[GUIDE] Smartphone CPU Guide

[medion]

Table of Contents:

Reply #1 - Benchmarks
Reply #2 - Explanation of Benchmarks and CPU Listings
Reply #3 - CPUs by Qualcomm
Reply #4 - CPUs by Texas Instruments
Reply #5 - CPUs by Samsung

[medion]

Medion Marks: (see footnotes in this post, as well as calculation explanation in 2nd post)

Samsung Hummingbird - 1126
Apple A4 (iPad) - 1126 (1)
Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8x55- 1075
Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8x50- 1075
Texas Instruments OMAP3640 - 1024
Apple A4 (iPhone 4) - 880
Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 - 840
Samsung S5PC100 - 600
Texas Instruments OMAP3630 - 600 (3)




(1) - Assumes same modifications as Samsung Hummingbird, as heavily rumored.

(2) - Assumes that the CPU is underclocked to 800mhz, as is heavily rumored, but not confirmed. Also, same assumption as
footnote (1), which makes this reading further unreliable.

(3) - Chip is capable of 600mhz from the factory (and has been overclocked in excess of 1ghz), but is underclocked in many
devices (550mhz in the Droid, 500mhz in the Pre). Since OMAP is our baseline, 1mhz = 1 point on this benchmark scale.

[medion]

Purpose:

To help explain performance difference in current and upcoming CPUs targeted at smartphones. I've started the new thread as the old one devolved into a GPU discussion. This thread will ONLY feature the CPU aspect of an SOC.

Benchmarks:

I've come up with a theoretical benchmark called the "Medion Mark." This fictitious number is a way of judging performance differences between different CPUs.

Benchmark Calculation:

Comparisons always need a baseline. I've set this baseline as the Texas Instruments OMAP 3640 1ghz, with a score of 1024 (1024mhz). So, a 600mhz OMAP would be 600, and a 2ghz OMAP would be 2048. Calulations for other CPUs are based on modifers applied to their clock rate. Modifiers so far are:

Cortex A8 - 1.00 (based on 2.0 DMIPS/MHZ)(SOURCE)
Scorpion - 1.05 (based on 2.1 DMIPS/MHZ) (5% faster than A8 clock for clock) (SOURCE)
Hummingbird - 1.10 (10% faster in multi-threaded performance) (SOURCE)
Cortex A9 - 1.25 (based on 2.5 DMIPS/MHZ) (SOURCE)

There will be a second modifier added for dual-core chips. Ouside of encoding, you'll never get a true 2X boost from a dual-core chip. Many programmers accept a 30% boost as typical for a dual-core chip, so the modifer is 1.3X the final score for the first core. IE, if a chip is rated a 1000, a dual-core model of the same chip would rate a 1300 according to my calculations.

Disclaimer:

My theorhetical benchmarks should not be taken as fact, but rather, as a means to evaluate basic differences in CPU speed. These fictitious benchmarks do not account for differences in memory speeds (should only affect certain operations and not most common tasks), GPU performance (in GPU specific areas), or differences in software performance (IE, Android and Meego will not perform equally on the same CPU).

CPU Listings - CPUs will be listed by manufacturer
Model: the model number and/or name
Speed: the speed or range of speeds available
MPCore: The core of the chip
Instruction Set: The chip's primary instruction set
Process: Lower is better (lower process means less power consumption, less heat, better production yields, and cheaper manufacturing costs)
Availability: Phones using it today (not a complete list, please post responses with more models), slated to use it (please give a link if you have confirmation), or (rumored) to use it, as designated.
Note: relevant information and speculation.

[medion]

CPUs by Qualcomm:

*note - Qualcomm includes the radio on the chip SOC. The "x" in the model number is either a 2 (GSM), or a 6 (CDMA). The only difference between the QSD8250 on the Nexus One and the QSD8650 on the Incredible is the radio on the SOC. There are some who believe the 8650 is faster, so I just wanted to clear that up in advance. This model numbering is concist across all Qualcomm chips listed in this thread.

Model: Snapdragon QSD8x50
Speed: 1ghz
MPCore: Scorpion
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 65nm
Availability: Google Nexus One, HTC Desire, HTC Droid Incredible, Acer Liquid (768mhz), HTC HD2, LG Optimus Q, Sony Xperia X10, Toshiba TG01
Notes: The first generation Snapdragon CPU, the 8x50 was THE high end chip for over a year before anything else even came close, and remained competitive even with the release of newer chips.

Model: Snapdragon MSM7230
Speed: 800mhz
MPCore: Scorpion
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 45nm
Availability: T-Mobile G2, HTC Desire Z, HTC Merge
Notes: The first of the 2nd generation Snapdragon Chips, featuring an improved GPU and a lower process (significantly better battery life), the MSM 7230 offered nearly the same overall performance of the previous generation Snapdragon, but did so with a low less battery consumption, and at a lower cost to OEMs.

