - In this mode you end up with virtual cores. Let's use the Exynos Octa as an example. If you have four low power and four high power cores you would end up with four virtual cores. Each virtual core is made up of one high performance and one low performance physical core. So the OS will go "hey core 0, here comes a big thread" so the big core will be started. If the OS says "hey core 2, here comes a small thread" then the small core will be activated. However, just like with cluster migration, you can NOT have all cores active at the same time. In this mode you can only send threads to as many pairs of cores as you got. If each pair is made out of one little and one big core, and you got 8 cores in total then you can only have 4 threads active at any time.

The Tegra 3 and 4 uses a variation of this mode for the little companion core. It only has one small core and 4 big cores though so I am not quite sure how they are paired up.

 

 

Heterogeneous multi-processing (aka global task scheduling, aka MP, aka HMP) - The OS sees all cores and know their properties (low power or high performance) and it can mix/match however it wants. This new Exynos octa uses it so the OS can use 1 little core and 3 big cores if it wants. It can use 4 little cores and 2 big cores if it want. It can use only one little, or only one big core if it wants. It can use all 4 little cores and all 4 big cores if it want. It is just like a normal 8 core CPU but the different cores have different performance levels. This is by far the best version of big.LITTLE. I read somewhere that the Exynos Octa 5420 was updated to this mode but I don't know if any device with it actually got the update.

The ones that use this mode is:

(possibly) Exynos Octa 5420

Exynos Octa 5422

Exynos Hexa 5260

Exynos Octa 5430

 

Global task scheduling is a true octa core, and that's what this newly announced SoC uses.

 

 

That is really interesting to read

 

And here is me knowing fuck all about anything

 

thanks for claryfing it, seems i misunderstood it quite a bit.

[AlTech]

Nvidia can wait... Apple and Samsung cannot... anyways samsung isn't even using TSMC, they have their own production line.

Samsung uses their own 20nm / 28nm High K Metal Gate they have devolped.

[AlTech]

Samsung uses their own 20nm / 28nm High K Metal Gate they have devolped.

As opposed to TSMCs High Power Mobile

[patrickjp93]

@LAwLz

 

I'm always impressed by your architecture knowledge.

[Deletive]

Samsung uses their own 20nm / 28nm High K Metal Gate they have devolped.

 

 

As opposed to TSMCs High Power Mobile

Thought so  

[LAwLz]

@LAwLz

 

I'm always impressed by your architecture knowledge.

Don't be. I am really out of date on desktop stuff these days. From what I've seen it seems like you know quite a lot more than me about that.

[LukeTim]

Your post is correct that it is two quad core clusters glued together. I don't see how that doesn't make it a "true octacore" though. The OS can scheduled tasks to all 8 cores at the same time. There is nothing stopping a single program for using all of the cores.

The first few Exynos Octa chips used what's called "cluster migration" which was "you're either using the 4 low power cores, or the 4 big performance cores". This is HMP which means that all cores are always available to the OS scheduler, and the OS knows about the different properties of each cluster.

 

 

Oh and speaking about TSMC, they have actually already provided Samsung with some 20nm parts. Samsung has their own fabs for the Exynos stuff, not the Snapdragon 805 is manufactured by TSMC and it has a 20nm modem in it.

 

 

 

Woho it has hardware accelerated HEVC decoding! I love seeing it get more and more support. Hopefully we will see release groups start encoding in it.

There is quite a serious lack of other data on the SoC though. Oh well... I am not that interested anyway. It's only like half a year left until we will see Cortex A53 and A57 chips and they will most likely blow this out of the water in terms of performance and power efficiency. It will be very interesting to see how the move to 20nm will affect battery life though. The 25% claim from Samsung sounds good, but I'd rather see real world numbers.

 

Hardware HEVC? Wow.... that's the first I've heard of in a mobile device. That's exciting. It doesn't have hardware HEVC encode though, does it? That would be even more impressive... and very useful for the 4K video.

 

Also, is it really the OS that does the scheduling between clusters? Finding it hard to understand how that would even work... Seems more sensible that it is largely automatic scheduling on hardware but the OS can change "settings" (for want of a better word) and control it that way... Then again, CPUs are not my area of expertise.

[LAwLz]

Hardware HEVC? Wow.... that's the first I've heard of in a mobile device. That's exciting. It doesn't have hardware HEVC encode though, does it? That would be even more impressive... and very useful for the 4K video.

Qualcomm actually beat Samsung to it. The Snapdragon 805 also supports hardware accelerated HEVC decoding (and is already shipping in two devices). The Snapdragon 810 will also support encoding (for video recording and such). I am very excited for that SoC.

 

 

Also, is it really the OS that does the scheduling between clusters? Finding it hard to understand how that would even work... Seems more sensible that it is largely automatic scheduling on hardware but the OS can change "settings" (for want of a better word) and control it that way... Then again, CPUs are not my area of expertise.

Do you mean in cluster migration or global task scheduling?

In cluster migration the scheduler only sees 1 cluster at a time and the switch is done automatically by the hardware when the OS asks for a certain voltage/frequency. In global task scheduling the scheduler sees all cores and has to make the decision, which is why it's more complicated and wasn't used in the first generation of big.LITTLE SoCs.

So yes, it works like you described it for cluster migration.

[LukeTim]

Qualcomm actually beat Samsung to it. The Snapdragon 805 also supports hardware accelerated HEVC decoding (and is already shipping in two devices). The Snapdragon 810 will also support encoding (for video recording and such). I am very excited for that SoC.

 

 

Do you mean in cluster migration or global task scheduling?

In cluster migration the scheduler only sees 1 cluster at a time and the switch is done automatically by the hardware when the OS asks for a certain voltage/frequency. In global task scheduling the scheduler sees all cores and has to make the decision, which is why it's more complicated and wasn't used in the first generation of big.LITTLE SoCs.

So yes, it works like you described it for cluster migration.

 

Wow... that 810 looks damned impressive. I only wish it had PowerVR Rogue in it (Nvidia Kepler would be great but that will never happen for obvious reasons)... though I know that Qualcomm have Adreno and they're not going to drop it now.

 

Yeah, I guess I am just unsure in general how multicore scheduling works. I did a little on scheduling at University when talking about RTOSes... but certainly nothing so complex as multicore, never mind multi cluster. And like I said, CPUs are not really my forte. I work in video coding.