5 ms·

ARM SoC developed for Android devices, on the other hand, are consistently way behind in performance and are nearly all based on ARM designs. I've been waiting

by Osiris 5y ago

ARM SoC developed for Android devices, on the other hand, are consistently way behind in performance and are nearly all based on ARM designs. I've been waiting for years for someone other than Apple to make a fully custom ARM SoC that can compete with Apple. I suspect there isn't a lot of incentive for Qualcomm to do it as they as nearly a monopoly in the Android space. I've been hoping that AMD or Intel would step up and make an ARM core that crushes Qualcomm. I just got a used iPhone 7 for my so and despite being 5 years old is still really smooth running the latest iOS 15. It's the only iPhone I own (the rest are Android) and I'm a bit jealous.

harpratap 5y ago
They acquired Nuvia which is meant to be the custom CPU attempt from Qualcomm. But not sure if they will bring Nuvia expertise to Mobile SoCs or keep them for desktop & servers
kllrnohj 5y ago
Qualcomm dominates at radios, which matters far more than single-core CPU performance. So there's no pressure on Qualcomm to be better, and really all they do is take off-the-shelf ARM designs for the CPU cores anyway. So it'd really be ARM themselves falling behind. Perhaps Qualcomm is pressuring them to keep die sizes small, so ARM just isn't willing to make a proper "big" CPU core. Or maybe ARM themselves just don't have the right incentives to do so. Who knows. But the end result is nobody really wants to compete against Qualcomm in the mobile phone SoC space, since Qualcomm's radios means they win by default. Then in the laptop & server space, Intel & AMD have no incentive to switch to ARM instead of sticking with x86. At least not at this point in time.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  > Qualcomm dominates at radios, which matters far more than single-core CPU performance. that is nonsense. I switched from iPhone to a Pixel 4 post-CSAM scandal and the difference is night and day. My phone now makes me wait. Every single fucking day I wait. Wait Wait Wait. Slow Slow Slow. And this is a phone without the bloatware. Fucking miserably slow. Not in absolute terms necessarily, it would have been competitive 10 years ago. But in 2021, Qualcomm is fucking over every single Android user and their management should be ashamed. I assume nonsense about single core performance being good enough is how the industry (Apple aside) has ended up in such a sorry state.
  - Scramblejams 5y ago
    What distro?
    - n8cpdx 5y ago
      GrapheneOS. A degree of slowness might be the extra security hardening. Not an excuse, because, aside from the built-in spyware, iOS is just as locked down, if not more so.
      - google234123 5y ago
        The next pixel(6) might have a non-generic SoC according to the rumors. obviously will cost more than a pixel 4 today though
        n8cpdx 5y ago
        I hope so. I got the 4 because I needed a cheap temporary replacement and only pixel is supported by graphene. I guess the risk is that google does something funky to prevent forks from working or taking advantage of the custom silicon. Competition for Qualcomm is way overdue. I'll probably suck it up and buy a pixel 6 once graphene is available for it.
      - NotPractical 5y ago
        iOS is probably not nearly as security-hardened as Graphene (or even plain AOSP). iOS relies mostly on "security through obscurity" rather than actual hardening. Apple hopes to maintain security by making the system so complicated and proprietary that it's difficult to understand, let alone find bugs in. Graphene/AOSP hopes to maintain security through real open-source improvements that can be independently verified. It's hard to find bugs there not because access to the sources are unavailable, but because there are usually less bugs in the first place. So, which approach is better? Well, critical exploits are discovered in iOS left and right, so that probably tells you something. Also, I don't think it's fair to assume that Graphene is not playing some role in the slowness (though I don't believe most of the currently-implemented hardening is expected to create dramatic slowdown). Perhaps you should try running the stock ROM for a day or two (with the Google apps disabled in Settings, of course).
stefandesu 5y ago
I updated my old first-gen iPhone SE to iOS 15 and it's still fast. Not nearly as snappy as the newer generations, but it's not laggy or anything.
scoopertrooper 5y ago
> I suspect there isn't a lot of incentive for Qualcomm to do it as they as nearly a monopoly in the Android space. That may change soon! Samsung and MediaTek are hot on their tail. https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-2000-to-feature-an-ARM-Cortex-X2-CPU-core-will-allegedly-perform-on-par-with-the-Snapdragon-898.569330.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-2000-to-fea...

