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  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014Vegator
    Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsu
     
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Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
7. Květen 2015 v 14:22
Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsung LSI. The report mentions that HiSilicon, Intel and MediaTek had bigger growth than Qualcomm in 2014.

Qualcomm's strength based on Snapdragon 800 series wins in higher-tier phones


According to the report, Qualcomm's leadership was largely based on design wins for its Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 805 SoCs in the higher-tier market. Examples of this include the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3. However, as I have previously reported Samsung has increased its use of in-house application processors starting from the second half of 2014, culminating in the exclusive use of Exynos 7420 in the Galaxy S6 in 2015, putting pressure on Qualcomm.

Baseband share in 2014


Strategy Analytics has also published a report with details about baseband (modem) market share in smartphones. According to the report, LTE (4G) basebands accounted for 50% of cellular baseband share in 2014, and the figure is likely to increase significantly in 2015. Qualcomm led in LTE basebands, but HiSilicon, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek and Samsung also increased LTE baseband shipments.

In terms of revenues in the overall baseband market, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Speadtrum, Marvell and Intel had the top positions in 2104. Qualcomm had 66% revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 17% and Speadtrum with 5% sare. Given the product lines of the respective companies in 2014, Qualcomm's revenues are based on both integrated SoC and separate modems, while Intel's sales were mostly separate modem chips, while the other players mostly shipped a mix of integrated SoCs and modem chips.

Comparison with 2013


Comparing with the reports that Strategy Analytics issued for 2013, Qualcomm saws it baseband revenue share remain relatively stable at 66% compared to 64% in 2013. MediaTek saw its AP market share increase from 10% in 2013 to 14% in 2014, and its baseband share increased.

Tablet processor market in 2014


According to another report issued by Strategy Analytics, the market for tablet processors grew 18% in 2014 to $4.2 billion. The top-five revenue share positions were occupied by Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung LSI. Apple led with 27% share (which must be an estimate), followed by Intel with 17% and Qualcomm with 16% share.

Notable is the absence among the top five of traditional leaders in the Chinese white-box market such as Rockchip and Allwinner. This most likely reflects in increase in brand name tablet shipments at the expense of the white-box tablet market, the low selling prices of white-box tablet processor and the encroachment of MediaTek and Intel into that segment.

Source: Strategy Analytics (Smartphone AP market share), Strategy Analytics (cellular baseband market share), Strategy Analytics (Tablet processor market share)

Qualcomm releases new variant of Snapdragon 410 that supports ARMv8, targeting tablets and other applications

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
19. Březen 2015 v 01:24
Qualcomm recently made announcements of products and reference designs based on the APQ8016 SoC, a new modem-less quad-core Cortex-A53-based SoC branded as Snapdragon 410. The chip is targeted at IoT applications, development boards and probably also Wi-Fi-only tablets, supporting Linux, Android and Windows 10. Although branded as Snapdragon 410, the chip is a new design that is likely to fix most of the performance deficiencies of the first-generation MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 SoC that has been targeted at smartphones. For example, the original Snapdragon 410 SoC appears not to support ARMv8 at all, while the new chip is clearly targeted at 64-bit platforms.

Development board released


Qualcomm recently announced the DragonBoard 410c, a development board with support for Linux and Android. It features a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 processor with Adreno 306 GPU, 533 MHZ LPDDR2/LPDDR3 SDRAM, HDMI output and several I/O interfaces. The HDMI output is limited to 30fps at 1080p.

The board is designed to compatible with the 96Boards initiative from Linaro, the non-profit engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

With 64-bit support and a maximum clock speed of 1.2 GHz, the APQ8016 SoC that is used on the board most likely uses a more recent version of the Cortex-A53 core than the original Snapdragon 410 processor for smartphones, while being manufactured using the same 28LP process at TSMC.

New SoC probably targets tablets as volume driver


There are indications that the new chip will be used in Wi-Fi-only tablets, such as recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab A series. There have also been indications that Qualcomm is stepping up its efforts to target Chinese tablet manufacturers.

Qualcomm and MediaTek support mainline Linux kernel with open-source drivers for selected SoCs


Whereas in the past major smartphone SoC companies kept their closed-source drivers separate from the open-source Linux community, more recently companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have started releasing open source contributions for the Linux kernel to support selected SoC products. Both companies have also recently joined Linaro, the engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

For both companies, the SoCs supported in the mainline Linux kernel are applications processors without an integrated modem. Qualcomm is supporting the APQ8016 mentioned above while MediaTek has contributed code for the MT8173 tablet processor.

Sources: Qualcomm (Dragonboard announcement), Qualcomm (Windows 10 IoT platform announcement), CNXSoft (DragonBoard 410c article)
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoCVegator
    ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core. Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016. However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced
     
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Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
10. Březen 2015 v 00:01
ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core.

Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016.

However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced SoCs using the Cortex-A72 core with commercial availability in the second half of 2015, suggesting that the CPU core itself is at an advanced stage of introduction. Already, early benchmarks for MediaTek's MT8173 tablet SoC that incorporates the Cortex-A72 have become available.

Cortex-A72 appears to be enhanced version Cortex-A57 optimized for next-generation processes


In its announcement press release from 3 February 2015, ARM claims that more than ten partners have already licensed Cortex-A72, including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Rockchip. Cortex-A72 is based on ARM's ARMv8-A instruction set architecture, and can be combined with the existing Cortex-A53 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Cortex-A72 seems to be positioned as a replacement for Cortex-A57. The similarities with Cortex-A57 are very apparent, for example in the identically sized L1 instruction and data caches, and a feature set that is otherwise very similar.

On a 16 nm FinFET process, the core can sustain operation at speeds up to 2.5 GHz within the constraints of a mobile power envelope (e.g. smartphones), with scalability to higher speeds for larger form-factor devices. However, the first announced devices, such as MediaTek's MT8173, appear to use older processes such as the tried-and-trusted 28 nm HPM process at TSMC, so they are likely to have a lower maximum clock speed.

ARM claims increased performance and power efficiency, although these claims seem to be based on implementation on next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET that deliver a significant intrinsic improvement in these metrics. ARM mentions micro-architectural improvements that result in enhancements in floating point, integer and memory performance. When implemented on a 16 nm FinFET process, ARM expects Cortex-A57 to provide 85% higher performance when compared to the Cortex-A57 core on a 20 nm process within a similar smartphone power budget.

Overall, the differences with Cortex-A57 appear to be relatively minor, so that Cortex-A72 is best viewed as an enhanced version of Cortex-A57 that is optimized for next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET. Nevertheless, the first SoCs to use the Cortex-A72 core will be manufactured using a less advanced process.

Benchmarks appear for MediaTek's MT8173


MediaTek's MT8173 is a mid-range tablet processor mainly targeting Wi-Fi-only tablets, since it does not have an integrated modem. It has two Cortex-A72 cores and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. Probably manufactured using the established 28HPM process at TSMC, the maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A57 cores is likely to be lower that the target for 16 nm FinFET, although MediaTek claims a clock speed up to 2.4 GHz, while a much lower frequency is apparent in early benchmarks results.

The chip also features a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which delivers higher performance than the G6200 GPU used inside MediaTek's existing MT8135 and MT6795.

Recently, early benchmarks for a MT8173 development board have appeared both in the Geekbench Browser and in the results database of GFXBench. The first Geekbench results already appeared in December 2014. The latest set of Geekbench results date from the end of February 2015, although they do show a certain amount variation that may reflect thermal throttling.

Single-core performance good, but not spectacular


As expected, the Geekbench results show good single-core performance, albeit not spectacular. As shown in the following table, singe-core performance is in line with Cortex-A57-based SoCs such as Exynos 5433 and Exynos 7420. It should be noted that the MT8173 test SoC is most likely manufactured at 28 nm with a corresponding relatively low maximum CPU clock speed, while Exynos 5433 and 7420 are manufactured using smaller leading edge processes at Samsung.


SoC          "big" CPU                    Arch     JPEG (int)  Lua (int)   Mandelb. (fp)
                                                   Comp. IPC         IPC         IPC
MT8173       2 x 1.6? GHz Cortex-A72      AArch32  1310  2.13  1380  2.10  1064  1.95
Exynos 5433  4 x 1.80 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch32  1456  2.10  1397  1.89  1174  1.91
Exynos 7420  4 x 1.97 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch64  1481  1.97  1409  1.74  1198  1.92

In this table, to determine the IPC index I have made an educated guess about the actual clock speed of MT8173 when running the benchmarks. Geekbench reports a 1.40 GHz clock speed (which probably applies to the Cortex-A53 cores), 1.6 GHz seems to be a good match, providing just a little better IPC than Cortex-A57. Note that Exynos 7420 runs in AArch64 mode, which skews direct IPC comparisons.

Practical implications unclear


Without knowing the exact clock speed of the Cortex-A72 cores, it is hard to draw conclusions about the actual IPC improvement over Cortex-A57. If the MT8173 uses a 28 nm process, the ability to approach the single-core performance of Samsung's Exynos 7420 manufactured using 14 nm FinFET process is impressive. However, although MediaTek demonstrated the MT8173 in an actual tablet at MWC, it is unclear what kind of device the Alps development board in the benchmark entries actually represents, so it remains to be seen whether the benchmarks actually reflect the power budget of a tablet.

The multi-core performance reported is not very impressive, as expected because of the relatively small number of CPU cores. The JPEG Compress multi-core score shows CPU scaling factor of 2.72, which is good and implies utilization of the Cortex-A53 cores. The Mandelbrot floating point benchmark shows similar scaling.

However, the Lua integer benchmark has a very low multi-core scaling factor of 1.41, which is lower than expected, even when allowing for the limited number of cores. For example, MediaTek's MT6795 achieves multi-core scaling of 7.5 in this benchmark, and the Exynos chips range from 3.9 to 5.0. Other chips with a low multi-core scaling factor for Geekbench's Lua subtest include Snapdragon 810 (Cortex-A57-based), MediaTek's MT6595 (Cortex-A17-based) and NVIDIA's Denver-based Tegra-K1 SoC. There are indications that this benchmark test heavily depends on on-chip cache (primarily L2 cache) size and speed.

