22 ms·

Samsung to jump into laptop processor market with Exynos chip in H2

309 points by cbg0 5y ago

CrazyCatDog 5y ago
As an early adopter, I pounced on the cell cpu powered 12” MacBook. It was horrible. Still an early adopter and love my m1 MacBook Air. I hope Samsung’s chip is closer to the latter experience and not the former!
cbg0 5y ago
The real meat of the story: > The new Exynos chip for laptops will use the graphics processing unit (GPU) jointly developed with US semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) to offer improved graphical technology, according to the sources.
- ksec 5y ago
  That was my thought when I read it as well, and I have to scroll all the way down to find this comment. AMD said part of the reason why they partner with Samsung was because they dont compete in Mobile Phone. Which is a valid point. But now Samsung is competing directly in Laptop and PC using these tech. As a tech enthusiast of course I want to see this ARM / AMD Graphics combination. But as an investor I am thinking If we were mislead in a way. And if this true does it mean AMD is open to license AMD graphics IP?
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    It could be a good market for AMD. There a tons of companies designing their own ARM processors, but who don't have the resources to also create a GPU. Nvidia is completely absent from that market, at least currently, so it might be a easy way for AMD to push their GPU design.
    - ksec 5y ago
      From a business POV yes. I just dont like companies that lie. Of course at the moment this is still a rumour.
  - slezyr 5y ago
    > And if this true does it mean AMD is open to license AMD graphics IP? This is not the first time this happens. There was an Intel CPU with AMD's GPU. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/130411/intel-core-i7-8705g-processor-with-radeon-rx-vega-m-gl-graphics-8m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/130411/...
    - ksec 5y ago
      AMD didn't license their IP to Intel. It was a collaboration with AMD GPU fabbed on TSMC and linked together via Intel EMIB.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  Hopefully this means ARM chips will finally have a good GPU option that has high quality open drivers
  - rektide 5y ago
    It's kind of amazing that Nvidia is so widely reviled for frustrating agonizing drivers filled with blobs, while ARM has been around providing no help, no docs, no assistance, no drivers, what-so-ever for over a decade. No one's been thrilled, but basically doing nothing has been more effective PR than doing a so-so job. The situation has changed somewhat recently, but basically only after the reverse engineering efforts succeeded & were fully operational.
    - qbasic_forever 5y ago
      ARM has plenty of docs, sources, etc. for its Mali GPU: https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/graphics-and-multimedia/mali-gpus https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/graphics-and-multimedi... Their GPU drivers are even distributed by Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/MaliGraphics https://wiki.debian.org/MaliGraphics You are probably conflating vendors like Broadcom who license the ARM ISA and processor IP but add their own (closed) GPU to SoCs they produce, like those used in the Raspberry Pi. Remember ARM is just a company that license and sell an ISA and chip design. It's up to system integrators to turn those designs into physical chips, and sadly we have seen many of them don't value making their designs available to open source, etc. The solution to this is to not support those vendors, not to complain at ARM.
      - stefan_ 5y ago
        Mali is every bit as proprietary as Nvidia.
        hda2 5y ago
        > Mali is every bit as proprietary as Nvidia. I don't think anyone was claiming it isn't. I think GP's (and his GP) point is that ARM /usually/ makes the information needed to develop high quality open source drivers available where as Nvidia tends to do the opposite. Whether these technologies are proprietary or not is orthogonal to this issue.
- throwaway120575 5y ago
  Amazing what they were able to do in such a short period of time after completely stopping R&D on both their custom CPU and GPU in 2019, opting to instead form a strategic partnership with AMD for the new exynos chips.
akvadrako 5y ago
Hopefully this is competitive with the A1. I would really like to use something non x86 as my daily driver just for the feeling of moving forward.
- zibzab 5y ago
  You have been able to buy ARM windows/ Linux/chromeos devices for years now. What makes this one more important? Neither this or M1 are market leder in raw performance or power efficiency either.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    I meant the M1, which is a market leader in terms of performance per watt in the same performance class.
    - zibzab 5y ago
      Not necessarily, I need a _proper_ benchmark against AMD 5xxx to belive that. Edit: proper means not using one M1 big core for single threaded performance benchmark, only the little cores in a battery test and then combine those two numbers for a performance/watt comparison. You can't compare big-little with all-big in this fashion.
      - akvadrako 5y ago
        That's not needed. The peformance is there when needed, as plenty of real world benchmarks show. That isn't true of other laptop ARM CPUs.
      - agloeregrets 5y ago
        Anandtech has you on that, hell, that's not even how the M1 works, when at full use the M1 uses all 8 cores pooled. The M1 is a quad-Big core, quad-little core Chip with a roughly 30W TDP at max use, (that's the Performance/Watt number to work off, Mac OS reports it at 5w per core + 3W for the little cores combined), this is including it's GTX 1050-class GPU. We have the numbers, we know where things stand. Fact of the matter is that Ryzen 5000 is just 7nm chips and the M1 is 5nm. For a ULV chip, it is shockingly competitive and superior to 5000-series chips in single threaded (Most GP computing is still threadlocked.) and lightly-threaded ( up to four core use) tasks. A critical thing to realize about the M1 is that it lacks turbo modes, so single-thread performance scales with cores unlike most x86 Chips that slow to handle more than 1 core at full use. 5000 series chips with more than four cores have advantages in massively threaded workloads but that is absolutely not a reasonable comparison with the M1 in the first place as they are much higher wattage chips in a very different market and comparing a 45w chip with the M1 is a joke to start in the same way you just explained above. The M1 is a sweet spot chip that is not better than everything at all wattages but in a lot of cases is much better at most things. I think a lot of the praise has driven some untrue claims of how 'amazing' the M1 is and made some people think that it compares with threadripper or such in multicore when it's not true and that has driven some unfair skepticism against the M1 as well. Watt per watt, core per core, the M1 is faster and cooler than anything AMD has, once you let cores increase and wattage rise, you will find faster multicore performance.