by Osiris 5y ago

harpratap 5y ago

They acquired Nuvia which is meant to be the custom CPU attempt from Qualcomm. But not sure if they will bring Nuvia expertise to Mobile SoCs or keep them for desktop & servers

kllrnohj 5y ago

Qualcomm dominates at radios, which matters far more than single-core CPU performance. So there's no pressure on Qualcomm to be better, and really all they do is take off-the-shelf ARM designs for the CPU cores anyway. So it'd really be ARM themselves falling behind. Perhaps Qualcomm is pressuring them to keep die sizes small, so ARM just isn't willing to make a proper "big" CPU core. Or maybe ARM themselves just don't have the right incentives to do so. Who knows. But the end result is nobody really wants to compete against Qualcomm in the mobile phone SoC space, since Qualcomm's radios means they win by default. Then in the laptop & server space, Intel & AMD have no incentive to switch to ARM instead of sticking with x86. At least not at this point in time.

n8cpdx 5y ago
> Qualcomm dominates at radios, which matters far more than single-core CPU performance. that is nonsense. I switched from iPhone to a Pixel 4 post-CSAM scandal and the difference is night and day. My phone now makes me wait. Every single fucking day I wait. Wait Wait Wait. Slow Slow Slow. And this is a phone without the bloatware. Fucking miserably slow. Not in absolute terms necessarily, it would have been competitive 10 years ago. But in 2021, Qualcomm is fucking over every single Android user and their management should be ashamed. I assume nonsense about single core performance being good enough is how the industry (Apple aside) has ended up in such a sorry state.
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  What distro?
  - n8cpdx 5y ago
    GrapheneOS. A degree of slowness might be the extra security hardening. Not an excuse, because, aside from the built-in spyware, iOS is just as locked down, if not more so.
    - google234123 5y ago
      The next pixel(6) might have a non-generic SoC according to the rumors. obviously will cost more than a pixel 4 today though
      - n8cpdx 5y ago
        I hope so. I got the 4 because I needed a cheap temporary replacement and only pixel is supported by graphene. I guess the risk is that google does something funky to prevent forks from working or taking advantage of the custom silicon. Competition for Qualcomm is way overdue. I'll probably suck it up and buy a pixel 6 once graphene is available for it.
    - NotPractical 5y ago
      iOS is probably not nearly as security-hardened as Graphene (or even plain AOSP). iOS relies mostly on "security through obscurity" rather than actual hardening. Apple hopes to maintain security by making the system so complicated and proprietary that it's difficult to understand, let alone find bugs in. Graphene/AOSP hopes to maintain security through real open-source improvements that can be independently verified. It's hard to find bugs there not because access to the sources are unavailable, but because there are usually less bugs in the first place. So, which approach is better? Well, critical exploits are discovered in iOS left and right, so that probably tells you something. Also, I don't think it's fair to assume that Graphene is not playing some role in the slowness (though I don't believe most of the currently-implemented hardening is expected to create dramatic slowdown). Perhaps you should try running the stock ROM for a day or two (with the Google apps disabled in Settings, of course).

stefandesu 5y ago

I updated my old first-gen iPhone SE to iOS 15 and it's still fast. Not nearly as snappy as the newer generations, but it's not laggy or anything.

scoopertrooper 5y ago

> I suspect there isn't a lot of incentive for Qualcomm to do it as they as nearly a monopoly in the Android space. That may change soon! Samsung and MediaTek are hot on their tail. https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-2000-to-feature-an-ARM-Cortex-X2-CPU-core-will-allegedly-perform-on-par-with-the-Snapdragon-898.569330.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-2000-to-fea...