GPU performance of MT8173's PowerVR GX6250 GPU improves on G6200


The MT8173 test device's GPU performance as shown in GFXBench results database is not overly impressive, but suitable for a mid-range chip and an improvement over the PowerVR G6200 GPU used in other MediaTek SoCs such as MT6595 and MT6795. In the T-Rex Offscreen benchmark, the MT8173 registers a score of 1487, higher than the 1311 of the MT6595 (G6200)-equipped Meizu MX4. In the GFXBench 3.0 low-level tests, alpha blending scores higher than the MT6595 while the other low-level scores are comparable.

Sources: ARM (Cortex-A57 announcement press release), AnandTech (MediaTek MT8173 article), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Geekbench Browser (MT8173 test device results), GFXBench (MT8173 test device result)

Updated 10 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • China tablet processor market declines in Q1Vegator
    According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for th
     
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China tablet processor market declines in Q1

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
6. Březen 2015 v 10:08
According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for the decline in shipments.

MediaTek leads Chinese tablet market in Q1 2015


Based on information published by DigiTimes Research, MediaTek, Rockchip, Allwinner and Intel were the top four providers of tablet processors in China, in that order, in Q4 2014. For Q1 2015, MediaTek is estimated to expand it market share by about 1% to reach 28.5%, although absolute shipments will decline significantly due to the overall market decline.

Rockchip, who was the market share leader for most of 2014, is estimated to see its market share remain stable in Q1 2015, registering a 0.6% increase according to DigiTimes Research, who did not supply a market share figure for Rockchip, although it is probably in the region of 25%. DigiTimes mentioned that Rockchip's new chips launched at the end of 2014 (which includes the Cortex-A7-based RK3126 and RK3128) have not yet reached strong shipments.

Meanwhile, Allwinner continues the trend of a steady decline a market share, being expected to have a share of 15.6% compared to 17.6% in Q4 2014. This allows it to be passed by Intel in terms of market share, with Intel's market share estimated to rise from 15% to 16.3% in Q1 2015.

Intel's global market share has increased and is significant, especially revenue share


It should be noted that in terms of global market share, Intel has a stronger position than what would be inferred just from the Chinese market due to a strong position at brand-name tablet manufacturers outside of China, such as Asus and Acer. The other chip players in the Chinese tablet processor market, especially Rockchip and Allwinner, have a weak position outside of China. Due to the higher-end nature of Intel's product mix, Intel also has a higher revenue share, whereas the sales of companies such as Allwinner are mostly concentrated in low-end processors. It has been reported that Intel is abandoning its "contra-revenue" strategy of subsidizing tablet processor sales, which it probably can afford to do because its chip solutions are fairly competitive on their own.

Global brand names gain share, use different chip suppliers


In the global tablet marker, brand name manufacturers are gaining share and dominate the dollar value of the market, also for semiconductor content. Apple and Samsung, who lead the global tablet market, use a lot of in-house chip solutions (100% in the case of Apple). Samsung also uses suppliers like Qualcomm and Marvell, who otherwise do not have a strong position in the Chinese tablet market.

MediaTek used to have strong market share among Taiwanese tablet manufacturers such as Asus and Acer. However, its market share their seems to have been eroded significantly by strong adoption of Intel's Atom SoCs at these manufacturers (who have strong ties with Intel through PC manufacturing).

Popular tablet SoCs as of Q1 2015


By analyzing the tablet models offered on Chinese e-commerce portals, one can get some idea of what SoCs are currently used the most in tablets from China. I took a look at the tablet offerings on Banggood.com.

Rockchip's RK3188 (which probably means the RK3188T variant in most cases) is still widely used. Originally a mid-range performance segment SoC, there are indications that Rockchip built a significant inventory of this SoC (which is not particularly cheap in terms of manufactuing cost) last year, and the chip has been used in cheaper models as well. Rockchip's RK3126, which is more cost-effective than RK3188, is slowly starting to appear in new tablet models.

Meanwhile, Rockchip's high-end RK3288 is used in several models from Pipo, Teclast and FNF, and these seem to be reasonably popular for a high-end product. I have some concerns about power consumption and battery life regarding these products due to the processor cores used in the SoC.

The most popular MediaTek chips used in tablets are SoCs with 3G connectivity such as the low-end dual-core MT8312 and quad-core MT8382 (the equivalent of the MT6572 and MT6582 smartphone SoCs), as well as the more performance oriented octa-core MT6592/MT8392, which provides good performance and battery-life and has moved down to lower-priced tablet models. Additionally, the new 64-bit MT8752 with 4G (equivalent to the MT6752 smartphone SoC) is starting to appear in new models (Cube, Teclast). For WiFi-only tablets, the MT8127 (which has a relatively powerful GPU for a cheap SoC) is used in some low-to-mid-range tablets.

Allwinner's A31s, which was released in 2013 but perhaps its last successful product introduction, appears to be still used for production. Low-end tablets are available with the A23 and A33 SoCs, although the A33 does not seem to have been very successful and has been affected by weakness in the low-end segment of the tablet market.

Allwinner's new octa-core A83T has started to appear in a few new models, and is probably replacing the high-end A80 Octa which is likely to have had low profit margins.

Finally, Intel's Z3735F, Z3735G and Z3736F Atom SoCs are widely used in tablets, although most prominently in higher-prices models that come equipped with Microsoft Windows.

Update (15 March): 3G smartphone chip inventory unloaded onto Chinese tablet market


In an article published on 13 March 2015, DigiTimes Research reported that due to a high inventory level of 3G smartphone solutions in China, such chips will be unloaded onto the Chinese tablet market by players such as MediaTek, Qualcomm and Spreadtrum.

3G-enabled chip solutions for tablets are usually very similar to similar solutions for smartphones. For example, MediaTek's smartphone solutions have commonly been used in tablets, while MediaTek's official 3G-enabled tablet solutions most likely consist of a chip virtually identical to the smartphone version, with the main difference being a different model number (e.g. MT6582 vs MT8382). That MediaTek would target any excess inventory of 3G smartphone chipsets at the tablet market is not surprising.

However, I am little sceptical about the volume that may be involved. The Chinese tablet market is clearly contracting in the near term, and the volumes in the tablet market are considerably smaller than the smartphone market, even the declining 3G part of the smartphone SoC market. To put things into perspective, MediaTek's quarterly 3G smartphone chip shipments were on the order of 70 million in Q4 2014, while its 3G tablet chip shipments were probably in the range of 5 to 10 million.

The article also mentions Qualcomm, which in the past has not been a major player in the Chinese white-box tablet market. It mentions rumours that Qualcomm may form a partnership with Allwinner (which has been consistently losing market share) to penetrate the tablet market in China. The article also states that while Intel has introduced 3G tablet solutions, Intel's solutions are unlikely to be widely adopted until Intel introduces the 4G version of its Atom x3 (formerly SoFIA) platform.

Sources: DigiTimes (Q1 2015 China tablet AP market article),  DigiTimes Research (smartphone chips inventory unloaded to tablet market)

Updated 15 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • New mobile SoCs announced at MWCVegator
    At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced. MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets. The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, accord
     
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New mobile SoCs announced at MWC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
2. Březen 2015 v 11:41
At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced.

MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones


MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets.

The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, according to MediaTek. Features include an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU up to 1.5 GHz and a Mali-T720 GPU with an unspecified number of cores. ARM's Mali-T720 GPU is positioned at a significantly lower performance bracket than the Mali-T760 used in the MT6752, positioning the MT6753 below the MT6752 in terms of cost and performance.

The MT6753 is described as being compatible with the previously announced MT6735 for entry-level smartphones. The MT6735 has four Cortex-A53 cores instead of eight but otherwise has a similar configuration with a Mali T720 GPU.

High-performance MT8173 tablet SoC uses small big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A72


The MT8173 is a high-performance tablet processor (without integrated modem) that utilizes ARM's new Cortex-A72 core in a big.LITTLE configuration. By using only two Cortex-A72 cores (clocked up to 2.4 GHz) as well as two Cortex-A53 cores, the chip has a lower cost than would be the case with the four-by-four core configuration commonly used for big.LITTLE designs, while still providing good performance.

The Cortex-A72 core, the successor of Cortex-A57, appears to be seeing quick adoption as Qualcomm has already announced performance-segment smartphone SoCs (Snapdragon 618 and 620) featuring the core.

MediaTek has previously used a similar two-by-two big.LITTLE configuration in its MT8135(V) tablet SoC, which has two Cortex-A15 cores and Cortex-A7 cores. This chip was used in Amazon tablets but otherwise did not see much adoption.

Other features include a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which is part of Imagination's Series 6XT family, with higher performance and efficiency than the G6200 GPU used in chips such as the MT8135 and MT6595.

Other tablet SoCs not yet publicly announced by MediaTek


Meanwhile, tablet product announcements by Lenovo also refer to the MT8161 and MT8165 SoCs, which have not been announced. From the specifications of the Lenovo Tab 2 A8 which is using it, the MT8161 appears to be a tablet SoC without modem with quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU running up to 1.3 GHz, while the MT8165 (used in the Tab 2 A10) is a similar SoC with the CPU running up to 1.5 GHz. The 4G version of the Lenovo tablets come equipped with the MT8735 (Tab 2 A8) and MT8732 (Tab 2 A10). These chips are the tablet versions of the MT6735 and MT6732 smartphone SoCs.

MT6795 renamed to Helio X10


In a closed-door presentation at MWC, MediaTek also presented the Helio X10 smartphone SoC, featuring a 64-bit octa-core CPU up to 2.2 GHz, 120 Hz display refresh rate and H.265 video encode up to 4K2K @ 30 fps. A photograph of a slide taken at the presentation strongly suggests that Helio X10 is nothing other than the delayed MT6795 SoC, whose specifications closely match. Devices using this chip are likely to have already started production. MediaTek also talked about the Helio P series, a high-performance platform, which will make its way into devices before the end of the year.

Qualcomm gives preview of next-generation Snapdragon 820 SoC


In a press release, Qualcomm has given a preview of the Snapdragon 820, which utilizes Qualcomm's new custom 64-bit CPU architecture for mobile devices called Kryo. The chip will start sampling in the second half of 2015 according to Qualcomm, with devices becoming available in 2016. It will be manufactured on a next-generation FinFET process (which probably means TSMC's 16FF+, but Samsung cannot be excluded). In the press release, Qualcomm does not mention whether the chip will conform to ARM's ARMv8 instruction set architecture.