ChildOfChaos 5y ago
Well duh. Apple released a laptop processor last year, so of course Samsung are doing one. Samsung tags soon no doubt.
- oyagci 5y ago
  Samsung Galaxy SmartTags exist since January 2020
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    January 2021? https://www.techradar.com/news/samsung-galaxy-smarttag-release-date-price-design-and-features https://www.techradar.com/news/samsung-galaxy-smarttag-relea...
    - wayneftw 5y ago
      > The device was announced at Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event on January 14, 2020. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_SmartTag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_SmartTag
      - deep-root 5y ago
        AirTags were leaked via trademark in 2019.[1] Tile has been around since 2012.[2] Someone on HN said something about whistling in the 80s.[3] Who did it first? [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/28/airtag-trademark/ https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/28/airtag-trademark/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile_(company) [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106048
        wayneftw 5y ago
        Yeah I didn't say they were first I just corrected the person that I responded to about the date that the Samsung product was announced.
  - 5y ago
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
What, their chips aren't good enough for their own phones, but they think they're good enough for dedicated laptops?
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  They already run a Samsung desktop called “Dex” on their phones.
  - nullify88 5y ago
    They also had Linux on Dex which was a full Linux desktop environment. Unfortunately it never left beta and was killed off.
    - wvenable 5y ago
      I think ultimately they couldn't make it compatible with Android 10 and that lead to its demise.
  - geogra4 5y ago
    Dex isn't bad. I use it from time to time. It's really not much different from a chromebook. I'd use a dex laptop if it was available.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Yeah, this phone: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7821516 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7821516 Probably has plenty more power than this laptop: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7185745 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7185745
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    That's an interesting point, actually. Samsung doesn't need to compete with the M1, it only needs to compete with Celerons and Athlons to make a profit. As far as most consumers are concerned, even Exynos chips may be worth it for desktop use because they can use the extensive video acceleration support that mobile GPUs have which many desktop chips still lack. Sadly, the Windows world is far from ARM-compatible. Few people install applications through the Windows Store, and bringing Linux to the masses with an alternative, low-power laptop processor will probably end up failing as well. I fear that the lack of software support will prevent Samsung for replicating Apple's success. Maybe Samsung can stuff these chips into Chromebooks, those provide a limited yet cross-platform operating system that some markets are getting used to already. There are plenty of ARM Chromebooks out there, so I'm not sure how well Samsung could compete in that space.
wodenokoto 5y ago
will it run windows or what is their aim?
- flatiron 5y ago
  Probably chromeos
- AmVess 5y ago
  Likely Windows ARM. It should prove to be a stout upgrade to the units MS currently uses in their ARM laptops.
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  FTA: "If the product hits the market, Samsung would become the first modern Windows laptop manufacturer to launch its own processor that works as the brain in its machines." That doesn't actually tell you what OS they're using, and it could just be the journalist trying to indicate how Samsung is the first at what Apple already did. But Windows 10 does run on ARM as long as you're willing to use "modern" apps only. I suppose this won't be a machine developers will be excited by, as excited as some of us want to be.
  - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago
    >But Windows 10 does run on ARM as long as you're willing to use "modern" apps only. I suppose this won't be a machine developers will be excited by, as excited as some of us want to be. Windows 10 for ARM have always had x86 emulation and they've recently extended it with x64 support: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introducing-x64-emulation-in-preview-for-windows-10-on-arm-pcs-to-the-windows-insider-program/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introdu...
- mekster 5y ago
  MS failed in the mobile market and didn't bother to prepare ARM version of Windows and now Apple will be enjoying the desktop/notebook market with Wintel having at least 5 years of catch up to do.
als0 5y ago
It wasn't too long ago that Samsung Chromebooks were powered by an Exynos. Even a lightweight system like ChromeOS was quite slow...
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks The 2.5 year old XR is faster than Android flagships. I wonder what tricks Samsung has to close the gap.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I bet the trick is that the new exynos laptops are just like the old ones: low end.
trynumber9 5y ago
I would have thought AMD's licensing agreement would prohibit Samsung products including Navi 2 from competing with AMD's own laptop-focused products (Cezanne & rumored Rembrandt). >AMD will license custom graphics IP based on the recently announced, highly-scalable RDNA graphics architecture to Samsung for use in mobile devices, including smartphones, and other products that complement AMD product offerings. So I would only expect this in Samsung laptops, where so far they have been hesitant to use AMD SoCs.
- demarq 5y ago
  I think it’s a customers first approach, much like Rimac selling vehicle technologies directly to it’s competitors
bilal4hmed 5y ago
I have a Samsung Chromebook with a Rokchip ARM processor. Its 3 years old and is still blazing fast, with multiple tabs open, video conferencing etc with amazing battery life. Would be nice to see what they can do with their own chips.
- megous 5y ago
  I wouldn't call RK3399 blazing fast, but it's quite usable.
  - wffurr 5y ago
    The GPU in that chip is so slow it can't fill the screen with a solid color at 60 Hz.
    - ladyanita22 5y ago
      It's that so? How c can then Chrome OS display anything then? Displaying a desktop environment with multiple apps and/or moving webpages must be impossible.
      - wffurr 5y ago
        None of it happens at 60 FPS. Dragging windows, animations, etc are all janky on that GPU.
