Next-gen Arm CPU Could Finally Beat the iPhone - Details Emerge About Blackhawk/Cortex-X5

[@ikjadoon]

Arm has just today confirmed Patrick's comment to _The Register_ : >A spokesperson at Arm told The Register: "I can confirm the information in the post from Patrick Moorhead is accurate. We will provide more details on Blackhawk when it launches later this year. No further comment at this time." Looks like the real deal, in terms of the claim.

[@SMASHINGblargharghar]

This is a huge deal for cheap handheld gaming devices coming from China. We've been limited by CPU power for years and those companies typically go for the cheaper arm designed cpus. Very excited

[@vineetkumarbharti2633]

I think instructions per watt is more important than instructions per clock, as all they have done since last 4 years is increasing power with IPC, X4 now using over 5.5watts in SPECfp2017. Imagine an architecture so bad, manufacturers like Qualcomm and mediatek have to use more performance cores to match competition efficiency in multi-core. Same goes with cortext A515.

[@SussySmurf]

Yes that's what I've been noticing in Cortex A715 and Cortex A720 and X4. It's like the performance gain is only achieved when the cores are clocked higher each year, low to mid level frequency performance seems to stay the same or at least only a small improvement. No wonder why both the SnapDragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 (A17 also) can reach 47 degrees in temperature since those 3 have a significantly high clock speeds at their peak just to show improvement over the last generation.

[@lavafree]

It’s not that big of a deal since clock speed is highly correlated to power consumption

[@Cosmic_malloW]

​@@lavafreeYour comment makes little sense, so you say clock speed is highly correlated to power consumption, so you agree that increasing clock speed will consume power consumption (that's if you mean directly proportional) both of which are not ideal since increasing clock speed also brings temperature up. You can only increase clock speeds to gain meaningful performance gains up to a certain point before the power consumption curve starts to flatten. Yes, it's definitely not a big deal if you factor out temperature which is a big deal in smartphones due to its size.

[@wheelyflac]

​@@Cosmic_malloWand after 2 years battery is at 80 percent capacity because of overheating XD

[@lohiths5302]

That is the point of the x core. The efficiency cores will be the ones in use. The x core will be in idle and take over when the CPU load is very high.

[@satysin630]

Let's hope so! Competition is the best thing for everyone as it drives progress. Nothing worse than those few barren years when Intel had basically no competition from AMD (or anyone else obviously) and so we saw very little innovation until AMD upped their game causing Intel to follow suit. We need this so that Apple and others step up and keep pushing performance and efficiency optimisations.

[@mannkeithc]

I think 2024 / 2025 will be interesting time for Arm CPUs. Especially with the projected wider use in the Windows 11 /12 PC laptop market, and the expanded use of NPUs (often included with Arm SOCs long before AMD and Intel got into the act) to offload specialised processes, such a speech recognition, video calling enhancements, offloading AI large level model components from cloud to PC to improve real time performance of some AI tasks, such as language translation.

[@davidkelly9428]

Blackhawk sounds good, but Apple also has the funds to allow their ARM designs to be implemented (with GPU and Neural processor, etc) on TSMC’s latest process technology (currently 3nm). Having a fast Blackhawk processor design will be great, but I presume it will be hard for Apple competitors to fund large quantities of Blackhawk processors with GPU, etc, on the latest process technology in order to compete with Apple.

[@jjptech]

Exactly.

[@vincelongman3264]

This is exciting. Can't wait for 8g4 (Nuvia) vs D9400 (Arm)!!

[@stuartford5556]

I'd love to see, with the low power usage of ARM chips, is a board with slots for multiple ARM CPU/GPU modules. This way you could scale as needed for your workload. Plus possibly use an optical interconnected back plane to limit latency when the modules are working together.

[@TamasKiss-yk4st]

It's not that easy to stack them infinitly, the unreleased M2 Extreme is a good example (it's capable to connect more than just 2 chip, because it has more than just 1 interconnect interface, but still the M2 Ultra is the highest avaliable chip in their Mac Pro tower. Or just check the leaked info about Snapdragon X Elite, the 80W power consumption only gives you 10% extra performance over the 23W.. so it's only 10% performance for extra 250% power consuption? Is that really worth it..?

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

Eh...performance be damned, give me a CPU that delivers the most performance per watt and I'll be a happy penguin.

[@raykyledecastro6083]

A very interesting next year indeed. Qualcomm with Oryon, TSMC N3E, and rumors of 2.8K GB6 ST, 10K GB6 MT. Then we have this

[@thetruthisouttheregofindit128]

Apple decided to do basically nothing in terms of raw cpu/gpu performance with the A16 after TSMC delayed their 3nm foundation so they had to wait another year to put it on A17 pro, which means they’re no longer a year ahead and is using an older design. This was the perfect time for competition to surpass apple and Qualcomm’s 8gen3 alongside with Mediatek’s dimensity 9300 did a great job at that. Honestly it’s nice to see ARM putting effort to beat custom made chips instead of just giving in but we’ll have to see how they actually perform first.