In conjuction with the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm also announced the Zeroth hardware/software platform focusing on device intelligence features including video and audio recognition techniques (such as visual object and face recognition).

Intel introduces tablet and smartphone SoCs with integrated modem


Intel has finally introduced SoCs with an integrated cellular modem in its Atom system-on-a-chip product line. The former SoFIA platform has been renamed to Atom X3 and features multi-core 64-bit Atom processors with integrated 3G or 4G LTE modem technology. The following products are available:
  • Atom X3-C3130, which has dual-core Atom CPU running up to 1.0 GHz and integrates a 3G modem. It features Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Maximum display resolution is 1280x800. It appears to be in the same market segment as MediaTek's previous-generation 3G SoCs such as MT6572 and MT6582 and other SoCs that are already on the market.
  • Atom X3-C3230RK, which was developed by Intel partner Rockchip following the agreement announced last year. It has quad-core Atom CPU, integrates a 3G modem and features a Mali-450 MP4 GPU.
  • Atom X3-C3440, a quad-core Atom CPU platform that integrates a Cat 6 LTE 4G modem. It has an Mali-T720 MP2 GPU. This product appears to be one that is most likely to succeed in the market.
All feature a 32-bit memory interface with support for LPDDR2 (and DDR3/DDR3L with the X3-C3230RK). These are the first Intel products that have features (such as the integrated modem) that make them specifically suitable for the smartphone market. They also target cellular-enabled tablets.

The 3G products are a little behind the times, and their success is uncertain. It will be interesting observe whether Rockchip was able to develop the X3-C3230RK in time (one would expect Intel to have greater expertise/resources so that the other products will appear on the market first).

One notable fact is that these are among the first SoCs to integrate an ARM GPU core with a non-ARM CPU.

Intel announces first 14 nm Atom SoCs for tablets and all-in-ones


Intel also rolled out its first 14 nm Atom SoCs, the Atom x5 and x7 processor series (formely codenamed Cherry Trail) with  Intel Gen 8 graphics, targeting tablets and small screen all-in-ones.

Intel has also introduced a new stand-alone modem chip, XMM 7360, which support LTE Cat 10 and download speeds up to 450 Mbps, as well as wireless connnectivity products (including WiFi/Bluetooth, GNSS/GPS and NFC solutions).

Sources: MediaTek (MT6753 announcement), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Qualcomm (Snapdragon 820/Zeroth platform preview), Intel (MWC announcements), Intel Atom x3 Processor Series Brief
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC marketVegator
    Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015. Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not se
     
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Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC market

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
17. Únor 2015 v 08:46
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015.

Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer


In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not selected the Snapdragon 810 processor for an upcoming flagship product. This is widely believed to refer to Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6. In fact the trend of increasing use of in-house Exynos processors already started last year, as models such as Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy S5 Mini and Galaxy Note 4 already saw increasing use of Samsung's own Exynos processors, including modem technology in some cases.

Qualcomm also mentions a share shift among major OEMs that will result in relatively more modem chips as opposed to SoCs (clearly referring to Apple, which only uses Qualcom's modem chips), as well as heightened competition in China. Recently, Qualcomm also recently announced a resolution of the anti-trust investigation by authorities in China, which amounts to a reduction in the patent royalty rate it charges to customers in China.

Qualcomm's total market share currently still strong


At the moment, Qualcomm's market share for smartphone SoCs is still strong as shown by unit shipments and revenues for Q4 2014 and Qualcomm's estimates for Q1 2015, although its product mix has shifted to lower-end products. In comparison to competitor MediaTek, Qualcomm is doing much better in terms of maintaining or growing unit shipments (with Qualcomm in fact seeing a 14% increase in unit shipments in Q4 2014), suggesting that Qualcomm is taking market share from MediaTek as products such as Snapdragon 410 and the new Snapdragon 210 take over large parts of the low-end cost-sensitive market (especially in China) where MediaTek's 3G solutions where previously dominant.

MediaTek losing market share despite successful new products


Meanwhile, although MediaTek has seen widespread adoption of its new MT6752 and MT6732 SoCs with integrated LTE modem for the cost-sensitive mid-range market, the company saw lower unit shipments in Q4 2014 and predicts a 10 to 18% revenue decline for Q1 2015, suggesting its smartphone SoC shipments are under pressure. Given the fact that the new 4G chips have higher selling prices than existing 3G chips, the revenue decline probably reflects a relatively dramatic decline in shipments of existing 3G solutions, with resulting loss of total market share, although price reductions may also play a role. MediaTek has been affected especially by the late introduction of integrated 4G solutions and the lack of a low-end 4G solution and to a lesser extend the delayed introduction of the high-end MT6795.

Captive mobile SoC use becoming more important


Within the total smartphone SoC market (and also in the tablet maket), captive supply (whereby a smartphone manufacturer uses its own SoCs in its smartphone models) is becoming more important, which affects the market opportunity for companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek. I already mentioned Samsung's increasing use of Exynos processors, which has a significant impact as Samsung is one of the two largest smartphone manufacturers. A major Chinese manufacturr, Huawei, is also increasingly using SoCs from its own HiSilicon division, also extending to lower end models. Apple's gains in market share also has an effect (especially on the high-end market) since it uses proprietary SoCs.

In the tablet market, the low-end and Chinese white-box market is seeing a sharp reduction in shipments in Q1 2015, with market share shifting to brand names (where captive solutions are more important, such as at Samsung) as total shipments are estimated to decline dramatically. This greatly affects traditional players in the tablet SoC market such as Rockchip, Allwinner and MediaTek. Intel's strategy of subsidizing tablet SoCs has also had an impact. According to DigiTimes, the total tablet market will decline 30% sequentially in Q1 2015, with estimates of a decline of 12% for the whole year 2015.


Sources: DigiTimes (tablet market article), DigiTimes (MediaTek results), Qualcomm, MediaTek

Teclast P50S, another entry-level 10.95″ tablet running Android 14

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Kim
15. Srpen 2024 v 09:09

Worldwide sales of tablets are increasing significantly and brands such as Teclast are constantly releasing new models such as the Teclast P50S, a shortened variant of the Teclast ...

The post Teclast P50S, another entry-level 10.95″ tablet running Android 14 first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

Teclast T50 Plus, the first tablet with UNISOC T620 now available for purchase

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Josh
14. Srpen 2024 v 13:32

We can now buy the new Teclast T50 Plus tablet, a new member of the T50 series that is the first to use a UNISOC T620 processor. The ...

The post Teclast T50 Plus, the first tablet with UNISOC T620 now available for purchase first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

Consolo is a modular cyberdeck with a Raspberry Pi 5 for brains, a 7 inch display and 7 hours of battery life

✇Liliputing
Od: Brad Linder
20. Srpen 2024 v 23:09

The Consolo is a tablet computer with a 7 inch touchscreen display and a modular design that lets you attach a physical keyboard or other add-ons via a slot on the bottom. Powered by a Raspberry Pi 5, the system should support a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions and software designed for that credit card-sized […]

The post Consolo is a modular cyberdeck with a Raspberry Pi 5 for brains, a 7 inch display and 7 hours of battery life appeared first on Liliputing.

  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014Vegator
    Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsu
     
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Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
7. Květen 2015 v 14:22
Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsung LSI. The report mentions that HiSilicon, Intel and MediaTek had bigger growth than Qualcomm in 2014.

Qualcomm's strength based on Snapdragon 800 series wins in higher-tier phones


According to the report, Qualcomm's leadership was largely based on design wins for its Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 805 SoCs in the higher-tier market. Examples of this include the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3. However, as I have previously reported Samsung has increased its use of in-house application processors starting from the second half of 2014, culminating in the exclusive use of Exynos 7420 in the Galaxy S6 in 2015, putting pressure on Qualcomm.

Baseband share in 2014


Strategy Analytics has also published a report with details about baseband (modem) market share in smartphones. According to the report, LTE (4G) basebands accounted for 50% of cellular baseband share in 2014, and the figure is likely to increase significantly in 2015. Qualcomm led in LTE basebands, but HiSilicon, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek and Samsung also increased LTE baseband shipments.

In terms of revenues in the overall baseband market, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Speadtrum, Marvell and Intel had the top positions in 2104. Qualcomm had 66% revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 17% and Speadtrum with 5% sare. Given the product lines of the respective companies in 2014, Qualcomm's revenues are based on both integrated SoC and separate modems, while Intel's sales were mostly separate modem chips, while the other players mostly shipped a mix of integrated SoCs and modem chips.

Comparison with 2013


Comparing with the reports that Strategy Analytics issued for 2013, Qualcomm saws it baseband revenue share remain relatively stable at 66% compared to 64% in 2013. MediaTek saw its AP market share increase from 10% in 2013 to 14% in 2014, and its baseband share increased.

Tablet processor market in 2014


According to another report issued by Strategy Analytics, the market for tablet processors grew 18% in 2014 to $4.2 billion. The top-five revenue share positions were occupied by Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung LSI. Apple led with 27% share (which must be an estimate), followed by Intel with 17% and Qualcomm with 16% share.

Notable is the absence among the top five of traditional leaders in the Chinese white-box market such as Rockchip and Allwinner. This most likely reflects in increase in brand name tablet shipments at the expense of the white-box tablet market, the low selling prices of white-box tablet processor and the encroachment of MediaTek and Intel into that segment.

Source: Strategy Analytics (Smartphone AP market share), Strategy Analytics (cellular baseband market share), Strategy Analytics (Tablet processor market share)

Qualcomm releases new variant of Snapdragon 410 that supports ARMv8, targeting tablets and other applications

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
19. Březen 2015 v 01:24
Qualcomm recently made announcements of products and reference designs based on the APQ8016 SoC, a new modem-less quad-core Cortex-A53-based SoC branded as Snapdragon 410. The chip is targeted at IoT applications, development boards and probably also Wi-Fi-only tablets, supporting Linux, Android and Windows 10. Although branded as Snapdragon 410, the chip is a new design that is likely to fix most of the performance deficiencies of the first-generation MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 SoC that has been targeted at smartphones. For example, the original Snapdragon 410 SoC appears not to support ARMv8 at all, while the new chip is clearly targeted at 64-bit platforms.