  - bilal4hmed 5y ago
    True, for me it I should have put in bold that for a 3 year old device its fast. Based on what I do with it as described above it does the job without having me to throw it against a window since its slow
- fctorial 5y ago
  Says more about chromeos than the processor. Try installing windows or ubuntu gnome on it.
abrowne 5y ago
Huawei as well, at least in China, and with a Linux OS: > Huawei launches a Linux laptop with an ARM-based Kirin 990 processor > Now Huawei has launched its first laptop that doesn’t feature an Intel or AMD chip. The Huawei Qingyun L410 is powered by Huwaei’s own Kirin 990 processor, an ARM-based chip that was initially developed for smartphones and tablets. https://liliputing.com/2021/05/huawei-launches-a-linux-laptop-with-an-arm-based-kirin-990-processor.html https://liliputing.com/2021/05/huawei-launches-a-linux-lapto...
- toxik 5y ago
  Truly the year of desktop Linux is soon here!
  - tbihl 5y ago
    Always is.
    - earthscienceman 5y ago
      To be fair to linux, this time could actually be different with a market shift as big as this. The biggest reason(s) Windows wins consistently is backwards compatibility and a large suite of software/apps. Windows for ARM kills these advantages. If ARM is the future, the playing field is being leveled significantly.
      - dontblink 5y ago
        Gaming is the thing that locks a lot of us into Windows. Direct3D really has allowed MS to keep the Desktop Windows as a monopoly IMHO (in addition to what you have said).
        pjmlp 5y ago
        It helps that OpenGL is an API designed by committee, where the amount of extensions means having to code multiple paths anyway, depending on the card, driver and OS. Vulkan isn't any better, just the bare basic and then extension loading fun. Game developers tend to prefer proprietary APIs because vendors actually care about the overall development experience end to end, instead of expecting the community to come up with something.
vitus 5y ago
> In November 2020, Apple Inc. launched the M1 chip, a desktop- and laptop-grade systems-on-chip (SoC) based on a British processor architecture known as ARM. Seems strange to call this out and not mention that the Exynos SoC is also based on ARM.
- mekster 5y ago
  What else could it be? It's used in some of the Samsung's Android devices.
Animats 5y ago
It took a while to find that this is a Cortex ARM CPU.
reader_mode 5y ago
I'm more interested in their new 360 laptops, those screens look amazing and 11gen Intel CPUs are tolerable from what I've seen, the iGPUs are decent enough to drive 5k monitor. I would like an ARM option but I'm afraid nobody is getting close to M1 soon, going on the rest of the ARM ecosystem track record these will be considerably worse than X86. Unfortunately Apple isn't big on providing choices or canibalizing iOS market where they get a 30% cut of everything going on the device so I have to hope companies like Samsung get it right.
- walterbell 5y ago
  > nobody is getting close to M1 soon Except the former M1 team that founded Nuvia, soon to ship Qualcomm's laptop SoC.
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    >The first Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms to feature Qualcomm Technologies’ new internally designed CPUs are expected to sample in the second half of 2022 and will be designed for high-performance ultraportable laptops So they will have enginering samples by the end of next year ? When I said soon I sort of meant in the two year period, in the long run Intel is likely to catch up on the process as well - but devices shipping in the next 2 years will be underperforming compared to Apple M processors.
    - walterbell 5y ago
      Didn't Nuvia have internal samples in 2020? Good for Qualcomm if their competitors don't expect M1-class product competition until 2023.
Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
I doubt Samsung is gonna come even close to Apple in performance. But perhaps getting decent ARM processors in laptops will mean we get battery life that is actually good. It's hard to believe that you can use a mobile phone with a high resolution screen and get 8 hours SOT with a varied workload. But browse the web in Chrome on a 2020 Intel or AMD based Windows laptop with a 1080p screen and see that your battery life doesn't even come close. Despite a much larger battery.
- drcode 5y ago
  It seems to me M1-style performance should be easy to achieve for other large companies with access to decent foundries... one would think Samsung could just use a similar ARM core, then study the design of the M1 to come up with a competitive cache design. (but I'm no expert, happy to have someone correct my view with better information)
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    If that were the case Apple couldn’t have maintained a huge performance lead in smartphone CPUs for half a decade.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      Excellent point. Also Apple has a unique advantage of hardware + OS all built under their control and carefully optimized. Regular chip companies can't influence their customers as well as Apple's hardware team influences the OS departments.
    - marticode 5y ago
      They had a lead because they were optimizing for a different target than Qualcomm. Apple was more concerned about single core performance while Qualcomm was focusing on lower cost and efficiency.
  - valuearb 5y ago
    If it was that easy Exynos wouldn’t already lag the A14 so badly. It should gain maybe 15% in a smaller process, but has a lot farther to go.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
Interesting, since this didn't happen after the Surface debut but did happen after the Macbook debut. Of course the processors are better now.
panny 5y ago
It is telling that there are many obvious ARM fans in this thread, but not a lot of proud M1 owners. It seems Apple really screwed the pooch by failing to ship some sort of bootcamp for M1 to make Linux possible.
- tmarsden 5y ago
  Apple obviously wants you to use MacOS. With that said the M1 fully supports booting unsigned/custom kernels, so running Linux doesn’t require any security exploits. Asahi Linux aims to bring you a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon Macs, sounds like some of their code might make it into the 5.13 version of the Linux kernel. Oh and M1 doesn’t have bootcamp but you can run windows ARM with Parallels.
  - panny 5y ago
    That code can only boot to a serial console. It is a start, but it will not produce a usable linux system in any way. It doesn't even touch drivers for the GPU/NPU/Bluetooth/WiFi/etc. By the time they can produce a minimum usable system which boots with a display, keyboard, headphones, usb, ssd, and trackpad, the M1 will likely be end of life. M2 went into production two weeks ago. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-s-follow-up-to-M1-chip-goes-into-mass-production-for-Mac https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-s... You'd need to buy one now, speculating that someday the Asahi work will produce a barely usable system on a laptop you can't even buy anymore. Considering the 2016 macbooks are basically unusable with Linux now 5 years after release, I don't have a lot of hope the M1 ever will be. https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux
radicaldreamer 5y ago
There's rumors of Google ARM silicon coming this year based on Exynos. We might see a similar chip in future Pixelbooks/Chromebooks.
- zibzab 5y ago
  I thought Google was doing it own design. Do you have any pointers to these rumors?
  - radicaldreamer 5y ago
    A good summary of the rumors… GS101 “Whitechapel” chip: https://9to5google.com/2021/04/09/everything-we-know-google-whitechapel-gs101-pixel-6/ https://9to5google.com/2021/04/09/everything-we-know-google-...
- swiley 5y ago
  There is no way I would buy a machine with FANG in the silicon.
MangoCoffee 5y ago
“Real men have fabs.” - AMD founder, Jerry Sanders. this is the new age. everyone can design a custom chip for its product without "real men have fabs". this is exciting. your custom chip designed for your own product can make your product stand out like Apple M1.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Uh, won't this chip be built using Samsung's fab?
  - wmf 5y ago
    Samsung phones, Samsung Exynos, and Samsung fabs are essentially separate companies.
    - CameronNemo 5y ago
      Sure, but the last flagship Exynos (2100) used the Samsung 5nm process. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16316/samsung-announces-exynos-2100 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16316/samsung-announces-exyno...
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    Can Samsung do 5nm in their own foundries?
    - CameronNemo 5y ago
      Yes, but the transistor density is lower than TSMC's 5nm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process
Nursie 5y ago
There was an Exynos chromebook nearly 10 years ago! It was pretty great for what it was. Slim, light and cheap!
- bloak 5y ago
  This one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Samsung_Series_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Samsung_Series_3) with the Exynos 5? In terms of value for money it was, in my opinion, the best computer ever sold. One of those cost £229 and was in constant use for about 8 years, carried around in a rucksack, used for e-mail, web browsing, video calls, iPlayer, editing files on Google Docs, ... If they could make one of those that runs Debian with the security features of a Chromebook but without the Google dependency ... it would be too good to be true.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    Yes, that's the one. I did have mine set up to dual boot Ubuntu back then, it was a reasonably capable little machine. Wouldn't like to comment on the security. As you say, it was rugged and cheap enough to throw around wherever, and you can do enough in ChromeOS to get by. I only eventually ditched it when updates stopped being available.
userbinator 5y ago
There's a bunch of comments here about performance, but IMHO even 10 years ago hardware was already fast enough (and any gains in speed are just being taken by increasingly bloated software); what I'm more worried about is openness --- will Samsung release detailed documentation for its SoCs, on par with what TI and other ARM SoC companies have done, or even better? I really hope Apple's M1 does not start a trend towards even more computers with basically zero public documentation.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Personally I searched the web for how to run a normal Linux build on the Samsung Exynos 2100 SoC. Could not find much information at all. Very sad state of affairs compared to an rk3399 or iMX8. Especially considering how much more performance the Exynos SoC appears to deliver. I am looking forward to the new Rockchip offerings (rk35xx), and the continued progress on mainline support for the VPUs. Not holding my breath for the Samsung or Qualcomm SoCs.
- cageface 5y ago
  Of course this depends on what you're trying to do. If you're doing 3d rendering or video compositing or heavy audio DSP or gaming you need all the power you can get. I share your concerns about openness though.
- wmf 5y ago
  Nope, it'll be Android, ChromeOS, and Windows only with no docs and three different bootloaders.
  - mateo1 5y ago
    yeah, if ARM takes over the laptop market it will be the beginning of the end for open software. They'll be shipping like phones do today. There's no realistic alternative to the OEMs stock OS unless you trust shady and often botched ports. It will also be the end for pirated software.
- judge2020 5y ago
  > even 10 years ago hardware was already fast enough (and any gains in speed are just being taken by increasingly bloated software) This point doesn't stand the test of time, much like how Gates said "640K ought to be enough for anybody" (except he didn't[0]). Computers will keep getting faster so that developers can keep abstracting away 'hard' parts of development, leading to modern-day bloat most would consider Electron and React/Vue/Polymer. This is only considered 'bloat' until the hardware is fast enough and has enough memory to where the slowdown caused by the bloat is negligible and it simply becomes a tool that increases productivity and the amount of products/features consumers see each quarter. 0: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/
p1mrx 5y ago
Will they be able to support TSO (total store ordering) for faster x86 emulation, or did Apple manage to patent that?
hoaryqueso 5y ago
this comment should show up on my program
villgax 5y ago
Hope these ARM laptops still keep priority to NVME storage as a first class citizen instead of soldered storage
Subsentient 5y ago
Please no. ARM chips are a nightmare enough for compatibility on phones and tablets, even devices several years old. I don't want to need custom patched Linux kernels just to boot my fucking laptop! Oh but I already know. That's deliberate. They're trying to prevent you from escaping their litterbox with a free OS. Because if you're trapped in the litterbox, all you have to eat are their tootsie rolls.
- mjg59 5y ago
  Contemporary ARM Windows laptops adhere to well documented standards. Booting Linux isn't a major challenge.
- p_l 5y ago
  "Full" Windows on ARM devices provide well architectured platform, unlike Linux-oriented throwaway designs. And aren't locked (unlike Windows Phone and WindowsRT devices), because that would prevent Microsoft offering them in their highest margin market (Enterprise) where one of their offerings requires customer-managed signing keys for Secure Boot.
zibzab 5y ago
Technically, Samsung jumped into this market already in 2012 (Samsung Series 3 chromebook had an exynos CPU). I think the real news here is the AMD collaboration.
estevaovix 5y ago
Intel is so fucked..
- mekster 5y ago
  In 10 years, will we see ARM everywhere?