Model: Snapdragon QSD8x55
Speed: 1ghz
MPCore: Scorpion
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 45nm
Availability: HTC Desire HD, HTC Mondrian, HTC Mozart
Notes: The true successor to the original Snapdragon, this SOC offers the same performance as the origonal, but comes with a better GPU, and the same batery saving process as the MS 7230.

[medion]

CPUs by Texas Instruments:

Model: OMAP3430
Speed: 600mhz
MPCore: Cortex A8
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 65nm
Availability: Motorola Droid/Milestone (550mhz), Palm Pre/Plus, Samsung i8910, Nokia N900
Notes: TI's first attempt at an iPhone CPU answer, it was comparable to that of the CPU in the iPhone 3Gs. Most phones using this chip underclocked the CPU (the Droid was 550mhz while the Pre was 500mhz), but at maz speed, it offered identical performance to the CPU in the iPhone 3Gs.

Model: OMAP3640
Speed: 1ghz
MPCore: Cortex A8
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 45nm
Availability: Motrola Droid X, Droid 2
Notes: TI's answer to Snapdragon, the OMAP35x0 series offered nearly identical performance, but with a significantly better GPU, and much better battery life.

[medion]

CPUs by Samsung:

Model: S5PC100
Speed: 600mhz
MPCore: Cortex A8
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 65nm
Availability: iPhone 3Gs
Notes: The CPU that all smartphones would be compared to in mid-late 2009 as it powered the iPhone 3Gs. Sure, the first Snapdragon-based device was released a month earlier, but it wasn't until the Nexus One 6 months after the iPhone 3Gs where the Snapdragons started to show it's CPU superiority.

Model: Apple A4
Speed: 1ghz
MPCore: Cortex A8
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 45nm
Availability: iPhone (800mhz, rumored), iPad
Notes: Apple launched their iPad using the A4 before actually using it in the iPhone 4 in June. The result of collaboration between Apple, Samsung, and Intrinsity, the A4 supposedly uses the same CPU as Samsung's own Hummingbird SOC.

Model: Hummingbird
Speed: 1ghz
MPCore: Cortex A8
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 45nm
Availability: Samsung Galaxy S and variants (Captivate, Fascinate, Epic 4G, Vibrant), Samsung Wave
Notes: Samsung's primary SOC released around the same time as the OMAP36x0 series, this SOC offered comparable if not slightly better performance over the venerable Snapdragon, as well as the best GPU in class, and the battery consumption expected of a 45nm chip.

[medion]

-reserved space for Nvidia Tegra 2-

[medion]

-reserved space for future CPU-

[medion]

Thread is now open for discussion. Please keep posts on topics, IE, no GPU talk. Only discuss the CPUs. Also, please help me make this information more accurate. I'm mainly looking for more phones to list under availability, plus upcoming and rumored phones are always nice.

[rickysio]

Originally Posted by medion

Model: S5PC100
Speed: 600mhz
MPCore: Cortex A8
Instruction Set: ARMv7
Process: 65nm
Availability: iPhone 3Gs
Notes: The CPU that all smartphones would be compared to in mid-late 2008, it was actually king of the hill until Snapdragon started seeing procuts become available. However, the Samsung still offered vastly superior battery life with still exceptional performance.

Although an obscure model, the Samsung LiMo series for Vodafone (360 X1 series, where X can be M or H, M is a lower end version with TFT 240X400 px screen and H has AMOLED with WVGA res.) should use the S5PC100. Unless Samsung decides to be funny and use TI's chip instead.

The unannounced H2 supposedly has a 1GHz A8 processor with PowerVR SGX, Hummingbird perhaps? Possibly canned too, but I need to go off now, no time to check. :X

[Jprone]

Pretty awesome compendium. Mind if you share the sources for the information?

[medion]

Originally Posted by Jprone

Pretty awesome compendium. Mind if you share the sources for the information?

A lot of this is from memory (which is why it's faulty). Case in point, I have the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 listed as a 1ghz processor that is downlocked to 800mhz for the G2. I was wrong, it is an 800mhz CPU, period. The 1ghz version is the QSD8x55 which is being used in the upcoming Desire HD (same CPU as the current SD, just 45nm for better efficiency and battery life, and Adreno 205GPU).

The current writeup on my machine has a lot of this info corrected, and I'll be doing an update "soon" to include an updated chart. That update should end up on the ABI front page. But to directly answer your question, I do intend to have some source links added.

[Maudit]

my 2cents would be judging CPU performance based purely on Ghz is not very accurate.
On a PC level, a core i7 running on 3.0ghz would probably perform a lot better than a rival AMD phenom X6 at 3.0ghz. Even with your modifiers, you said it yourself, other factors such as OS optimization, eg never will iOS run on symbian hardware. I digress...

All in all a very good compilation, however benchmarks have a very synthetic feel to them eg. it only gives you the slightest idea on how real world performance would be.

