Is Qualcomm thoroughly defeated by Apple in SOC?

[FFR]

Yet none of them are really that big. The big 3, Samsung, Huawei and LG do their own custom UIs.

HTC in their heydays had the stunning SenseUI, they stuck out from the crowd, now they look like every other vanilla Android.

Yes exactly. Everyone had their custom ui’s. Now not not so much other than Samsung and touch wiz, Huawei, htc and even lg seem to be toning down their contributions.

By next year or the year after, it could be only Samsung releasing phones with different Ui compared to everyone else in the android camp.

 

[Falhófnir]

It's an interesting question, presumably there's nothing actually all that special about the A series of chips, they're built on the same ARM instruction set and manufactured by the same Fabs, be it Samsung or TSMC - the big difference seems to be Apple's focus on single core, rather than Qualcomm's focus on multi core. At a guess I'd assume iOS and Android are designed to take advantage of available cores/ threads in a different way, with iOS optimised for single core (I understand this method keeps the system/ animations etc running more smoothly, hence iOS' relative snappiness) and Android more geared up for multi core. ultimately the A series aren't all that far ahead of Qualcomm's top end offerings overall, just far and away ahead in single core performance.

I would also be very interested to see Apple go to town creating a mac ARM processor with a similar 15, 28 or 45 watt TDP to intel's lineup - it seems like if they scaled well they could post top end i7 performance for less than i3 money...

 

[macgeek18]

The Priv had an 808, not an 820. The 820 came out in 2016.

You are correct. When I posted this I was thinking why in the world is the 820 in my Priv slower than the 821 in my Pixel when it's practically the same SoC.

 

[Tsepz]

Yes exactly. Everyone had their custom ui’s. Now not not so much other than Samsung and touch wiz, Huawei, htc and even lg seem to be toning down their contributions.

By next year or the year after, it could be only Samsung releasing phones with different Ui compared to everyone else in the android camp.

Which will work in Samsungs favour as they stick out more with their UI.

It will also work in Google's favour as they make the best stock Android experience.

Not so great for the other guys. They will have to tread carefully.

I think there may be a resurgence in custom UI when they realise that they all pretty much are doing the same thing.

I remember PC manufacturers had a bit of this, and nowhere days they have stock Windows with their UI elements added in lightly.

 

[grkm3]

I watched a few iPhone 8 vs note 8 speed tests and the note 8 is neck to neck in opening most apps and faster in a few and slightly slower in some games

It also beat the iPhone 8 in holding apps in memory for the first time ever in a few tests I've seen so far and this is with the same old soc as the gs8

For apple almost having 110% higher single score and almost double multy 1900-2000 vs 4100-4300 and 6400 vs 10000 it's kinda weird how it's slower in most apps and even in others.almost like geekbench is cherry picking operations that favor the apple soc.

With it's high geekbench scores I would expect it to dominate the 835

 

[thunng8]

I watched a few iPhone 8 vs note 8 speed tests and the note 8 is neck to neck in opening most apps and faster in a few and slightly slower in some games

It also beat the iPhone 8 in holding apps in memory for the first time ever in a few tests I've seen so far and this is with the same old soc as the gs8

For apple almost having 110% higher single score and almost double multy 1900-2000 vs 4100-4300 and 6400 vs 10000 it's kinda weird how it's slower in most apps and even in others.almost like geekbench is cherry picking operations that favor the apple soc.

With it's high geekbench scores I would expect it to dominate the 835

No cherry pickup going on. Opening apps is mainly related to storage speed and also it seems iOS 11 needs a lot more optimization in this area as iPhone 7 with iOS dominated the note8 in the opening app speed test.

Once you get into anything that would be dominated by cpu speed the iPhone 8 would pull well ahead and would match or even exceed what speed is predicted by geekbench. Ie prcoessing raw photos or editing video. Eg video editing was 4x faster on the 8 Plus compared to the note 8.

 

[grkm3]

No cherry pickup going on. Opening apps is mainly related to storage speed and also it seems iOS 11 needs a lot more optimization in this area as iPhone 7 with iOS dominated the note8 in the opening app speed test.

Once you get into anything that would be dominated by cpu speed the iPhone 8 would pull well ahead and would match or even exceed what speed is predicted by geekbench. Ie prcoessing raw photos or editing video. Eg video editing was 4x faster on the 8 Plus compared to the note 8.

Can you link a test showing the iPhone 7 dominating the note 8 in speed tests

If this is what the new apple soc is capable with I'm not impressed at all.The older last gen soc that was used in the gs7 is neck to neck with apples greatest and only gets 1800 single core.

Don't forget it's going up against a brand new instruction set from arm and a fair test is Samsung's next gen soc using arms a75 cores.

The gs9 will pull ahead of the iPhone x if these early tests are the norm.

And yes geekbench is using a few instruction sets that favor apples socs as you can see.

I just scored 1700 on my gs7 and scores 2500 on geekbench 3 so something really changed big time going from geek bench 3 to 4

 

[thunng8]

Can you link a test showing the iPhone 7 dominating the note 8 in speed tests

Big domination there. It does have a video export test there which is CPU intensive, not just plain loading apps which is not.