309 points by cbg0 5y ago

As an early adopter, I pounced on the cell cpu powered 12” MacBook. It was horrible. Still an early adopter and love my m1 MacBook Air. I hope Samsung’s chip is closer to the latter experience and not the former!

cbg0 5y ago

The real meat of the story: > The new Exynos chip for laptops will use the graphics processing unit (GPU) jointly developed with US semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) to offer improved graphical technology, according to the sources.

ksec 5y ago
That was my thought when I read it as well, and I have to scroll all the way down to find this comment. AMD said part of the reason why they partner with Samsung was because they dont compete in Mobile Phone. Which is a valid point. But now Samsung is competing directly in Laptop and PC using these tech. As a tech enthusiast of course I want to see this ARM / AMD Graphics combination. But as an investor I am thinking If we were mislead in a way. And if this true does it mean AMD is open to license AMD graphics IP?
- mrweasel 5y ago
  It could be a good market for AMD. There a tons of companies designing their own ARM processors, but who don't have the resources to also create a GPU. Nvidia is completely absent from that market, at least currently, so it might be a easy way for AMD to push their GPU design.
  - ksec 5y ago
    From a business POV yes. I just dont like companies that lie. Of course at the moment this is still a rumour.
- slezyr 5y ago
  > And if this true does it mean AMD is open to license AMD graphics IP? This is not the first time this happens. There was an Intel CPU with AMD's GPU. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/130411/intel-core-i7-8705g-processor-with-radeon-rx-vega-m-gl-graphics-8m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/130411/...
  - ksec 5y ago
    AMD didn't license their IP to Intel. It was a collaboration with AMD GPU fabbed on TSMC and linked together via Intel EMIB.
kevingadd 5y ago
Hopefully this means ARM chips will finally have a good GPU option that has high quality open drivers
- rektide 5y ago
  It's kind of amazing that Nvidia is so widely reviled for frustrating agonizing drivers filled with blobs, while ARM has been around providing no help, no docs, no assistance, no drivers, what-so-ever for over a decade. No one's been thrilled, but basically doing nothing has been more effective PR than doing a so-so job. The situation has changed somewhat recently, but basically only after the reverse engineering efforts succeeded & were fully operational.
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    ARM has plenty of docs, sources, etc. for its Mali GPU: https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/graphics-and-multimedia/mali-gpus https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/graphics-and-multimedi... Their GPU drivers are even distributed by Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/MaliGraphics https://wiki.debian.org/MaliGraphics You are probably conflating vendors like Broadcom who license the ARM ISA and processor IP but add their own (closed) GPU to SoCs they produce, like those used in the Raspberry Pi. Remember ARM is just a company that license and sell an ISA and chip design. It's up to system integrators to turn those designs into physical chips, and sadly we have seen many of them don't value making their designs available to open source, etc. The solution to this is to not support those vendors, not to complain at ARM.
    - stefan_ 5y ago
      Mali is every bit as proprietary as Nvidia.
      - hda2 5y ago
        > Mali is every bit as proprietary as Nvidia. I don't think anyone was claiming it isn't. I think GP's (and his GP) point is that ARM /usually/ makes the information needed to develop high quality open source drivers available where as Nvidia tends to do the opposite. Whether these technologies are proprietary or not is orthogonal to this issue.
throwaway120575 5y ago
Amazing what they were able to do in such a short period of time after completely stopping R&D on both their custom CPU and GPU in 2019, opting to instead form a strategic partnership with AMD for the new exynos chips.

akvadrako 5y ago

Hopefully this is competitive with the A1. I would really like to use something non x86 as my daily driver just for the feeling of moving forward.

zibzab 5y ago
You have been able to buy ARM windows/ Linux/chromeos devices for years now. What makes this one more important? Neither this or M1 are market leder in raw performance or power efficiency either.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  I meant the M1, which is a market leader in terms of performance per watt in the same performance class.
  - zibzab 5y ago
    Not necessarily, I need a _proper_ benchmark against AMD 5xxx to belive that. Edit: proper means not using one M1 big core for single threaded performance benchmark, only the little cores in a battery test and then combine those two numbers for a performance/watt comparison. You can't compare big-little with all-big in this fashion.
    - akvadrako 5y ago
      That's not needed. The peformance is there when needed, as plenty of real world benchmarks show. That isn't true of other laptop ARM CPUs.
    - agloeregrets 5y ago
      Anandtech has you on that, hell, that's not even how the M1 works, when at full use the M1 uses all 8 cores pooled. The M1 is a quad-Big core, quad-little core Chip with a roughly 30W TDP at max use, (that's the Performance/Watt number to work off, Mac OS reports it at 5w per core + 3W for the little cores combined), this is including it's GTX 1050-class GPU. We have the numbers, we know where things stand. Fact of the matter is that Ryzen 5000 is just 7nm chips and the M1 is 5nm. For a ULV chip, it is shockingly competitive and superior to 5000-series chips in single threaded (Most GP computing is still threadlocked.) and lightly-threaded ( up to four core use) tasks. A critical thing to realize about the M1 is that it lacks turbo modes, so single-thread performance scales with cores unlike most x86 Chips that slow to handle more than 1 core at full use. 5000 series chips with more than four cores have advantages in massively threaded workloads but that is absolutely not a reasonable comparison with the M1 in the first place as they are much higher wattage chips in a very different market and comparing a 45w chip with the M1 is a joke to start in the same way you just explained above. The M1 is a sweet spot chip that is not better than everything at all wattages but in a lot of cases is much better at most things. I think a lot of the praise has driven some untrue claims of how 'amazing' the M1 is and made some people think that it compares with threadripper or such in multicore when it's not true and that has driven some unfair skepticism against the M1 as well. Watt per watt, core per core, the M1 is faster and cooler than anything AMD has, once you let cores increase and wattage rise, you will find faster multicore performance.

