Qualcomm is making a new Wear OS chip

[Eduard the weeb]

Original Article from the Verge - https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/8/17334228/qualcomm-snapdragon-wear-smartwatch-chip-coming

 

So its looks like Qualcomm may finally be moving from the Snapdragon 2100

 

Quote

As you may know, all Wear OS watches that come out today have little option but to use the same core chip inside: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100, which dates back to February 2016. Some have argued that this is what’s holding the entire Wear OS — née Android Wear— platform back. I personally think that Wear OS has deeper fundamental issues than the processor it runs on, but in any case it turns out that Qualcomm does plan to address the problem this year.

Pankaj Kedia, Qualcomm’s senior wearables director, tells Wareable that the company will announce updated watch-focused silicon this fall alongside a flagship device, with “several partners” set to release Wear OS watches based on the new chips by the holidays. Kedia says the third-generation processors will be “designed from the ground up for a no-compromises smartwatch experience,” supposedly enabling smaller watches with better battery life.

 

 

Mr.Keida also said that this should change the Wear OS ecosystem alot, with things like improving the always on clock, and also saying you should consider waiting it out if you have been thinking about getting a new Wear device, but other than that not much else is know

[Sniperfox47]

Ultimately this isn't going to change anything.

 

It's most likely going to have updated Bluetooth and Wifi, a slightly newer process node, a higher efficiency GPU, a newer LTE modem, and maybe a tensor processor. Yawn.

 

Unless they really go off the rails and make it on a modern process node or with some secretive custom ARM core, it's going to be a lot of the same. Qualcomm isn't exactly known for their innovation...

[DrMacintosh]

I wonder how it compared to the chips Apple uses the the Apple Watch. 

 

The design of the Apple Watch, internally at least, is very impressive. 

[Sniperfox47]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

I wonder how it compared to the chips Apple uses the the Apple Watch. 

 

The design of the Apple Watch, internally at least, is very impressive. 

The Apple S3 and the SD Wear 2100 are *very* similar already. The S3 has a slightly better modem on the LTE model (Qualcomm's x7 vs their X5 on the SDW2100) but other than that they're pretty much identical.

 

The S3 has the nand storage straight on the SoC, vs using eMMC for the SDW2100 but that shouldn't matter too much since they both use slower lower power nand anyways.

 

I'm not sure if the S3 supports 5Ghz WiFi but the SDW2100 only supports 2.4GHz for power reasons.

[Guest The Viking]

I still wonder why all watches use Qualcomm's watch-specific chips? Is there any reason? Software? Battery? Size? Or just nobody else wants to bother?

 

Not really sure we need better chips anyway, I mean, it's a watch. My gen1 smartwatch is doing very well, and I don't see any point in buying a new, upgraded model.

 

ok huawei did say that in 2019 we could be getting a new one but...nothing confirmed.

[ScratchCat]

Essentially this is an announcement for the announcement of a very niche product, at best we will get a small boost in performance and better efficiency - nothing particularly exciting.

 

47 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

It's most likely going to have updated Bluetooth and Wifi, a slightly newer process node, a higher efficiency GPU, a newer LTE modem, and maybe a tensor processor. Yawn.

Smartwatches should not sacrifice efficiency for performance as in 99% if cases the watch will have access to a high performance phone to which it can offload any complex processing. Applications which require a low latency such as games are not for smartwatches hence latency will not be an issue. A tensor processor would just be ridiculous - there are few use cases for TPUs on phones apart from photographs anyway which could not be done with similar effect on the GPU while the phone was plugged in.

[ScratchCat]

1 minute ago, The Viking said:

I still wonder why all watches use Qualcomm's watch-specific chips? Is there any reason? Software? Battery? Size? Or just nobody else wants to bother?

 

Not really sure we need better chips anyway, I mean, it's a watch. My gen1 smartwatch is doing very well, and I don't see any point in buying a new, upgraded model.

 

ok huawei did say that in 2019 we could be getting a new one but...nothing confirmed.

Pretty much Apple owns the watch market (40% market share or so) so any custom design would not be financially viable.

[Eduard the weeb]

1 minute ago, ScratchCat said:

Pretty much Apple owns the watch market (40% market share or so) so any custom design would not be financially viable.

wait do fit bits use Qualcomm chips because I assume there still pretty big in the watch scene.

[Sniperfox47]

5 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

Smartwatches should not sacrifice efficiency for performance as in 99% if cases the watch will have access to a high performance phone to which it can offload any complex processing. Applications which require a low latency such as games are not for smartwatches hence latency will not be an issue. A tensor processor would just be ridiculous - there are few use cases for TPUs on phones apart from photographs anyway which could not be done with similar effect on the GPU while the phone was plugged in.