If this is what the new apple soc is capable with I'm not impressed at all.The older last gen soc that was used in the gs7 is neck to neck with apples greatest and only gets 1800 single core.

Don't forget it's going up against a brand new instruction set from arm and a fair test is Samsung's next gen soc using arms a75 cores.

The gs9 will pull ahead of the iPhone x if these early tests are the norm.

And yes geekbench is using a few instruction sets that favor apples socs as you can see.

I just scored 1700 on my gs7 and scores 2500 on geekbench 3 so something really changed big time going from geek bench 3 to 4

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-benchmarks-fastest-phone,review-4676.html

video editing 4X faster
pdf opening 8X faster
large game loading almost 1.8X faster
3mark ice storm more than 1.5X faster

When I had the s8 I did some comparison with my ipad pro (which in terms of cpu speed is a little bit slower than the a11 in iphone8) and iphone6s plus in lightroom doing raw photo editing large 42MP files. the ipad pro was more than 3X faster and iphone6s plus was also much faster (~1.5x) than the snapdragon 835 s8.

 

[grkm3]

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-benchmarks-fastest-phone,review-4676.html

video editing 4X faster
pdf opening 8X faster
large game loading almost 1.8X faster
3mark ice storm more than 1.5X faster

When I had the s8 I did some comparison with my ipad pro (which in terms of cpu speed is a little bit slower than the a11 in iphone8) and iphone6s plus in lightroom doing raw photo editing large 42MP files. the ipad pro was more than 3X faster and iphone6s plus was also much faster (~1.5x) than the snapdragon 835 s8.

I know the iPhone 8 will do better as it's using newer instruction sets.i was asking for the iPhone 7 dominating as that phone is supposed to go up against the 835.

It's not fair to compare them and the gs9 is the soc to compete with the iPhone 8

 

[thunng8]

I know the iPhone 8 will do better as it's using newer instruction sets.i was asking for the iPhone 7 dominating as that phone is supposed to go up against the 835.

It's not fair to compare them and the gs9 is the soc to compete with the iPhone 8

I just edited previous post, see above video with the video export test. iphone 7 was already much faster in CPU intensive operations.

That has also been my experience as well. Even iphone 6s Plus was faster than the s8 (snapdragon 835) when it came to anything CPU intensive.

 

[FFR]

I know the iPhone 8 will do better as it's using newer instruction sets.i was asking for the iPhone 7 dominating as that phone is supposed to go up against the 835.

It's not fair to compare them and the gs9 is the soc to compete with the iPhone 8

That’s retarded, you want to compare the 2018 processor of the galaxy s9 to the 2017 iPhone 8 a11 and call it fair.

835 was released in 2017, the note was just released with it and the pixel 2 will have them as well.

845 will be released in 2018 that will go head to head with the a12.

 

[grkm3]

That’s retarded, you want to compare the 2018 processor of the galaxy s9 to the 2017 iPhone 8 a11 and call it fair.

835 was released in 2017, the note was just released with it and the pixel 2 will have them as well.

845 will be released in 2018 that will go head to head with the a12.

No it's not retarded...both camps are on different release cycles.

The 835 was unveiled in March 7 months ago and the iPhone x is not even out yet.

Apple is using the newest instruction set from arm and is going to be used in the 845.

7 months is a long time.

You think it's retarded to compare ARMv8-A in the 835 to ARMv8.2a in the apple a11

 

[FFR]

No it's not retarded...both camps are on different release cycles.

The 835 was unveiled in March 7 months ago and the iPhone x is not even out yet.

Apple is using the newest instruction set from arm and is going to be used in the 845.

7 months is a long time.

Yes March 7, 2017!
2017 flagship processors
Android: snapdragon 835
Apple: a11

2018 processors
Android: snapdragon 845
Apple: a12

Note8 was just released with the 835 and pixel 2 will be released soon

You think it's retarded to compare ARMv8-A in the 835 to ARMv8.2a in the apple a11

Both 835 and a11 are both 2017 processors that are each 10 nm. It’s retarded not to.

If the 845 was released this year it would be compared to the a11. But it’s not

Comparison is more than fair.

 

[Michael Goff]

I know the iPhone 8 will do better as it's using newer instruction sets.i was asking for the iPhone 7 dominating as that phone is supposed to go up against the 835.

It's not fair to compare them and the gs9 is the soc to compete with the iPhone 8

I’m going to say the same thing as when people told others to not compare the s8 to the iPhone 7.

Bull crap.

A person walks into a store and can either buy the iPhone 8 or s8. They literally can’t buy the S9. Why shouldn’t we compare phones that are actually out?

 

[dallas112678]

The reason Qualcomm is behind Apple in CPU's is that they are now doing semi-custom (changing some parameters) designs based off of ARM cores.

The issue with that is simple, ARM designs their CPU's to be used in many different markets, i.e., they aren't designed specifically for mobile. They are meant to also be used in markets where parallel processing is VERY important. What this means, is their CPU cores are meant to be more simplistic (lower SC performance) but also more power efficient so they can have many more cores in CPU which is very beneficial for heavily parallelized (performing lots of calculations in parallel for example) tasks. So what you have is a processor that can perform adequately in mobile, but also perform very well in applications that require power efficiency, but also need to crunch a lot of numbers.