Development board released


Qualcomm recently announced the DragonBoard 410c, a development board with support for Linux and Android. It features a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 processor with Adreno 306 GPU, 533 MHZ LPDDR2/LPDDR3 SDRAM, HDMI output and several I/O interfaces. The HDMI output is limited to 30fps at 1080p.

The board is designed to compatible with the 96Boards initiative from Linaro, the non-profit engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

With 64-bit support and a maximum clock speed of 1.2 GHz, the APQ8016 SoC that is used on the board most likely uses a more recent version of the Cortex-A53 core than the original Snapdragon 410 processor for smartphones, while being manufactured using the same 28LP process at TSMC.

New SoC probably targets tablets as volume driver


There are indications that the new chip will be used in Wi-Fi-only tablets, such as recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab A series. There have also been indications that Qualcomm is stepping up its efforts to target Chinese tablet manufacturers.

Qualcomm and MediaTek support mainline Linux kernel with open-source drivers for selected SoCs


Whereas in the past major smartphone SoC companies kept their closed-source drivers separate from the open-source Linux community, more recently companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have started releasing open source contributions for the Linux kernel to support selected SoC products. Both companies have also recently joined Linaro, the engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

For both companies, the SoCs supported in the mainline Linux kernel are applications processors without an integrated modem. Qualcomm is supporting the APQ8016 mentioned above while MediaTek has contributed code for the MT8173 tablet processor.

Sources: Qualcomm (Dragonboard announcement), Qualcomm (Windows 10 IoT platform announcement), CNXSoft (DragonBoard 410c article)
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoCVegator
    ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core. Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016. However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced
     
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Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
10. Březen 2015 v 00:01
ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core.

Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016.

However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced SoCs using the Cortex-A72 core with commercial availability in the second half of 2015, suggesting that the CPU core itself is at an advanced stage of introduction. Already, early benchmarks for MediaTek's MT8173 tablet SoC that incorporates the Cortex-A72 have become available.

Cortex-A72 appears to be enhanced version Cortex-A57 optimized for next-generation processes


In its announcement press release from 3 February 2015, ARM claims that more than ten partners have already licensed Cortex-A72, including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Rockchip. Cortex-A72 is based on ARM's ARMv8-A instruction set architecture, and can be combined with the existing Cortex-A53 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Cortex-A72 seems to be positioned as a replacement for Cortex-A57. The similarities with Cortex-A57 are very apparent, for example in the identically sized L1 instruction and data caches, and a feature set that is otherwise very similar.

On a 16 nm FinFET process, the core can sustain operation at speeds up to 2.5 GHz within the constraints of a mobile power envelope (e.g. smartphones), with scalability to higher speeds for larger form-factor devices. However, the first announced devices, such as MediaTek's MT8173, appear to use older processes such as the tried-and-trusted 28 nm HPM process at TSMC, so they are likely to have a lower maximum clock speed.

ARM claims increased performance and power efficiency, although these claims seem to be based on implementation on next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET that deliver a significant intrinsic improvement in these metrics. ARM mentions micro-architectural improvements that result in enhancements in floating point, integer and memory performance. When implemented on a 16 nm FinFET process, ARM expects Cortex-A57 to provide 85% higher performance when compared to the Cortex-A57 core on a 20 nm process within a similar smartphone power budget.

Overall, the differences with Cortex-A57 appear to be relatively minor, so that Cortex-A72 is best viewed as an enhanced version of Cortex-A57 that is optimized for next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET. Nevertheless, the first SoCs to use the Cortex-A72 core will be manufactured using a less advanced process.

Benchmarks appear for MediaTek's MT8173


MediaTek's MT8173 is a mid-range tablet processor mainly targeting Wi-Fi-only tablets, since it does not have an integrated modem. It has two Cortex-A72 cores and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. Probably manufactured using the established 28HPM process at TSMC, the maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A57 cores is likely to be lower that the target for 16 nm FinFET, although MediaTek claims a clock speed up to 2.4 GHz, while a much lower frequency is apparent in early benchmarks results.

The chip also features a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which delivers higher performance than the G6200 GPU used inside MediaTek's existing MT8135 and MT6795.

Recently, early benchmarks for a MT8173 development board have appeared both in the Geekbench Browser and in the results database of GFXBench. The first Geekbench results already appeared in December 2014. The latest set of Geekbench results date from the end of February 2015, although they do show a certain amount variation that may reflect thermal throttling.

Single-core performance good, but not spectacular


As expected, the Geekbench results show good single-core performance, albeit not spectacular. As shown in the following table, singe-core performance is in line with Cortex-A57-based SoCs such as Exynos 5433 and Exynos 7420. It should be noted that the MT8173 test SoC is most likely manufactured at 28 nm with a corresponding relatively low maximum CPU clock speed, while Exynos 5433 and 7420 are manufactured using smaller leading edge processes at Samsung.


SoC          "big" CPU                    Arch     JPEG (int)  Lua (int)   Mandelb. (fp)
                                                   Comp. IPC         IPC         IPC
MT8173       2 x 1.6? GHz Cortex-A72      AArch32  1310  2.13  1380  2.10  1064  1.95
Exynos 5433  4 x 1.80 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch32  1456  2.10  1397  1.89  1174  1.91
Exynos 7420  4 x 1.97 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch64  1481  1.97  1409  1.74  1198  1.92

In this table, to determine the IPC index I have made an educated guess about the actual clock speed of MT8173 when running the benchmarks. Geekbench reports a 1.40 GHz clock speed (which probably applies to the Cortex-A53 cores), 1.6 GHz seems to be a good match, providing just a little better IPC than Cortex-A57. Note that Exynos 7420 runs in AArch64 mode, which skews direct IPC comparisons.

Practical implications unclear


Without knowing the exact clock speed of the Cortex-A72 cores, it is hard to draw conclusions about the actual IPC improvement over Cortex-A57. If the MT8173 uses a 28 nm process, the ability to approach the single-core performance of Samsung's Exynos 7420 manufactured using 14 nm FinFET process is impressive. However, although MediaTek demonstrated the MT8173 in an actual tablet at MWC, it is unclear what kind of device the Alps development board in the benchmark entries actually represents, so it remains to be seen whether the benchmarks actually reflect the power budget of a tablet.

The multi-core performance reported is not very impressive, as expected because of the relatively small number of CPU cores. The JPEG Compress multi-core score shows CPU scaling factor of 2.72, which is good and implies utilization of the Cortex-A53 cores. The Mandelbrot floating point benchmark shows similar scaling.

However, the Lua integer benchmark has a very low multi-core scaling factor of 1.41, which is lower than expected, even when allowing for the limited number of cores. For example, MediaTek's MT6795 achieves multi-core scaling of 7.5 in this benchmark, and the Exynos chips range from 3.9 to 5.0. Other chips with a low multi-core scaling factor for Geekbench's Lua subtest include Snapdragon 810 (Cortex-A57-based), MediaTek's MT6595 (Cortex-A17-based) and NVIDIA's Denver-based Tegra-K1 SoC. There are indications that this benchmark test heavily depends on on-chip cache (primarily L2 cache) size and speed.

GPU performance of MT8173's PowerVR GX6250 GPU improves on G6200


The MT8173 test device's GPU performance as shown in GFXBench results database is not overly impressive, but suitable for a mid-range chip and an improvement over the PowerVR G6200 GPU used in other MediaTek SoCs such as MT6595 and MT6795. In the T-Rex Offscreen benchmark, the MT8173 registers a score of 1487, higher than the 1311 of the MT6595 (G6200)-equipped Meizu MX4. In the GFXBench 3.0 low-level tests, alpha blending scores higher than the MT6595 while the other low-level scores are comparable.

Sources: ARM (Cortex-A57 announcement press release), AnandTech (MediaTek MT8173 article), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Geekbench Browser (MT8173 test device results), GFXBench (MT8173 test device result)

Updated 10 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • China tablet processor market declines in Q1Vegator
    According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for th
     
  • ↗️

China tablet processor market declines in Q1

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
6. Březen 2015 v 10:08
According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for the decline in shipments.

MediaTek leads Chinese tablet market in Q1 2015


Based on information published by DigiTimes Research, MediaTek, Rockchip, Allwinner and Intel were the top four providers of tablet processors in China, in that order, in Q4 2014. For Q1 2015, MediaTek is estimated to expand it market share by about 1% to reach 28.5%, although absolute shipments will decline significantly due to the overall market decline.

Rockchip, who was the market share leader for most of 2014, is estimated to see its market share remain stable in Q1 2015, registering a 0.6% increase according to DigiTimes Research, who did not supply a market share figure for Rockchip, although it is probably in the region of 25%. DigiTimes mentioned that Rockchip's new chips launched at the end of 2014 (which includes the Cortex-A7-based RK3126 and RK3128) have not yet reached strong shipments.

Meanwhile, Allwinner continues the trend of a steady decline a market share, being expected to have a share of 15.6% compared to 17.6% in Q4 2014. This allows it to be passed by Intel in terms of market share, with Intel's market share estimated to rise from 15% to 16.3% in Q1 2015.

Intel's global market share has increased and is significant, especially revenue share


It should be noted that in terms of global market share, Intel has a stronger position than what would be inferred just from the Chinese market due to a strong position at brand-name tablet manufacturers outside of China, such as Asus and Acer. The other chip players in the Chinese tablet processor market, especially Rockchip and Allwinner, have a weak position outside of China. Due to the higher-end nature of Intel's product mix, Intel also has a higher revenue share, whereas the sales of companies such as Allwinner are mostly concentrated in low-end processors. It has been reported that Intel is abandoning its "contra-revenue" strategy of subsidizing tablet processor sales, which it probably can afford to do because its chip solutions are fairly competitive on their own.

Global brand names gain share, use different chip suppliers


In the global tablet marker, brand name manufacturers are gaining share and dominate the dollar value of the market, also for semiconductor content. Apple and Samsung, who lead the global tablet market, use a lot of in-house chip solutions (100% in the case of Apple). Samsung also uses suppliers like Qualcomm and Marvell, who otherwise do not have a strong position in the Chinese tablet market.