ChildOfChaos 5y ago

Well duh. Apple released a laptop processor last year, so of course Samsung are doing one. Samsung tags soon no doubt.

oyagci 5y ago
Samsung Galaxy SmartTags exist since January 2020
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  January 2021? https://www.techradar.com/news/samsung-galaxy-smarttag-release-date-price-design-and-features https://www.techradar.com/news/samsung-galaxy-smarttag-relea...
  - wayneftw 5y ago
    > The device was announced at Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event on January 14, 2020. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_SmartTag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_SmartTag
    - deep-root 5y ago
      AirTags were leaked via trademark in 2019.[1] Tile has been around since 2012.[2] Someone on HN said something about whistling in the 80s.[3] Who did it first? [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/28/airtag-trademark/ https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/28/airtag-trademark/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile_(company) [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27106048
      - wayneftw 5y ago
        Yeah I didn't say they were first I just corrected the person that I responded to about the date that the Samsung product was announced.
- 5y ago

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

What, their chips aren't good enough for their own phones, but they think they're good enough for dedicated laptops?

twobitshifter 5y ago
They already run a Samsung desktop called “Dex” on their phones.
- nullify88 5y ago
  They also had Linux on Dex which was a full Linux desktop environment. Unfortunately it never left beta and was killed off.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    I think ultimately they couldn't make it compatible with Android 10 and that lead to its demise.
- geogra4 5y ago
  Dex isn't bad. I use it from time to time. It's really not much different from a chromebook. I'd use a dex laptop if it was available.
kube-system 5y ago
Yeah, this phone: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7821516 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7821516 Probably has plenty more power than this laptop: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7185745 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7185745
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  That's an interesting point, actually. Samsung doesn't need to compete with the M1, it only needs to compete with Celerons and Athlons to make a profit. As far as most consumers are concerned, even Exynos chips may be worth it for desktop use because they can use the extensive video acceleration support that mobile GPUs have which many desktop chips still lack. Sadly, the Windows world is far from ARM-compatible. Few people install applications through the Windows Store, and bringing Linux to the masses with an alternative, low-power laptop processor will probably end up failing as well. I fear that the lack of software support will prevent Samsung for replicating Apple's success. Maybe Samsung can stuff these chips into Chromebooks, those provide a limited yet cross-platform operating system that some markets are getting used to already. There are plenty of ARM Chromebooks out there, so I'm not sure how well Samsung could compete in that space.

wodenokoto 5y ago

will it run windows or what is their aim?

flatiron 5y ago
Probably chromeos
AmVess 5y ago
Likely Windows ARM. It should prove to be a stout upgrade to the units MS currently uses in their ARM laptops.
squiggleblaz 5y ago
FTA: "If the product hits the market, Samsung would become the first modern Windows laptop manufacturer to launch its own processor that works as the brain in its machines." That doesn't actually tell you what OS they're using, and it could just be the journalist trying to indicate how Samsung is the first at what Apple already did. But Windows 10 does run on ARM as long as you're willing to use "modern" apps only. I suppose this won't be a machine developers will be excited by, as excited as some of us want to be.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago
  >But Windows 10 does run on ARM as long as you're willing to use "modern" apps only. I suppose this won't be a machine developers will be excited by, as excited as some of us want to be. Windows 10 for ARM have always had x86 emulation and they've recently extended it with x64 support: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introducing-x64-emulation-in-preview-for-windows-10-on-arm-pcs-to-the-windows-insider-program/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introdu...
mekster 5y ago
MS failed in the mobile market and didn't bother to prepare ARM version of Windows and now Apple will be enjoying the desktop/notebook market with Wintel having at least 5 years of catch up to do.

als0 5y ago

It wasn't too long ago that Samsung Chromebooks were powered by an Exynos. Even a lightweight system like ChromeOS was quite slow...

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks The 2.5 year old XR is faster than Android flagships. I wonder what tricks Samsung has to close the gap.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I bet the trick is that the new exynos laptops are just like the old ones: low end.

trynumber9 5y ago

I would have thought AMD's licensing agreement would prohibit Samsung products including Navi 2 from competing with AMD's own laptop-focused products (Cezanne & rumored Rembrandt). >AMD will license custom graphics IP based on the recently announced, highly-scalable RDNA graphics architecture to Samsung for use in mobile devices, including smartphones, and other products that complement AMD product offerings. So I would only expect this in Samsung laptops, where so far they have been hesitant to use AMD SoCs.

demarq 5y ago
I think it’s a customers first approach, much like Rimac selling vehicle technologies directly to it’s competitors

bilal4hmed 5y ago

I have a Samsung Chromebook with a Rokchip ARM processor. Its 3 years old and is still blazing fast, with multiple tabs open, video conferencing etc with amazing battery life. Would be nice to see what they can do with their own chips.

megous 5y ago
I wouldn't call RK3399 blazing fast, but it's quite usable.
- wffurr 5y ago
  The GPU in that chip is so slow it can't fill the screen with a solid color at 60 Hz.
  - ladyanita22 5y ago
    It's that so? How c can then Chrome OS display anything then? Displaying a desktop environment with multiple apps and/or moving webpages must be impossible.
    - wffurr 5y ago
      None of it happens at 60 FPS. Dragging windows, animations, etc are all janky on that GPU.
- bilal4hmed 5y ago
  True, for me it I should have put in bold that for a 3 year old device its fast. Based on what I do with it as described above it does the job without having me to throw it against a window since its slow
fctorial 5y ago
Says more about chromeos than the processor. Try installing windows or ubuntu gnome on it.