That's literally the point of sticking a TPU on the watch... they're way more efficient for tensor applications than the GPU would be, especially an ancient OpenGL ES 3.0 GPU.

 

And what are you talking about? Tensor is a huuuuuuge focus on Android right now? There's a reason Google was pushing MLkit out immediately after IO. It's a big deal for a lot of developers.

 

But perhaps the biggest reason to include it is for local acceleration and efficiency improvements for Google Assistant. Assistant is currently being pushed by the media as one of the last saving graces for WearOS for a reason. Having a fully functional version of Google Assistant with you everywhere on a cellular smartwatch could be just the push that smartwatches need to reach a wider audience. A TPU would let them do more of the language recognition on device efficiently and drastically improve both performance and power efficiency of assistant interactions on the watch.

[Guest The Viking]

19 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

Pretty much Apple owns the watch market (40% market share or so) so any custom design would not be financially viable.

so that's why android watches all rely on a single chip from qualcomm? kinda sad...

16 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

wait do fit bits use Qualcomm chips because I assume there still pretty big in the watch scene.

tried to find the info, seems fitbit doesn't make "watches" so they just use trackers and such? not propietary chip but not qualcomm either?

 

weird, I try to find the chip these sport things use but no website has the info. Seems it's literally just trackers to monitor your stuff, communicated to your phone and your phone app does the rest? 

 

yup, seems fitbit is just a basic pcb with various chips from Texas instruments and some other company to handle the display. No Qualcomm, but nothing propietary either.

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, ScratchCat said:

Pretty much Apple owns the watch market (40% market share or so) so any custom design would not be financially viable.

Not as though Android users have a choice though. For them, Apple Watch doesn't exist.

[Guest The Viking]

6 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Not as though Android users have a choice though. For them, Apple Watch doesn't exist.

doesn't work on android phones  so yeah, no choice really, for us it doesn't "exist". It's there, sure, but eh, unless you switch...

 

Unless tizen is a choice? not even sure it works on android.

 

on the other hand, android watches do work on ios, so apple users do have a choice.

[ScratchCat]

1 hour ago, Eduard the weeb said:

wait do fit bits use Qualcomm chips because I assume there still pretty big in the watch scene.

I would doubt it, a full ARM core would be overkill for a fitbit - it is essentially on the level of a microcontroller as far as I can tell.

23 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Not as though Android users have a choice though. For them, Apple Watch doesn't exist.

The Apple Watch does work with Android though some features are missing. It would be pointless to spread the development for so few users over more than a few chips let alone different custom chips - you would end up with devices with little to no support after launch.

1 hour ago, Sniperfox47 said:

That's literally the point of sticking a TPU on the watch... they're way more efficient for tensor applications than the GPU would be, especially an ancient OpenGL ES 3.0 GPU.

 

And what are you talking about? Tensor is a huuuuuuge focus on Android right now? There's a reason Google was pushing MLkit out immediately after IO. It's a big deal for a lot of developers.

 

But perhaps the biggest reason to include it is for local acceleration and efficiency improvements for Google Assistant. Assistant is currently being pushed by the media as one of the last saving graces for WearOS for a reason. Having a fully functional version of Google Assistant with you everywhere on a cellular smartwatch could be just the push that smartwatches need to reach a wider audience. A TPU would let them do more of the language recognition on device efficiently and drastically improve both performance and power efficiency of assistant interactions on the watch.

It may be a big thing on Android but is there an API on Android Wear?

As far as I know Google Assistant mainly runs on Google's TPUs in the cloud as it means you do not need to clone X large NNs and place them on each device. With integrated modems you could have a similar power consumption with much greater performance and you would need an internet connection in both cases to obtain results.

Yes some natural language processing could take place on the device but this is Google - if they have the slightest reason to collect your data they will.

If Google Assistant gets a proper offline mode, not just setting a timer and reminders, (which I hope but greatly doubt) then an TPU would be useful - prior to that on a phone, not.

 

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

The Apple S3 and the SD Wear 2100 are *very* similar already. The S3 has a slightly better modem on the LTE model (Qualcomm's x7 vs their X5 on the SDW2100) but other than that they're pretty much identical.

 

The S3 has the nand storage straight on the SoC, vs using eMMC for the SDW2100 but that shouldn't matter too much since they both use slower lower power nand anyways.

 

I'm not sure if the S3 supports 5Ghz WiFi but the SDW2100 only supports 2.4GHz for power reasons.

I'd disagree.

 

Apple has a custom architecture with custom GPUs, and the performance difference is tangible.  A Series 3 watch kicks the ass of a Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip in terms of overall performance.  Battery life in particular is better -- it's realistic to expect two days of serious use out of an Apple Watch where most SW2100 models tend not to last much longer than a day at best, and that's with the always-on display turned off.