MediaTek used to have strong market share among Taiwanese tablet manufacturers such as Asus and Acer. However, its market share their seems to have been eroded significantly by strong adoption of Intel's Atom SoCs at these manufacturers (who have strong ties with Intel through PC manufacturing).

Popular tablet SoCs as of Q1 2015


By analyzing the tablet models offered on Chinese e-commerce portals, one can get some idea of what SoCs are currently used the most in tablets from China. I took a look at the tablet offerings on Banggood.com.

Rockchip's RK3188 (which probably means the RK3188T variant in most cases) is still widely used. Originally a mid-range performance segment SoC, there are indications that Rockchip built a significant inventory of this SoC (which is not particularly cheap in terms of manufactuing cost) last year, and the chip has been used in cheaper models as well. Rockchip's RK3126, which is more cost-effective than RK3188, is slowly starting to appear in new tablet models.

Meanwhile, Rockchip's high-end RK3288 is used in several models from Pipo, Teclast and FNF, and these seem to be reasonably popular for a high-end product. I have some concerns about power consumption and battery life regarding these products due to the processor cores used in the SoC.

The most popular MediaTek chips used in tablets are SoCs with 3G connectivity such as the low-end dual-core MT8312 and quad-core MT8382 (the equivalent of the MT6572 and MT6582 smartphone SoCs), as well as the more performance oriented octa-core MT6592/MT8392, which provides good performance and battery-life and has moved down to lower-priced tablet models. Additionally, the new 64-bit MT8752 with 4G (equivalent to the MT6752 smartphone SoC) is starting to appear in new models (Cube, Teclast). For WiFi-only tablets, the MT8127 (which has a relatively powerful GPU for a cheap SoC) is used in some low-to-mid-range tablets.

Allwinner's A31s, which was released in 2013 but perhaps its last successful product introduction, appears to be still used for production. Low-end tablets are available with the A23 and A33 SoCs, although the A33 does not seem to have been very successful and has been affected by weakness in the low-end segment of the tablet market.

Allwinner's new octa-core A83T has started to appear in a few new models, and is probably replacing the high-end A80 Octa which is likely to have had low profit margins.

Finally, Intel's Z3735F, Z3735G and Z3736F Atom SoCs are widely used in tablets, although most prominently in higher-prices models that come equipped with Microsoft Windows.

Update (15 March): 3G smartphone chip inventory unloaded onto Chinese tablet market


In an article published on 13 March 2015, DigiTimes Research reported that due to a high inventory level of 3G smartphone solutions in China, such chips will be unloaded onto the Chinese tablet market by players such as MediaTek, Qualcomm and Spreadtrum.

3G-enabled chip solutions for tablets are usually very similar to similar solutions for smartphones. For example, MediaTek's smartphone solutions have commonly been used in tablets, while MediaTek's official 3G-enabled tablet solutions most likely consist of a chip virtually identical to the smartphone version, with the main difference being a different model number (e.g. MT6582 vs MT8382). That MediaTek would target any excess inventory of 3G smartphone chipsets at the tablet market is not surprising.

However, I am little sceptical about the volume that may be involved. The Chinese tablet market is clearly contracting in the near term, and the volumes in the tablet market are considerably smaller than the smartphone market, even the declining 3G part of the smartphone SoC market. To put things into perspective, MediaTek's quarterly 3G smartphone chip shipments were on the order of 70 million in Q4 2014, while its 3G tablet chip shipments were probably in the range of 5 to 10 million.

The article also mentions Qualcomm, which in the past has not been a major player in the Chinese white-box tablet market. It mentions rumours that Qualcomm may form a partnership with Allwinner (which has been consistently losing market share) to penetrate the tablet market in China. The article also states that while Intel has introduced 3G tablet solutions, Intel's solutions are unlikely to be widely adopted until Intel introduces the 4G version of its Atom x3 (formerly SoFIA) platform.

Sources: DigiTimes (Q1 2015 China tablet AP market article),  DigiTimes Research (smartphone chips inventory unloaded to tablet market)

Updated 15 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • New mobile SoCs announced at MWCVegator
    At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced. MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets. The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, accord
     
  • ↗️

New mobile SoCs announced at MWC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
2. Březen 2015 v 11:41
At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced.

MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones


MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets.

The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, according to MediaTek. Features include an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU up to 1.5 GHz and a Mali-T720 GPU with an unspecified number of cores. ARM's Mali-T720 GPU is positioned at a significantly lower performance bracket than the Mali-T760 used in the MT6752, positioning the MT6753 below the MT6752 in terms of cost and performance.

The MT6753 is described as being compatible with the previously announced MT6735 for entry-level smartphones. The MT6735 has four Cortex-A53 cores instead of eight but otherwise has a similar configuration with a Mali T720 GPU.

High-performance MT8173 tablet SoC uses small big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A72


The MT8173 is a high-performance tablet processor (without integrated modem) that utilizes ARM's new Cortex-A72 core in a big.LITTLE configuration. By using only two Cortex-A72 cores (clocked up to 2.4 GHz) as well as two Cortex-A53 cores, the chip has a lower cost than would be the case with the four-by-four core configuration commonly used for big.LITTLE designs, while still providing good performance.

The Cortex-A72 core, the successor of Cortex-A57, appears to be seeing quick adoption as Qualcomm has already announced performance-segment smartphone SoCs (Snapdragon 618 and 620) featuring the core.

MediaTek has previously used a similar two-by-two big.LITTLE configuration in its MT8135(V) tablet SoC, which has two Cortex-A15 cores and Cortex-A7 cores. This chip was used in Amazon tablets but otherwise did not see much adoption.

Other features include a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which is part of Imagination's Series 6XT family, with higher performance and efficiency than the G6200 GPU used in chips such as the MT8135 and MT6595.

Other tablet SoCs not yet publicly announced by MediaTek


Meanwhile, tablet product announcements by Lenovo also refer to the MT8161 and MT8165 SoCs, which have not been announced. From the specifications of the Lenovo Tab 2 A8 which is using it, the MT8161 appears to be a tablet SoC without modem with quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU running up to 1.3 GHz, while the MT8165 (used in the Tab 2 A10) is a similar SoC with the CPU running up to 1.5 GHz. The 4G version of the Lenovo tablets come equipped with the MT8735 (Tab 2 A8) and MT8732 (Tab 2 A10). These chips are the tablet versions of the MT6735 and MT6732 smartphone SoCs.

MT6795 renamed to Helio X10


In a closed-door presentation at MWC, MediaTek also presented the Helio X10 smartphone SoC, featuring a 64-bit octa-core CPU up to 2.2 GHz, 120 Hz display refresh rate and H.265 video encode up to 4K2K @ 30 fps. A photograph of a slide taken at the presentation strongly suggests that Helio X10 is nothing other than the delayed MT6795 SoC, whose specifications closely match. Devices using this chip are likely to have already started production. MediaTek also talked about the Helio P series, a high-performance platform, which will make its way into devices before the end of the year.

Qualcomm gives preview of next-generation Snapdragon 820 SoC


In a press release, Qualcomm has given a preview of the Snapdragon 820, which utilizes Qualcomm's new custom 64-bit CPU architecture for mobile devices called Kryo. The chip will start sampling in the second half of 2015 according to Qualcomm, with devices becoming available in 2016. It will be manufactured on a next-generation FinFET process (which probably means TSMC's 16FF+, but Samsung cannot be excluded). In the press release, Qualcomm does not mention whether the chip will conform to ARM's ARMv8 instruction set architecture.

In conjuction with the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm also announced the Zeroth hardware/software platform focusing on device intelligence features including video and audio recognition techniques (such as visual object and face recognition).

Intel introduces tablet and smartphone SoCs with integrated modem


Intel has finally introduced SoCs with an integrated cellular modem in its Atom system-on-a-chip product line. The former SoFIA platform has been renamed to Atom X3 and features multi-core 64-bit Atom processors with integrated 3G or 4G LTE modem technology. The following products are available:
  • Atom X3-C3130, which has dual-core Atom CPU running up to 1.0 GHz and integrates a 3G modem. It features Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Maximum display resolution is 1280x800. It appears to be in the same market segment as MediaTek's previous-generation 3G SoCs such as MT6572 and MT6582 and other SoCs that are already on the market.
  • Atom X3-C3230RK, which was developed by Intel partner Rockchip following the agreement announced last year. It has quad-core Atom CPU, integrates a 3G modem and features a Mali-450 MP4 GPU.
  • Atom X3-C3440, a quad-core Atom CPU platform that integrates a Cat 6 LTE 4G modem. It has an Mali-T720 MP2 GPU. This product appears to be one that is most likely to succeed in the market.
All feature a 32-bit memory interface with support for LPDDR2 (and DDR3/DDR3L with the X3-C3230RK). These are the first Intel products that have features (such as the integrated modem) that make them specifically suitable for the smartphone market. They also target cellular-enabled tablets.

The 3G products are a little behind the times, and their success is uncertain. It will be interesting observe whether Rockchip was able to develop the X3-C3230RK in time (one would expect Intel to have greater expertise/resources so that the other products will appear on the market first).

One notable fact is that these are among the first SoCs to integrate an ARM GPU core with a non-ARM CPU.

Intel announces first 14 nm Atom SoCs for tablets and all-in-ones


Intel also rolled out its first 14 nm Atom SoCs, the Atom x5 and x7 processor series (formely codenamed Cherry Trail) with  Intel Gen 8 graphics, targeting tablets and small screen all-in-ones.

Intel has also introduced a new stand-alone modem chip, XMM 7360, which support LTE Cat 10 and download speeds up to 450 Mbps, as well as wireless connnectivity products (including WiFi/Bluetooth, GNSS/GPS and NFC solutions).

Sources: MediaTek (MT6753 announcement), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Qualcomm (Snapdragon 820/Zeroth platform preview), Intel (MWC announcements), Intel Atom x3 Processor Series Brief
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC marketVegator
    Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015. Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not se
     
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Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC market

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
17. Únor 2015 v 08:46
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015.

Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer


In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not selected the Snapdragon 810 processor for an upcoming flagship product. This is widely believed to refer to Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6. In fact the trend of increasing use of in-house Exynos processors already started last year, as models such as Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy S5 Mini and Galaxy Note 4 already saw increasing use of Samsung's own Exynos processors, including modem technology in some cases.

Qualcomm also mentions a share shift among major OEMs that will result in relatively more modem chips as opposed to SoCs (clearly referring to Apple, which only uses Qualcom's modem chips), as well as heightened competition in China. Recently, Qualcomm also recently announced a resolution of the anti-trust investigation by authorities in China, which amounts to a reduction in the patent royalty rate it charges to customers in China.

Qualcomm's total market share currently still strong


At the moment, Qualcomm's market share for smartphone SoCs is still strong as shown by unit shipments and revenues for Q4 2014 and Qualcomm's estimates for Q1 2015, although its product mix has shifted to lower-end products. In comparison to competitor MediaTek, Qualcomm is doing much better in terms of maintaining or growing unit shipments (with Qualcomm in fact seeing a 14% increase in unit shipments in Q4 2014), suggesting that Qualcomm is taking market share from MediaTek as products such as Snapdragon 410 and the new Snapdragon 210 take over large parts of the low-end cost-sensitive market (especially in China) where MediaTek's 3G solutions where previously dominant.

MediaTek losing market share despite successful new products


Meanwhile, although MediaTek has seen widespread adoption of its new MT6752 and MT6732 SoCs with integrated LTE modem for the cost-sensitive mid-range market, the company saw lower unit shipments in Q4 2014 and predicts a 10 to 18% revenue decline for Q1 2015, suggesting its smartphone SoC shipments are under pressure. Given the fact that the new 4G chips have higher selling prices than existing 3G chips, the revenue decline probably reflects a relatively dramatic decline in shipments of existing 3G solutions, with resulting loss of total market share, although price reductions may also play a role. MediaTek has been affected especially by the late introduction of integrated 4G solutions and the lack of a low-end 4G solution and to a lesser extend the delayed introduction of the high-end MT6795.

Captive mobile SoC use becoming more important


Within the total smartphone SoC market (and also in the tablet maket), captive supply (whereby a smartphone manufacturer uses its own SoCs in its smartphone models) is becoming more important, which affects the market opportunity for companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek. I already mentioned Samsung's increasing use of Exynos processors, which has a significant impact as Samsung is one of the two largest smartphone manufacturers. A major Chinese manufacturr, Huawei, is also increasingly using SoCs from its own HiSilicon division, also extending to lower end models. Apple's gains in market share also has an effect (especially on the high-end market) since it uses proprietary SoCs.

In the tablet market, the low-end and Chinese white-box market is seeing a sharp reduction in shipments in Q1 2015, with market share shifting to brand names (where captive solutions are more important, such as at Samsung) as total shipments are estimated to decline dramatically. This greatly affects traditional players in the tablet SoC market such as Rockchip, Allwinner and MediaTek. Intel's strategy of subsidizing tablet SoCs has also had an impact. According to DigiTimes, the total tablet market will decline 30% sequentially in Q1 2015, with estimates of a decline of 12% for the whole year 2015.


Sources: DigiTimes (tablet market article), DigiTimes (MediaTek results), Qualcomm, MediaTek

  • ✇- SamMobile
  • Samsung monthly updates: August 2024 security patch gets detailedAsif Iqbal Shaik
    Samsung has revealed all the details about its new security update. The company will soon release the August 2024 security patch to its eligible smartphones and tablets, and its high-end devices might get the new update first. Samsung's August 2024 security patch fixes 50 security vulnerabilities After Google detailed the August 2024 security patch for Android on Sunday, Samsung revealed information about its own August 2024 security patch. It fixes 50 security loopholes found in the previous so
     
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Samsung monthly updates: August 2024 security patch gets detailed

✇- SamMobile
Od: Asif Iqbal Shaik
6. Srpen 2024 v 08:13

Samsung has revealed all the details about its new security update. The company will soon release the August 2024 security patch to its eligible smartphones and tablets, and its high-end devices might get the new update first.

Samsung's August 2024 security patch fixes 50 security vulnerabilities

After Google detailed the August 2024 security patch for Android on Sunday, Samsung revealed information about its own August 2024 security patch. It fixes 50 security loopholes found in the previous software. 35 of those fixes have been provided by Google; one of them is marked as critical, while 34 are of moderate severity. One patch has also been provided by Samsung Semiconductor (Samsung's chip-making division).

Samsung has included 14 security fixes that apply only to Galaxy smartphones and tablets. The South Korean firm has detailed 12 of those fixes on its security bulletin webpage. Most of them are related to improper access control in several system services. Improper access control was also found in ExtControlDeviceService, Galaxy Watch, Knox, and system property.

Out-of-bound issues in the code were also found in several functions, including libcodec2secmp4vdec.so and libsmat.so. In case of insufficient permission, handling was not done properly in KnoxDualDARPolicy, SumeNNService, and Telephony. Improper input validation was found in the librtp.so function.

These improper access control, out-of-bound, and improper input validation issues allow attackers to gain access to the information in your device without permission or cause the device to crash. The company might start rolling out the August 2024 security patch to Galaxy smartphones and tablets this week.

With its next update, Samsung might start rolling out the One UI 6.1.1-based software update to its high-end devices. It could bring several new features and some Galaxy AI features that debuted with the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 last month to older devices.

The post Samsung monthly updates: August 2024 security patch gets detailed appeared first on SamMobile.

ALLDOCUBE iPlay 60 pad Pro, a new 12.1″ for multimedia consumption

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Kim
5. Srpen 2024 v 17:22

Introducing the new ALLDOCUBE iPlay 60 pad Pro, a tablet that is an ALLDOCUBE iPlay 60 Pro with a larger screen and some extra features. A new version ...

The post ALLDOCUBE iPlay 60 pad Pro, a new 12.1″ for multimedia consumption first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014Vegator
    Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsu
     
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Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
7. Květen 2015 v 14:22
Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsung LSI. The report mentions that HiSilicon, Intel and MediaTek had bigger growth than Qualcomm in 2014.

Qualcomm's strength based on Snapdragon 800 series wins in higher-tier phones


According to the report, Qualcomm's leadership was largely based on design wins for its Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 805 SoCs in the higher-tier market. Examples of this include the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3. However, as I have previously reported Samsung has increased its use of in-house application processors starting from the second half of 2014, culminating in the exclusive use of Exynos 7420 in the Galaxy S6 in 2015, putting pressure on Qualcomm.

Baseband share in 2014


Strategy Analytics has also published a report with details about baseband (modem) market share in smartphones. According to the report, LTE (4G) basebands accounted for 50% of cellular baseband share in 2014, and the figure is likely to increase significantly in 2015. Qualcomm led in LTE basebands, but HiSilicon, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek and Samsung also increased LTE baseband shipments.

In terms of revenues in the overall baseband market, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Speadtrum, Marvell and Intel had the top positions in 2104. Qualcomm had 66% revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 17% and Speadtrum with 5% sare. Given the product lines of the respective companies in 2014, Qualcomm's revenues are based on both integrated SoC and separate modems, while Intel's sales were mostly separate modem chips, while the other players mostly shipped a mix of integrated SoCs and modem chips.

Comparison with 2013


Comparing with the reports that Strategy Analytics issued for 2013, Qualcomm saws it baseband revenue share remain relatively stable at 66% compared to 64% in 2013. MediaTek saw its AP market share increase from 10% in 2013 to 14% in 2014, and its baseband share increased.

Tablet processor market in 2014


According to another report issued by Strategy Analytics, the market for tablet processors grew 18% in 2014 to $4.2 billion. The top-five revenue share positions were occupied by Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung LSI. Apple led with 27% share (which must be an estimate), followed by Intel with 17% and Qualcomm with 16% share.

Notable is the absence among the top five of traditional leaders in the Chinese white-box market such as Rockchip and Allwinner. This most likely reflects in increase in brand name tablet shipments at the expense of the white-box tablet market, the low selling prices of white-box tablet processor and the encroachment of MediaTek and Intel into that segment.

Source: Strategy Analytics (Smartphone AP market share), Strategy Analytics (cellular baseband market share), Strategy Analytics (Tablet processor market share)

Qualcomm releases new variant of Snapdragon 410 that supports ARMv8, targeting tablets and other applications

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
19. Březen 2015 v 01:24
Qualcomm recently made announcements of products and reference designs based on the APQ8016 SoC, a new modem-less quad-core Cortex-A53-based SoC branded as Snapdragon 410. The chip is targeted at IoT applications, development boards and probably also Wi-Fi-only tablets, supporting Linux, Android and Windows 10. Although branded as Snapdragon 410, the chip is a new design that is likely to fix most of the performance deficiencies of the first-generation MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 SoC that has been targeted at smartphones. For example, the original Snapdragon 410 SoC appears not to support ARMv8 at all, while the new chip is clearly targeted at 64-bit platforms.

Development board released


Qualcomm recently announced the DragonBoard 410c, a development board with support for Linux and Android. It features a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 processor with Adreno 306 GPU, 533 MHZ LPDDR2/LPDDR3 SDRAM, HDMI output and several I/O interfaces. The HDMI output is limited to 30fps at 1080p.

The board is designed to compatible with the 96Boards initiative from Linaro, the non-profit engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

With 64-bit support and a maximum clock speed of 1.2 GHz, the APQ8016 SoC that is used on the board most likely uses a more recent version of the Cortex-A53 core than the original Snapdragon 410 processor for smartphones, while being manufactured using the same 28LP process at TSMC.

New SoC probably targets tablets as volume driver


There are indications that the new chip will be used in Wi-Fi-only tablets, such as recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab A series. There have also been indications that Qualcomm is stepping up its efforts to target Chinese tablet manufacturers.

Qualcomm and MediaTek support mainline Linux kernel with open-source drivers for selected SoCs


Whereas in the past major smartphone SoC companies kept their closed-source drivers separate from the open-source Linux community, more recently companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have started releasing open source contributions for the Linux kernel to support selected SoC products. Both companies have also recently joined Linaro, the engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

For both companies, the SoCs supported in the mainline Linux kernel are applications processors without an integrated modem. Qualcomm is supporting the APQ8016 mentioned above while MediaTek has contributed code for the MT8173 tablet processor.