Here's the issue: In mobile, the biggest issue is the simple fact that it's hard to create an application that puts equal loads on all of the cores. What I mean by this, is some tasks in a mobile applications will take more processor time than other tasks that you may send off to another core. This means that although you can write multicore apps, you're much more likely going to run into issues where tasks running on core 2, needs information from tasks running on core 1 which creates a bottleneck. This isn't an issue if you are primarily crunching numbers that don't depend on each other, in those cases, the ARM cores would be much better compared to Apple's cores.

Until, Qualcomm, or someone else, starts making cores that are specifically meant for mobile (i.e. fewer but more complex designs with higher SC performance), then they will be behind Apple in mobile performance.

TLDR: By nature, it's very difficult to make mobile apps use all cores equally which means ARMS proprietary designs that focus on efficient multicore performance is not optimal for mobile use. This works very well when you have a lot of simple threads that, but it's not as good when you have very heavy threads like ones you'd expect from things like video editing.

 

[Significant1]

Gary Sims from Android Authority has made an very informative video explaining why Apple has an advantage:

 

[FFR]

Gary Sims from Android Authority has made an very informative video explaining why Apple has an advantage:

Thanks for the video. Very informative.

 

[Michael Goff]

The reason Qualcomm is behind Apple in CPU's is that they are now doing semi-custom (changing some parameters) designs based off of ARM cores.

The issue with that is simple, ARM designs their CPU's to be used in many different markets, i.e., they aren't designed specifically for mobile. They are meant to also be used in markets where parallel processing is VERY important. What this means, is their CPU cores are meant to be more simplistic (lower SC performance) but also more power efficient so they can have many more cores in CPU which is very beneficial for heavily parallelized (performing lots of calculations in parallel for example) tasks. So what you have is a processor that can perform adequately in mobile, but also perform very well in applications that require power efficiency, but also need to crunch a lot of numbers.

Here's the issue: In mobile, the biggest issue is the simple fact that it's hard to create an application that puts equal loads on all of the cores. What I mean by this, is some tasks in a mobile applications will take more processor time than other tasks that you may send off to another core. This means that although you can write multicore apps, you're much more likely going to run into issues where tasks running on core 2, needs information from tasks running on core 1 which creates a bottleneck. This isn't an issue if you are primarily crunching numbers that don't depend on each other, in those cases, the ARM cores would be much better compared to Apple's cores.

Until, Qualcomm, or someone else, starts making cores that are specifically meant for mobile (i.e. fewer but more complex designs with higher SC performance), then they will be behind Apple in mobile performance.

TLDR: By nature, it's very difficult to make mobile apps use all cores equally which means ARMS proprietary designs that focus on efficient multicore performance is not optimal for mobile use. This works very well when you have a lot of simple threads that, but it's not as good when you have very heavy threads like ones you'd expect from things like video editing.

You do know Apple uses the same ARM reference designs in their chips, right? What do you think they use?

 

[dallas112678]

You do know Apple uses the same ARM reference designs in their chips, right? What do you think they use?

Um, you realize that using an ARM compatible architecture (what they are licensing), and then creating your own completely custom processor core (what Apple does), is completely different than slightly modifying a stock ARM core (What Qualcomm does), correct?

That's like saying an AMD threadripper processor is the same as Intel processors because they are based off of the x86 architecture.

 

[Michael Goff]

Um, you realize that using an ARM compatible architecture (what they are licensing), and then creating your own completely custom processor core (what Apple does), is completely different than slightly modifying a stock ARM core (What Qualcomm does), correct?

That's like saying an AMD threadripper processor is the same as Intel processors because they are based off of the x86 architecture.

So what you’re telling me is Qualcomm is basically doing very little work in comparison to Apple? Because one is taking ARMs work and modifying it and the other is making their own crap and ensuring it is compatible?

 

[dallas112678]

So what you’re telling me is Qualcomm is basically doing very little work in comparison to Apple? Because one is taking ARMs work and modifying it and the other is making their own crap and ensuring it is compatible?

Yes. Feel free to do some actual research next time.

http://www.androidauthority.com/kryo-280-and-semi-custom-arm-cpu-cores-740584/

 

[Michael Goff]

Yes. Feel free to do some actual research next time.

http://www.androidauthority.com/kryo-280-and-semi-custom-arm-cpu-cores-740584/

Thanks.

And why do my own research when I can just be snarky and have people do it for me? Works just as well.

 

[dallas112678]

Thanks.

And why do my own research when I can just be snarky and have people do it for me? Works just as well.

Touche.

 

[Technarchy]

It’s worth saying there is no being defeated in a competition that never ends.

Short of Qualcomm or Apple going out of business...

 

[Michael Goff]

It’s worth saying there is no being defeated in a competition that never ends.

Short of Qualcomm or Apple going out of business...

Okay, maybe I should rephrase what is being said. Is it fair to say Qualcomm is letting Android down in comparison to the A series team and iOS?