[@wheelyflac]

There's also the oryon cpu core now.. probably will makes its way to smartphones too

[@thetruthisouttheregofindit128]

@@wheelyflac 8gen4 is already rumoured to have oryon cores It allegedly gets 10k multicore score on geekbench but I forgot whether it was on gb5 or 6

[@GaryExplains]

It isn't a rumor, Qualcomm confirmed it, on stage, during the last Snapdragon summit.

[@wheelyflac]

@GaryExplains what thing? , that they will use oryon in snapdragon for smartphones?

[@GaryExplains]

Yes, Oryon on mobile for the next iteration of Snapdragon.

[@Winnetou17]

I have to comment on something - that IPC is not about the manufacturing node. Well, in practice, indirectly it is (to an extent) about the manufacturing node. Because most of the IPC gains come from having more transistors. With more transistors, you can have more pipelines or bigger internal buses and the such, and with these you can indeed do multiple instructions, so to speak. The thing is that the manufacturing node directly influences the transitor count you can have on a chip. While technically nobody tells you that you cannot do a Zen 4 core on a 40nm manufacturing node, the reality is that it will probably be as big as 300mm^2 for a single core (number chosen for illustrating the point, I haven't done any maths to see how much it could be). So to have a 8 core Zen4 chip done on a 40nm manufacturing node would probably be possible, but it would have terrible yields. And cost a lot. And it would probably clock terribly and consume a lot too. So, while the IPC is directly tied only to the architecture used, the manufacturing node "enables" IPC gains for the newer architectures. But if you, say, take the Zen2 core and port it to a smaller manufacturing node, you'll only get the power efficiency benefit and probably the ability to clock higher. But the IPC would be the exact same, indeed.

[@thaernejem7317]

Completion is a grace!

[@nidalspam509]

cortex x4 is already insane. geekerwan tested it on the 8 gen 3 and found it had a 10 wide decoders compared to a17 pro's p core with 9 wide decoders. Looking forward

[@GaryExplains]

And yet the A17 has higher performance. While the pipeline width is a key factor, it isn't the deciding factor.

[@GaryExplains]

Plus the pipeline width for the X4 was published at its launch, not something that needed to be discovered by testing.

[@nidalspam509]

@@GaryExplains thanks for the correction. Excited nonetheless for the new arm core designs and how they compete with apple and now qualcomm's custom designs.

[@lekejoshua4402]

Is this about single core performance alone? Because the mideatek dimensity is crushing everyone at multicore and gpu also in reality. ​@@GaryExplains

[@pedalthang2079]

An unannounced product design could beat products that are already in the marketplace in a years time? I am very happy to see a race upwards of performance and efficiency but the products DO actually need to be available to buy before they can be considered competitors. The problem with this kind of 'in the future we'll be faster' 'leak' is that it seems to ignore that the competitors that already have products in the market place and are not sat around doing nothing. They're likely to have another generation of processor in a product in the market by the time these announcements make it to the market. Let's hope these announcements do actually result in products that are competitive with ones side by side in the marketplace at the same time.

[@jordancave6987]

My interpretation is this is ARM reacting to many vendors building their own customised ARM cores.

[@TheSonyExperience]

So can't apple license this to and create a custom version? Arm isn't competition to Apple, so it seems like this is something Qualcomm and Apple will chop up and push even further. Maybe I'm off?

[@GaryExplains]

No, Arm doesn't license its CPU cores to be chopped up. Apple has a license to design its own cores, not to chop up cores designed by Arm.

[@TheSonyExperience]

@@GaryExplains ahh you have educated me. Thank you. Had no idea.

[@johnnyblaze9217]

this is just wrong, apple 100% can do this and has..@@GaryExplains

[@mrbigberd]

I suspect the actual core configuration will be the unmentioned 2+6 (2 X5 + 6 A79) configuration for a few reasons. Moving down to just 6 cores isn't likely because customers want to beat Apple's benchmarks and extra cores increase multicore scores. 8 cores was chosen YEARS ago because it's a lucky number in quite a few cultures. Finally, A5xx chips SUCK when it comes to efficiency. They use MORE power than Apple's E-cores while getting several times less performance.

[@fbifido2]

ARM now has tech that is on par with Apple custom implementation. when, where, how ?????? "Qualcomm Oryon™ CPU" tech ??? "Snapdragon X Elite" tech ???