Sources: Qualcomm (Dragonboard announcement), Qualcomm (Windows 10 IoT platform announcement), CNXSoft (DragonBoard 410c article)
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoCVegator
    ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core. Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016. However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced
     
  • ↗️

Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
10. Březen 2015 v 00:01
ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core.

Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016.

However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced SoCs using the Cortex-A72 core with commercial availability in the second half of 2015, suggesting that the CPU core itself is at an advanced stage of introduction. Already, early benchmarks for MediaTek's MT8173 tablet SoC that incorporates the Cortex-A72 have become available.

Cortex-A72 appears to be enhanced version Cortex-A57 optimized for next-generation processes


In its announcement press release from 3 February 2015, ARM claims that more than ten partners have already licensed Cortex-A72, including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Rockchip. Cortex-A72 is based on ARM's ARMv8-A instruction set architecture, and can be combined with the existing Cortex-A53 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Cortex-A72 seems to be positioned as a replacement for Cortex-A57. The similarities with Cortex-A57 are very apparent, for example in the identically sized L1 instruction and data caches, and a feature set that is otherwise very similar.

On a 16 nm FinFET process, the core can sustain operation at speeds up to 2.5 GHz within the constraints of a mobile power envelope (e.g. smartphones), with scalability to higher speeds for larger form-factor devices. However, the first announced devices, such as MediaTek's MT8173, appear to use older processes such as the tried-and-trusted 28 nm HPM process at TSMC, so they are likely to have a lower maximum clock speed.

ARM claims increased performance and power efficiency, although these claims seem to be based on implementation on next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET that deliver a significant intrinsic improvement in these metrics. ARM mentions micro-architectural improvements that result in enhancements in floating point, integer and memory performance. When implemented on a 16 nm FinFET process, ARM expects Cortex-A57 to provide 85% higher performance when compared to the Cortex-A57 core on a 20 nm process within a similar smartphone power budget.

Overall, the differences with Cortex-A57 appear to be relatively minor, so that Cortex-A72 is best viewed as an enhanced version of Cortex-A57 that is optimized for next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET. Nevertheless, the first SoCs to use the Cortex-A72 core will be manufactured using a less advanced process.

Benchmarks appear for MediaTek's MT8173


MediaTek's MT8173 is a mid-range tablet processor mainly targeting Wi-Fi-only tablets, since it does not have an integrated modem. It has two Cortex-A72 cores and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. Probably manufactured using the established 28HPM process at TSMC, the maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A57 cores is likely to be lower that the target for 16 nm FinFET, although MediaTek claims a clock speed up to 2.4 GHz, while a much lower frequency is apparent in early benchmarks results.

The chip also features a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which delivers higher performance than the G6200 GPU used inside MediaTek's existing MT8135 and MT6795.

Recently, early benchmarks for a MT8173 development board have appeared both in the Geekbench Browser and in the results database of GFXBench. The first Geekbench results already appeared in December 2014. The latest set of Geekbench results date from the end of February 2015, although they do show a certain amount variation that may reflect thermal throttling.

Single-core performance good, but not spectacular


As expected, the Geekbench results show good single-core performance, albeit not spectacular. As shown in the following table, singe-core performance is in line with Cortex-A57-based SoCs such as Exynos 5433 and Exynos 7420. It should be noted that the MT8173 test SoC is most likely manufactured at 28 nm with a corresponding relatively low maximum CPU clock speed, while Exynos 5433 and 7420 are manufactured using smaller leading edge processes at Samsung.


SoC          "big" CPU                    Arch     JPEG (int)  Lua (int)   Mandelb. (fp)
                                                   Comp. IPC         IPC         IPC
MT8173       2 x 1.6? GHz Cortex-A72      AArch32  1310  2.13  1380  2.10  1064  1.95
Exynos 5433  4 x 1.80 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch32  1456  2.10  1397  1.89  1174  1.91
Exynos 7420  4 x 1.97 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch64  1481  1.97  1409  1.74  1198  1.92

In this table, to determine the IPC index I have made an educated guess about the actual clock speed of MT8173 when running the benchmarks. Geekbench reports a 1.40 GHz clock speed (which probably applies to the Cortex-A53 cores), 1.6 GHz seems to be a good match, providing just a little better IPC than Cortex-A57. Note that Exynos 7420 runs in AArch64 mode, which skews direct IPC comparisons.

Practical implications unclear


Without knowing the exact clock speed of the Cortex-A72 cores, it is hard to draw conclusions about the actual IPC improvement over Cortex-A57. If the MT8173 uses a 28 nm process, the ability to approach the single-core performance of Samsung's Exynos 7420 manufactured using 14 nm FinFET process is impressive. However, although MediaTek demonstrated the MT8173 in an actual tablet at MWC, it is unclear what kind of device the Alps development board in the benchmark entries actually represents, so it remains to be seen whether the benchmarks actually reflect the power budget of a tablet.

The multi-core performance reported is not very impressive, as expected because of the relatively small number of CPU cores. The JPEG Compress multi-core score shows CPU scaling factor of 2.72, which is good and implies utilization of the Cortex-A53 cores. The Mandelbrot floating point benchmark shows similar scaling.

However, the Lua integer benchmark has a very low multi-core scaling factor of 1.41, which is lower than expected, even when allowing for the limited number of cores. For example, MediaTek's MT6795 achieves multi-core scaling of 7.5 in this benchmark, and the Exynos chips range from 3.9 to 5.0. Other chips with a low multi-core scaling factor for Geekbench's Lua subtest include Snapdragon 810 (Cortex-A57-based), MediaTek's MT6595 (Cortex-A17-based) and NVIDIA's Denver-based Tegra-K1 SoC. There are indications that this benchmark test heavily depends on on-chip cache (primarily L2 cache) size and speed.

GPU performance of MT8173's PowerVR GX6250 GPU improves on G6200


The MT8173 test device's GPU performance as shown in GFXBench results database is not overly impressive, but suitable for a mid-range chip and an improvement over the PowerVR G6200 GPU used in other MediaTek SoCs such as MT6595 and MT6795. In the T-Rex Offscreen benchmark, the MT8173 registers a score of 1487, higher than the 1311 of the MT6595 (G6200)-equipped Meizu MX4. In the GFXBench 3.0 low-level tests, alpha blending scores higher than the MT6595 while the other low-level scores are comparable.

Sources: ARM (Cortex-A57 announcement press release), AnandTech (MediaTek MT8173 article), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Geekbench Browser (MT8173 test device results), GFXBench (MT8173 test device result)

Updated 10 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • China tablet processor market declines in Q1Vegator
    According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for th
     
  • ↗️

China tablet processor market declines in Q1

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
6. Březen 2015 v 10:08
According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for the decline in shipments.

MediaTek leads Chinese tablet market in Q1 2015


Based on information published by DigiTimes Research, MediaTek, Rockchip, Allwinner and Intel were the top four providers of tablet processors in China, in that order, in Q4 2014. For Q1 2015, MediaTek is estimated to expand it market share by about 1% to reach 28.5%, although absolute shipments will decline significantly due to the overall market decline.

Rockchip, who was the market share leader for most of 2014, is estimated to see its market share remain stable in Q1 2015, registering a 0.6% increase according to DigiTimes Research, who did not supply a market share figure for Rockchip, although it is probably in the region of 25%. DigiTimes mentioned that Rockchip's new chips launched at the end of 2014 (which includes the Cortex-A7-based RK3126 and RK3128) have not yet reached strong shipments.

Meanwhile, Allwinner continues the trend of a steady decline a market share, being expected to have a share of 15.6% compared to 17.6% in Q4 2014. This allows it to be passed by Intel in terms of market share, with Intel's market share estimated to rise from 15% to 16.3% in Q1 2015.

Intel's global market share has increased and is significant, especially revenue share


It should be noted that in terms of global market share, Intel has a stronger position than what would be inferred just from the Chinese market due to a strong position at brand-name tablet manufacturers outside of China, such as Asus and Acer. The other chip players in the Chinese tablet processor market, especially Rockchip and Allwinner, have a weak position outside of China. Due to the higher-end nature of Intel's product mix, Intel also has a higher revenue share, whereas the sales of companies such as Allwinner are mostly concentrated in low-end processors. It has been reported that Intel is abandoning its "contra-revenue" strategy of subsidizing tablet processor sales, which it probably can afford to do because its chip solutions are fairly competitive on their own.

Global brand names gain share, use different chip suppliers


In the global tablet marker, brand name manufacturers are gaining share and dominate the dollar value of the market, also for semiconductor content. Apple and Samsung, who lead the global tablet market, use a lot of in-house chip solutions (100% in the case of Apple). Samsung also uses suppliers like Qualcomm and Marvell, who otherwise do not have a strong position in the Chinese tablet market.

MediaTek used to have strong market share among Taiwanese tablet manufacturers such as Asus and Acer. However, its market share their seems to have been eroded significantly by strong adoption of Intel's Atom SoCs at these manufacturers (who have strong ties with Intel through PC manufacturing).

Popular tablet SoCs as of Q1 2015


By analyzing the tablet models offered on Chinese e-commerce portals, one can get some idea of what SoCs are currently used the most in tablets from China. I took a look at the tablet offerings on Banggood.com.

Rockchip's RK3188 (which probably means the RK3188T variant in most cases) is still widely used. Originally a mid-range performance segment SoC, there are indications that Rockchip built a significant inventory of this SoC (which is not particularly cheap in terms of manufactuing cost) last year, and the chip has been used in cheaper models as well. Rockchip's RK3126, which is more cost-effective than RK3188, is slowly starting to appear in new tablet models.

Meanwhile, Rockchip's high-end RK3288 is used in several models from Pipo, Teclast and FNF, and these seem to be reasonably popular for a high-end product. I have some concerns about power consumption and battery life regarding these products due to the processor cores used in the SoC.