[medion]

Originally Posted by Maudit

my 2cents would be judging CPU performance based purely on Ghz is not very accurate.
On a PC level, a core i7 running on 3.0ghz would probably perform a lot better than a rival AMD phenom X6 at 3.0ghz. Even with your modifiers, you said it yourself, other factors such as OS optimization, eg never will iOS run on symbian hardware. I digress...

The modifiers are in there because judging a CPU based on just the clock speed would be wrong, so I don't know what your concern is when it's already been addressed.

As for the OS differences, that's something you cannot account for. This is meant to be a baseline CPU comparison, nothing more. The user should first pick the OS they want, and then can use this chart to see if X CPU is worth the price premium over Y CPU. It's also a good way to compare generational differences (iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4).

[chengdude]

Model: Hummingbird
Notes: Samsung's currently exclsuive SOC for their phones, it's rumored to essentially be an A4 with upgraded GPU.

Not quite exclusive...the Meizu M9 apparently uses this processor along with a PowerVR Series 5 GPU. Demo units (for customer pre-orders) are supposed to be in Meizu stores in early October, so we'll see.

[Jprone]

Originally Posted by medion

A lot of this is from memory (which is why it's faulty). Case in point, I have the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 listed as a 1ghz processor that is downlocked to 800mhz for the G2. I was wrong, it is an 800mhz CPU, period. The 1ghz version is the QSD8x55 which is being used in the upcoming Desire HD (same CPU as the current SD, just 45nm for better efficiency and battery life, and Adreno 205GPU).

The current writeup on my machine has a lot of this info corrected, and I'll be doing an update "soon" to include an updated chart. That update should end up on the ABI front page. But to directly answer your question, I do intend to have some source links added.

Sounds good! I didn't want to down on your thread, I would just like to read up for myself too ^__^

[medion]

Originally Posted by Jprone

Sounds good! I didn't want to down on your thread, I would just like to read up for myself too ^__^

There is nothing wrong with expecting links, as it lends credibility to the post. I may have earned credibility amongst many ABI members, but those who are strolling by and seeing this on the front page will wonder "who's this nut?" It would be an embarrassment to ABI if I were to put this current article on the front page. It needs to be rechecked (I see many typos), verified, and have some gaps filled in. I'm also very tempted to remove a lot of the speculation (IE, Samsung Orion) as there is nothing conclusive on that CPU other than the fact that Samsung is working on it.

[kasrhp]

I saw this today. Thought you would be interested. Maybe it is good, maybe not.
The "your device" was a G2.

[medion]

Those are real benchmarks, unlike my theoretical ones. However, the problem there is you've got different software builds, which leads to some "fake" results, such as I/O inflation, something that we previously saw with the Droid X and are now seeing with the G2. The I/O score doesn't have a meaningful effect on performance, and given the recent trend of OEMs to inflate it for benchmarking, it may even get removed from Quadrant.

There are two things to take from that. As I stated before, the G2's CPU is slower than the N1/Desire/Incredible (blue portion of the bar). (ignore the 2.1 results, as 2.2 gets a boost from JIT). Also, the G2's GPU is on par with or slightly better than the Droid X, which is impressive given Qualcomm's previous effort. Memory performance hasn't changed, and that's not good. It means that they stuck with LPDDR1 for 2nd generation Snapdragon. Samsung and Moto have already moved to LPDDR2, as evidenced by their memory scores (which should further inflate with 2.2).

[medion]

Added:
-Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8x55

Removed:
-Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8x72 and related benchmarks
-Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8x60 and related benchmarks
-Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8x50A and related benchmarks
-Texas Instruments OMAP4440 and related benchmarks
-Texas Instruments OMAP4430 and related benchmarks
-Samsung Orion and related benchmarks

Updated:
-links for sources
-Cortex A9 modifer is 25% (I had it incorrectly listed as 20%)
-Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 is 800mhz, I had it incorrectly listed as 1ghz
-various typos, probably created some more though
-Changed CPU "notes" to be less time sensitive, and have less of my opinion. Just the facts, ma'am.
-chartes are updated, and there are dates over a bar to indicate first shipping product.

Notes:

I removed all future CPUs and only included CPUs that are either shipping now, or have a definite shipping product announced. My benchmarks for future CPUs were relying on too many speculated specs.

Look at the dates in the new chart. This is to signify first actual shipping product using the chip (please post a response if you think my dates are off, so that I can correct them). Looking at these dates it should be readily apparent why the Snapdragon dominated for so long. The thing released over a year before the OMAP 36x0 and Hummingbird SOCs, and even then, keeps pace very well. Release dates based on the following shipping products;

OMAP 3430 - Palm Pre
Samsung S5PC100 - iPhone 3Gs
Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 - T-Mobile G2
Apple A4 - iPhone 4
TI OMAP 3640 - Motorola Droid X
Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8x50 - Toshiba TG01
Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8x55 - HTC Desire HD
Apple A4 - iPad
Samsung Hummingbird - Samsung Galaxy S (NOTE: This is wrong, it's actually the Samsung Wave in June 2010, will correct on next update)