abrowne 5y ago

Huawei as well, at least in China, and with a Linux OS: > Huawei launches a Linux laptop with an ARM-based Kirin 990 processor > Now Huawei has launched its first laptop that doesn’t feature an Intel or AMD chip. The Huawei Qingyun L410 is powered by Huwaei’s own Kirin 990 processor, an ARM-based chip that was initially developed for smartphones and tablets. https://liliputing.com/2021/05/huawei-launches-a-linux-laptop-with-an-arm-based-kirin-990-processor.html https://liliputing.com/2021/05/huawei-launches-a-linux-lapto...

toxik 5y ago
Truly the year of desktop Linux is soon here!
- tbihl 5y ago
  Always is.
  - earthscienceman 5y ago
    To be fair to linux, this time could actually be different with a market shift as big as this. The biggest reason(s) Windows wins consistently is backwards compatibility and a large suite of software/apps. Windows for ARM kills these advantages. If ARM is the future, the playing field is being leveled significantly.
    - dontblink 5y ago
      Gaming is the thing that locks a lot of us into Windows. Direct3D really has allowed MS to keep the Desktop Windows as a monopoly IMHO (in addition to what you have said).
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        It helps that OpenGL is an API designed by committee, where the amount of extensions means having to code multiple paths anyway, depending on the card, driver and OS. Vulkan isn't any better, just the bare basic and then extension loading fun. Game developers tend to prefer proprietary APIs because vendors actually care about the overall development experience end to end, instead of expecting the community to come up with something.

vitus 5y ago

> In November 2020, Apple Inc. launched the M1 chip, a desktop- and laptop-grade systems-on-chip (SoC) based on a British processor architecture known as ARM. Seems strange to call this out and not mention that the Exynos SoC is also based on ARM.

mekster 5y ago
What else could it be? It's used in some of the Samsung's Android devices.

Animats 5y ago

It took a while to find that this is a Cortex ARM CPU.

reader_mode 5y ago

I'm more interested in their new 360 laptops, those screens look amazing and 11gen Intel CPUs are tolerable from what I've seen, the iGPUs are decent enough to drive 5k monitor. I would like an ARM option but I'm afraid nobody is getting close to M1 soon, going on the rest of the ARM ecosystem track record these will be considerably worse than X86. Unfortunately Apple isn't big on providing choices or canibalizing iOS market where they get a 30% cut of everything going on the device so I have to hope companies like Samsung get it right.

walterbell 5y ago
> nobody is getting close to M1 soon Except the former M1 team that founded Nuvia, soon to ship Qualcomm's laptop SoC.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  >The first Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms to feature Qualcomm Technologies’ new internally designed CPUs are expected to sample in the second half of 2022 and will be designed for high-performance ultraportable laptops So they will have enginering samples by the end of next year ? When I said soon I sort of meant in the two year period, in the long run Intel is likely to catch up on the process as well - but devices shipping in the next 2 years will be underperforming compared to Apple M processors.
  - walterbell 5y ago
    Didn't Nuvia have internal samples in 2020? Good for Qualcomm if their competitors don't expect M1-class product competition until 2023.

Philip-J-Fry 5y ago

I doubt Samsung is gonna come even close to Apple in performance. But perhaps getting decent ARM processors in laptops will mean we get battery life that is actually good. It's hard to believe that you can use a mobile phone with a high resolution screen and get 8 hours SOT with a varied workload. But browse the web in Chrome on a 2020 Intel or AMD based Windows laptop with a 1080p screen and see that your battery life doesn't even come close. Despite a much larger battery.

drcode 5y ago
It seems to me M1-style performance should be easy to achieve for other large companies with access to decent foundries... one would think Samsung could just use a similar ARM core, then study the design of the M1 to come up with a competitive cache design. (but I'm no expert, happy to have someone correct my view with better information)
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  If that were the case Apple couldn’t have maintained a huge performance lead in smartphone CPUs for half a decade.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Excellent point. Also Apple has a unique advantage of hardware + OS all built under their control and carefully optimized. Regular chip companies can't influence their customers as well as Apple's hardware team influences the OS departments.
  - marticode 5y ago
    They had a lead because they were optimizing for a different target than Qualcomm. Apple was more concerned about single core performance while Qualcomm was focusing on lower cost and efficiency.
- valuearb 5y ago
  If it was that easy Exynos wouldn’t already lag the A14 so badly. It should gain maybe 15% in a smaller process, but has a lot farther to go.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

Interesting, since this didn't happen after the Surface debut but did happen after the Macbook debut. Of course the processors are better now.

panny 5y ago

It is telling that there are many obvious ARM fans in this thread, but not a lot of proud M1 owners. It seems Apple really screwed the pooch by failing to ship some sort of bootcamp for M1 to make Linux possible.

tmarsden 5y ago
Apple obviously wants you to use MacOS. With that said the M1 fully supports booting unsigned/custom kernels, so running Linux doesn’t require any security exploits. Asahi Linux aims to bring you a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon Macs, sounds like some of their code might make it into the 5.13 version of the Linux kernel. Oh and M1 doesn’t have bootcamp but you can run windows ARM with Parallels.
- panny 5y ago
  That code can only boot to a serial console. It is a start, but it will not produce a usable linux system in any way. It doesn't even touch drivers for the GPU/NPU/Bluetooth/WiFi/etc. By the time they can produce a minimum usable system which boots with a display, keyboard, headphones, usb, ssd, and trackpad, the M1 will likely be end of life. M2 went into production two weeks ago. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-s-follow-up-to-M1-chip-goes-into-mass-production-for-Mac https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Apple-s... You'd need to buy one now, speculating that someday the Asahi work will produce a barely usable system on a laptop you can't even buy anymore. Considering the 2016 macbooks are basically unusable with Linux now 5 years after release, I don't have a lot of hope the M1 ever will be. https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

radicaldreamer 5y ago

There's rumors of Google ARM silicon coming this year based on Exynos. We might see a similar chip in future Pixelbooks/Chromebooks.

zibzab 5y ago
I thought Google was doing it own design. Do you have any pointers to these rumors?
- radicaldreamer 5y ago
  A good summary of the rumors… GS101 “Whitechapel” chip: https://9to5google.com/2021/04/09/everything-we-know-google-whitechapel-gs101-pixel-6/ https://9to5google.com/2021/04/09/everything-we-know-google-...
swiley 5y ago
There is no way I would buy a machine with FANG in the silicon.