 

If you're wondering: the Series 3 doesn't support 5GHz either.  I suspect we won't see that for a while yet in most smartwatches.

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, The Viking said:

Unless tizen is a choice? not even sure it works on android.

All of Samsung's Gear S3 and Fit watches run Tizen, and work with all Android phones.

[Sniperfox47]

3 hours ago, Commodus said:

Apple has a custom architecture with custom GPUs, and the performance difference is tangible. 

Umm no? The S3 runs a dual core semi-custom Cortex A7...

 

And they both have "custom GPUs" in that they both have stripped down versions of their respective smartphone GPUs. The Apple Watch is just running a stripped down "Apple designed" PowerVR based processor... which Apple got the patents to by practically blackmailing their GPU partner for patent tech...

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Umm no? The S3 runs a dual core semi-custom Cortex A7...

 

And they both have "custom GPUs" in that they both have stripped down versions of their respective smartphone GPUs. The Apple Watch is just running a stripped down "Apple designed" PowerVR based processor... which Apple got the patents to by practically blackmailing their GPU partner for patent tech...

But it's definitely not the same as Qualcomm's... remember, Apple's wearable chips are usually related to their phone counterparts, and Apple's chips tend to do more with fewer cores.  It's a bit like saying an AMD Ryzen is basically the same as a Core i7 because they both use x86.

 

And however Apple got its graphics, they're still custom and still pretty fast.  Certainly faster than a two-year-old Qualcomm chip.

[Sniperfox47]

3 hours ago, Commodus said:

But it's definitely not the same as Qualcomm's... remember, Apple's wearable chips are usually related to their phone counterparts, and Apple's chips tend to do more with fewer cores.  It's a bit like saying an AMD Ryzen is basically the same as a Core i7 because they both use x86.

 

And however Apple got its graphics, they're still custom and still pretty fast.  Certainly faster than a two-year-old Qualcomm chip.

...they both use ARMs Cortex-A7 core... it's not some custom Apple architecture like Monsoon, they're literally the same Cortex-A7 cores as everyone else uses.

 

They may be developing a custom core for the S4, but honestly I don't see why they would. The A7 is already incredibly power efficient and there's not as big a benefit for 64 bit ARM on watches as there is for phones. Apple's custom architectures also tend to have significantly larger dies which would be incredibly problematic in the limited watch footprint.

 

As far as graphics, how do you assert that they're any faster than Qualcomm's Adreno? There's literally no benchmarks for WatchOS that you can compare against WearOS... It *may* be more efficient, but claiming it has better performance? Really?

 

PowerVR is traditionally more efficient than other architectures, in part because they locked down TBDRing with a ton of patents. I wouldn't be surprised if it's more efficient than the Adreno GPU in the SDW2100, but there's not really any solid evidence of that point, and performance there's even less evidence.

 

That being said, the developer site for WatchOS says it doesn't support custom OpenGL (or metal) shaders for scenekit, which makes me wonder what version of OGLES the GPUs even support, if any.

[Trixanity]

20 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Ultimately this isn't going to change anything.

 

It's most likely going to have updated Bluetooth and Wifi, a slightly newer process node, a higher efficiency GPU, a newer LTE modem, and maybe a tensor processor. Yawn.

 

Unless they really go off the rails and make it on a modern process node or with some secretive custom ARM core, it's going to be a lot of the same. Qualcomm isn't exactly known for their innovation...

Wear 2100 was on 28nm so I wouldn't call a move to FinFET a small update (I don't see any other move forward). I doubt they'll go 10nm though. I fully expect either Samsung 14LPP or TSMC 16FFC. Although it would be kinda interesting if someone were to try out GloFo's 22FDX although I'm not sure how suitable it is for this nor how receptive Qualcomm would be to try a new partner.

 

Moving from A7 to A35 would provide a decent increase in performance and efficiency while maintaining size but I'm not sure what Qualcomm's intentions are. Wear doesn't need 64bit but since 32bit-only seems to have been abandoned in ARM's application processors I think it would be the only logical step forward. However it wouldn't surprise me either if they stuck to A7 but it would be disappointing.

 

Otherwise I expect some tiny Adreno 500 series GPU (not 600) and as you say new BT/WIFI/LTE. I don't think you'll see tensor cores. I think it'll rely on Qualcomm's HVX for any ML stuff.

 

I would be surprised if Qualcomm went all in on this so conservative improvements seem to be their MO for this.

[ZimFreak]

Of course I see this 3 days after I placed an order for a Ticwatch E. Oh well, I'm sure the first watches to come out will be $300+ so I'll hopefully be able to use this until I can snag something used or under $150.