[@Bibbatron]

This has been in the works for a while. ARM had the Android market in their palm for years and could just offer lackluster improvements. Now they're forced to release a new design with big improvements to take away market share from Qualcomm using Mediatek and Samsung.

[@HatDog692]

maybe if nvidia and intel would work together ofcourse it will finally beat apple

[@Sacto1654]

It might be faster, but will operating systems be highly optimized for the Cortex-X5 design? A big advantage of Apple's A-series SoC is the fact it's highly optimized for iOS, iPadOS or MacOS, which means very fast performance. It may require that future versions of Android and soon ARM-specific versions of Windows 11 and (likely) Windows 12 be very optimized for the SoC.

[@GaryExplains]

Nonsense. That is a page directly from Apple's marketing. Android is just as optimized as iOS. Do you have any software engineering experience?

[@Sacto1654]

@@GaryExplains Then how come most third party benchmark tests show Android being quite a bit slower than iOS?

[@GaryExplains]

Do they? Please give me a link that shows that. What I see is benchmarks that show that Apple's processor is faster, not iOS.

[@clickbaitpro]

@@Sacto1654 That's actually just your illogical belief than anything real because 3D mark and Antutu says otherwise

[@johnnyblaze9217]

I'm a software engineer. its no conspiracy. IOS is far more optimized than android, do YOU have any software experience? He didn't state anything that wasn't true. @@GaryExplains

[@ifrankenstein7455]

Mediatek's latest chips beats apple in multicore performance while the snapdragon beats both in GPU. Currently apple leads in only single core

[@GaryExplains]

Yes, which is the whole point since MediaTek uses 8 cores (vs 6 for Apple) and 4 big cores (vs 2 for Apple). So if you have 397 cores then of course it will beat the competition at multi core.

[@nkarthik12]

Interesting, looks like arm learned from apple and nuvia and implementating some features to bridge those gaps😂

[@ezequielgervasio]

Qualcomm's Nuvia will beat apple with the future Snapdragon 8 gen 4. Don't worry! The snapdragon 8 gen 3 closed the gap Between apple when it come to CPU, on the other hand, Qualcomm GPU outperformed the apple's GPU in some benchmarks tests like 3DMark.

[@GaryExplains]

I agree that the Nuvia based Snapdragon 8 will be great, but since the Snapdragon X Elite doesn't beat the M3 then it is hard to see how you can claim with such confidence that the scaled down version will beat Apple's CPU.

[@ezequielgervasio]

@@GaryExplains I've searched on Google and in a Geekbench multi-core test Qualcomm x elite defeated Apple M3. It wasn't informed about the thermal profile, but it is a great result.

[@GaryExplains]

No, the Qualcomm didn't beat the M3. I have a whole video about it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aaXZZ6eMhLeAmsU

[@ezequielgervasio]

@@GaryExplains So the Snapdragon x elite was beaten by the M3 Max which has 4 more cores than the snapdragon X elite.

[@GaryExplains]

And now you see why X beating Y at multi-core isn't as interesting as it might seem. Any device with more core is going to beat a device with less cores assuming the single core performance is very roughly the same. It then becomes an issue of power and thermals (as you noted earlier). So, how many cores will the Snapdragon 8 gen 4 have? Who knows! Also there is a whole new generation of CPU from Apple coming before the Snapdragon 8 gen 4 gets announced. In other words, it is way to early to make any predictions about what will beat what. As I said originally, "I agree that the Nuvia based Snapdragon 8 will be great," but we can't claim with any confidence that it will beat Apple's next gen CPU.

[@NNokia-jz6jb]

So, this soc will be in a phone or a laptop?

[@GaryExplains]

In a phone, but to clarify, this isn't about a SoC, but a CPU design that will be used in a SoC for smartphones.

[@SzBenedek2006]

Won't it be used in laptops too?

[@GaryExplains]

It could be, yes.

[@billymania11]

I don't see anybody catching up to Apple. The other guys are doing interesting things but it's all piecemeal and isolated. Perhaps in a year or two, we'll have real competition.

[@juizel8008]

apple can license new arm architecture and improve.

[@GaryExplains]

Apple doesn't license architectures, it designs them itself. Has done so for at least a decade.

[@HatDog692]

how about the apple gpu 🤔

[@fjdkfdfjdf33]

blackhawk down ? :)

[@RealLifeTech187]

2:10 I think it's very disrespectful and arrogant of you to simply call all leakers "script kiddie that has stumbled upon some info". They often find information and piece it together in a way high payed wall street analysts fail and simply because they do this as a hobby rather than their job doesn't subtract anything from their skill set. If these "kiddies" can find that info then why didn't all your well regarded sources? I get the point you want to make but you can lift up Patrick Moorhead without punching down other people. Just talking about Mr. Moorhead's qualifications would have been enough - no need to insult other people to make your point. I can tell you how smart Einstein was without telling you how stupid the rest of us are in comparison. Humble yourself!