MangoCoffee 5y ago

“Real men have fabs.” - AMD founder, Jerry Sanders. this is the new age. everyone can design a custom chip for its product without "real men have fabs". this is exciting. your custom chip designed for your own product can make your product stand out like Apple M1.

CameronNemo 5y ago
Uh, won't this chip be built using Samsung's fab?
- wmf 5y ago
  Samsung phones, Samsung Exynos, and Samsung fabs are essentially separate companies.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Sure, but the last flagship Exynos (2100) used the Samsung 5nm process. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16316/samsung-announces-exynos-2100 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16316/samsung-announces-exyno...
- mr_toad 5y ago
  Can Samsung do 5nm in their own foundries?
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Yes, but the transistor density is lower than TSMC's 5nm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process

Nursie 5y ago

There was an Exynos chromebook nearly 10 years ago! It was pretty great for what it was. Slim, light and cheap!

bloak 5y ago
This one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Samsung_Series_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Samsung_Series_3) with the Exynos 5? In terms of value for money it was, in my opinion, the best computer ever sold. One of those cost £229 and was in constant use for about 8 years, carried around in a rucksack, used for e-mail, web browsing, video calls, iPlayer, editing files on Google Docs, ... If they could make one of those that runs Debian with the security features of a Chromebook but without the Google dependency ... it would be too good to be true.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Yes, that's the one. I did have mine set up to dual boot Ubuntu back then, it was a reasonably capable little machine. Wouldn't like to comment on the security. As you say, it was rugged and cheap enough to throw around wherever, and you can do enough in ChromeOS to get by. I only eventually ditched it when updates stopped being available.

userbinator 5y ago

There's a bunch of comments here about performance, but IMHO even 10 years ago hardware was already fast enough (and any gains in speed are just being taken by increasingly bloated software); what I'm more worried about is openness --- will Samsung release detailed documentation for its SoCs, on par with what TI and other ARM SoC companies have done, or even better? I really hope Apple's M1 does not start a trend towards even more computers with basically zero public documentation.

CameronNemo 5y ago
Personally I searched the web for how to run a normal Linux build on the Samsung Exynos 2100 SoC. Could not find much information at all. Very sad state of affairs compared to an rk3399 or iMX8. Especially considering how much more performance the Exynos SoC appears to deliver. I am looking forward to the new Rockchip offerings (rk35xx), and the continued progress on mainline support for the VPUs. Not holding my breath for the Samsung or Qualcomm SoCs.
cageface 5y ago
Of course this depends on what you're trying to do. If you're doing 3d rendering or video compositing or heavy audio DSP or gaming you need all the power you can get. I share your concerns about openness though.
wmf 5y ago
Nope, it'll be Android, ChromeOS, and Windows only with no docs and three different bootloaders.
- mateo1 5y ago
  yeah, if ARM takes over the laptop market it will be the beginning of the end for open software. They'll be shipping like phones do today. There's no realistic alternative to the OEMs stock OS unless you trust shady and often botched ports. It will also be the end for pirated software.
judge2020 5y ago
> even 10 years ago hardware was already fast enough (and any gains in speed are just being taken by increasingly bloated software) This point doesn't stand the test of time, much like how Gates said "640K ought to be enough for anybody" (except he didn't[0]). Computers will keep getting faster so that developers can keep abstracting away 'hard' parts of development, leading to modern-day bloat most would consider Electron and React/Vue/Polymer. This is only considered 'bloat' until the hardware is fast enough and has enough memory to where the slowdown caused by the bloat is negligible and it simply becomes a tool that increases productivity and the amount of products/features consumers see each quarter. 0: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/

p1mrx 5y ago

Will they be able to support TSO (total store ordering) for faster x86 emulation, or did Apple manage to patent that?

hoaryqueso 5y ago

this comment should show up on my program

villgax 5y ago

Hope these ARM laptops still keep priority to NVME storage as a first class citizen instead of soldered storage

Subsentient 5y ago

Please no. ARM chips are a nightmare enough for compatibility on phones and tablets, even devices several years old. I don't want to need custom patched Linux kernels just to boot my fucking laptop! Oh but I already know. That's deliberate. They're trying to prevent you from escaping their litterbox with a free OS. Because if you're trapped in the litterbox, all you have to eat are their tootsie rolls.

mjg59 5y ago
Contemporary ARM Windows laptops adhere to well documented standards. Booting Linux isn't a major challenge.
p_l 5y ago
"Full" Windows on ARM devices provide well architectured platform, unlike Linux-oriented throwaway designs. And aren't locked (unlike Windows Phone and WindowsRT devices), because that would prevent Microsoft offering them in their highest margin market (Enterprise) where one of their offerings requires customer-managed signing keys for Secure Boot.

zibzab 5y ago

Technically, Samsung jumped into this market already in 2012 (Samsung Series 3 chromebook had an exynos CPU). I think the real news here is the AMD collaboration.

estevaovix 5y ago

Intel is so fucked..

mekster 5y ago
In 10 years, will we see ARM everywhere?