[@GaryExplains]

My point is that 99% of leaks that I read online (from these script kiddies) are inaccurate and nothing more than just rumoring mongering. They are often posted by people with little or no knowledge in the field. However, it also turns out that this leak wasn't quite correct either! 🤐

[@RealLifeTech187]

@@GaryExplains That leaks are inherently inaccurate and that a growing number of bad actors try to gain a following by spreading misinformation is no secret. And if even industry veterans get stuff wrong is it really fair to be so disrespectful to amateurs because they can't do better? How would you feel if I said youtubers are just lying b*stards because 99% of the videos uploaded to youtube are trash? Wouldn't you feel insulted because I put you in the same group as them out of ignorance? There are people who generally leak qualitative information and do a lot of fact checking before posting and in my opinion it's your shortcoming you focus on unreliable sources instead of searching for better alternatives only to complain about "script kiddies". That's like only reading TMZ and then complaining journalists do nothing more than gossip. For me extracting the right info from leakers is training in critical thinking not something that is bothersome. 🤷‍♂ Changing ones perspective often helps seeing what can be improved without insisting on all the others to change. Cheers. ✌

[@GaryExplains]

LOL. "How would you feel if I said youtubers are just lying b*stards because 99% of the videos uploaded to youtube are trash?" Welcome to my world.

[@RealLifeTech187]

@@GaryExplains That's my point! That obviously doesn't feel good so why you do the same to others? Does that help create a better world? Shouldn't you end the vicious cycle of insults because you know best how that feels?

[@GaryExplains]

I see your point and I certainly wasn't trying to be nasty or unkind. However because, as you said, 99% of what is on KZbin is rubbish then I am fighting a lone battle to bring quality content and it is hard when people gravitate to the trash. Sometimes it is necessary to point out what is good and what is bad. It seems as if people are unable to discern the difference.

[@leledumbo]

I have a believe that huge cache is Apple's A secret all this time. Really when compared to other SoC, the cache size is enormous. I wonder if their true IPC is really that big.

[@robertlee6338]

Blackhawk cant match Apple performance in REAL LIFE simply becuase Blackhawk is a made for many OS`s

[@GaryExplains]

Really? Why does that mean it can't match the performance?

[@itaco8066]

Apple leapfrog other companys also for the the great software that they tied with their hardware

[@GaryExplains]

I don't think that is true, that is a marketing message created by Apple. Can you give an actual example of that?

[@edwarddejong8025]

First of all, Apple is an ARM design. So saying ARM CPU could beat... another ARM CPU is a fairly nonsensical argument. There are only 2 chips in large volume production nowadays: Intel x86 architecture, and ARM. ARM designs have 99% of all Cellphones, due to the lower power consumption. However, Intel has drastically improved the power efficiency of x86 and is now much closer than in the past.

[@GaryExplains]

LOL. Apple is not an Arm design. Apple uses the Arm ISA but it is an Apple design.

[@edwarddejong8025]

@@GaryExplains You are completely ignorant if you think Apple is not an ARM licensee at the highest level. They are ARM's largest customer. Apple has some proprietary chips in their iPhone and Macintosh systems, like the secure enclave, and the audio chips, etc., but the guts of their system is 100% based on ARM licenses, and is implemented by the thousands of engineers in Berlin that they purchased from Siemens' Infineon when they left the CPU biz, and sold it to Apple. Apple has never developed their own CPU from scratch; they used the 6502, then the Motorola 68000, then the PowerPC, and then Intel, and lastly ARM.

[@GaryExplains]

Eh? Apple has an architectural license that allows it to design Arm compliant CPUs. Yes it did buy the design team, but it was PA Semi in 2008. Your last comment seems quite confused you seem to be saying that Apple licences Arm designed cores and then say it designs its own cores. Very confusing. 🤷‍♂️

[@edwarddejong8025]

@@GaryExplains Apple claiming that this is their chip is similar to Honda claiming the Prologue EV is "a Honda". Under the hood Apple is using massive amounts of ARM technology.

[@GaryExplains]

No. Simply not true. Under the hood there is no Arm technology. Architectural license holders get no access to Arm's designs. Apple's CPUs are "clean room". I have verified this with senior management from Arm (while at Arm's HQ) on several occasions.

[@Saif0412]

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 already has superior GPU to IPhone, interesting the CPU is now gonna whoop Apples best Phone CPU as well 😂

[@GaryExplains]

You know the next Snapdragon won't use the X5, it will be Nuvia based.