The most popular MediaTek chips used in tablets are SoCs with 3G connectivity such as the low-end dual-core MT8312 and quad-core MT8382 (the equivalent of the MT6572 and MT6582 smartphone SoCs), as well as the more performance oriented octa-core MT6592/MT8392, which provides good performance and battery-life and has moved down to lower-priced tablet models. Additionally, the new 64-bit MT8752 with 4G (equivalent to the MT6752 smartphone SoC) is starting to appear in new models (Cube, Teclast). For WiFi-only tablets, the MT8127 (which has a relatively powerful GPU for a cheap SoC) is used in some low-to-mid-range tablets.

Allwinner's A31s, which was released in 2013 but perhaps its last successful product introduction, appears to be still used for production. Low-end tablets are available with the A23 and A33 SoCs, although the A33 does not seem to have been very successful and has been affected by weakness in the low-end segment of the tablet market.

Allwinner's new octa-core A83T has started to appear in a few new models, and is probably replacing the high-end A80 Octa which is likely to have had low profit margins.

Finally, Intel's Z3735F, Z3735G and Z3736F Atom SoCs are widely used in tablets, although most prominently in higher-prices models that come equipped with Microsoft Windows.

Update (15 March): 3G smartphone chip inventory unloaded onto Chinese tablet market


In an article published on 13 March 2015, DigiTimes Research reported that due to a high inventory level of 3G smartphone solutions in China, such chips will be unloaded onto the Chinese tablet market by players such as MediaTek, Qualcomm and Spreadtrum.

3G-enabled chip solutions for tablets are usually very similar to similar solutions for smartphones. For example, MediaTek's smartphone solutions have commonly been used in tablets, while MediaTek's official 3G-enabled tablet solutions most likely consist of a chip virtually identical to the smartphone version, with the main difference being a different model number (e.g. MT6582 vs MT8382). That MediaTek would target any excess inventory of 3G smartphone chipsets at the tablet market is not surprising.

However, I am little sceptical about the volume that may be involved. The Chinese tablet market is clearly contracting in the near term, and the volumes in the tablet market are considerably smaller than the smartphone market, even the declining 3G part of the smartphone SoC market. To put things into perspective, MediaTek's quarterly 3G smartphone chip shipments were on the order of 70 million in Q4 2014, while its 3G tablet chip shipments were probably in the range of 5 to 10 million.

The article also mentions Qualcomm, which in the past has not been a major player in the Chinese white-box tablet market. It mentions rumours that Qualcomm may form a partnership with Allwinner (which has been consistently losing market share) to penetrate the tablet market in China. The article also states that while Intel has introduced 3G tablet solutions, Intel's solutions are unlikely to be widely adopted until Intel introduces the 4G version of its Atom x3 (formerly SoFIA) platform.

Sources: DigiTimes (Q1 2015 China tablet AP market article),  DigiTimes Research (smartphone chips inventory unloaded to tablet market)

Updated 15 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • New mobile SoCs announced at MWCVegator
    At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced. MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets. The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, accord
     
  • ↗️

New mobile SoCs announced at MWC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
2. Březen 2015 v 11:41
At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced.

MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones


MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets.

The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, according to MediaTek. Features include an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU up to 1.5 GHz and a Mali-T720 GPU with an unspecified number of cores. ARM's Mali-T720 GPU is positioned at a significantly lower performance bracket than the Mali-T760 used in the MT6752, positioning the MT6753 below the MT6752 in terms of cost and performance.

The MT6753 is described as being compatible with the previously announced MT6735 for entry-level smartphones. The MT6735 has four Cortex-A53 cores instead of eight but otherwise has a similar configuration with a Mali T720 GPU.

High-performance MT8173 tablet SoC uses small big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A72


The MT8173 is a high-performance tablet processor (without integrated modem) that utilizes ARM's new Cortex-A72 core in a big.LITTLE configuration. By using only two Cortex-A72 cores (clocked up to 2.4 GHz) as well as two Cortex-A53 cores, the chip has a lower cost than would be the case with the four-by-four core configuration commonly used for big.LITTLE designs, while still providing good performance.

The Cortex-A72 core, the successor of Cortex-A57, appears to be seeing quick adoption as Qualcomm has already announced performance-segment smartphone SoCs (Snapdragon 618 and 620) featuring the core.

MediaTek has previously used a similar two-by-two big.LITTLE configuration in its MT8135(V) tablet SoC, which has two Cortex-A15 cores and Cortex-A7 cores. This chip was used in Amazon tablets but otherwise did not see much adoption.

Other features include a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which is part of Imagination's Series 6XT family, with higher performance and efficiency than the G6200 GPU used in chips such as the MT8135 and MT6595.

Other tablet SoCs not yet publicly announced by MediaTek


Meanwhile, tablet product announcements by Lenovo also refer to the MT8161 and MT8165 SoCs, which have not been announced. From the specifications of the Lenovo Tab 2 A8 which is using it, the MT8161 appears to be a tablet SoC without modem with quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU running up to 1.3 GHz, while the MT8165 (used in the Tab 2 A10) is a similar SoC with the CPU running up to 1.5 GHz. The 4G version of the Lenovo tablets come equipped with the MT8735 (Tab 2 A8) and MT8732 (Tab 2 A10). These chips are the tablet versions of the MT6735 and MT6732 smartphone SoCs.

MT6795 renamed to Helio X10


In a closed-door presentation at MWC, MediaTek also presented the Helio X10 smartphone SoC, featuring a 64-bit octa-core CPU up to 2.2 GHz, 120 Hz display refresh rate and H.265 video encode up to 4K2K @ 30 fps. A photograph of a slide taken at the presentation strongly suggests that Helio X10 is nothing other than the delayed MT6795 SoC, whose specifications closely match. Devices using this chip are likely to have already started production. MediaTek also talked about the Helio P series, a high-performance platform, which will make its way into devices before the end of the year.

Qualcomm gives preview of next-generation Snapdragon 820 SoC


In a press release, Qualcomm has given a preview of the Snapdragon 820, which utilizes Qualcomm's new custom 64-bit CPU architecture for mobile devices called Kryo. The chip will start sampling in the second half of 2015 according to Qualcomm, with devices becoming available in 2016. It will be manufactured on a next-generation FinFET process (which probably means TSMC's 16FF+, but Samsung cannot be excluded). In the press release, Qualcomm does not mention whether the chip will conform to ARM's ARMv8 instruction set architecture.

In conjuction with the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm also announced the Zeroth hardware/software platform focusing on device intelligence features including video and audio recognition techniques (such as visual object and face recognition).

Intel introduces tablet and smartphone SoCs with integrated modem


Intel has finally introduced SoCs with an integrated cellular modem in its Atom system-on-a-chip product line. The former SoFIA platform has been renamed to Atom X3 and features multi-core 64-bit Atom processors with integrated 3G or 4G LTE modem technology. The following products are available:
  • Atom X3-C3130, which has dual-core Atom CPU running up to 1.0 GHz and integrates a 3G modem. It features Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Maximum display resolution is 1280x800. It appears to be in the same market segment as MediaTek's previous-generation 3G SoCs such as MT6572 and MT6582 and other SoCs that are already on the market.
  • Atom X3-C3230RK, which was developed by Intel partner Rockchip following the agreement announced last year. It has quad-core Atom CPU, integrates a 3G modem and features a Mali-450 MP4 GPU.
  • Atom X3-C3440, a quad-core Atom CPU platform that integrates a Cat 6 LTE 4G modem. It has an Mali-T720 MP2 GPU. This product appears to be one that is most likely to succeed in the market.
All feature a 32-bit memory interface with support for LPDDR2 (and DDR3/DDR3L with the X3-C3230RK). These are the first Intel products that have features (such as the integrated modem) that make them specifically suitable for the smartphone market. They also target cellular-enabled tablets.

The 3G products are a little behind the times, and their success is uncertain. It will be interesting observe whether Rockchip was able to develop the X3-C3230RK in time (one would expect Intel to have greater expertise/resources so that the other products will appear on the market first).

One notable fact is that these are among the first SoCs to integrate an ARM GPU core with a non-ARM CPU.

Intel announces first 14 nm Atom SoCs for tablets and all-in-ones


Intel also rolled out its first 14 nm Atom SoCs, the Atom x5 and x7 processor series (formely codenamed Cherry Trail) with  Intel Gen 8 graphics, targeting tablets and small screen all-in-ones.

Intel has also introduced a new stand-alone modem chip, XMM 7360, which support LTE Cat 10 and download speeds up to 450 Mbps, as well as wireless connnectivity products (including WiFi/Bluetooth, GNSS/GPS and NFC solutions).

Sources: MediaTek (MT6753 announcement), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Qualcomm (Snapdragon 820/Zeroth platform preview), Intel (MWC announcements), Intel Atom x3 Processor Series Brief
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC marketVegator
    Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015. Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not se
     
  • ↗️

Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC market

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
17. Únor 2015 v 08:46
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015.

Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer


In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not selected the Snapdragon 810 processor for an upcoming flagship product. This is widely believed to refer to Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6. In fact the trend of increasing use of in-house Exynos processors already started last year, as models such as Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy S5 Mini and Galaxy Note 4 already saw increasing use of Samsung's own Exynos processors, including modem technology in some cases.

Qualcomm also mentions a share shift among major OEMs that will result in relatively more modem chips as opposed to SoCs (clearly referring to Apple, which only uses Qualcom's modem chips), as well as heightened competition in China. Recently, Qualcomm also recently announced a resolution of the anti-trust investigation by authorities in China, which amounts to a reduction in the patent royalty rate it charges to customers in China.

Qualcomm's total market share currently still strong


At the moment, Qualcomm's market share for smartphone SoCs is still strong as shown by unit shipments and revenues for Q4 2014 and Qualcomm's estimates for Q1 2015, although its product mix has shifted to lower-end products. In comparison to competitor MediaTek, Qualcomm is doing much better in terms of maintaining or growing unit shipments (with Qualcomm in fact seeing a 14% increase in unit shipments in Q4 2014), suggesting that Qualcomm is taking market share from MediaTek as products such as Snapdragon 410 and the new Snapdragon 210 take over large parts of the low-end cost-sensitive market (especially in China) where MediaTek's 3G solutions where previously dominant.

MediaTek losing market share despite successful new products


Meanwhile, although MediaTek has seen widespread adoption of its new MT6752 and MT6732 SoCs with integrated LTE modem for the cost-sensitive mid-range market, the company saw lower unit shipments in Q4 2014 and predicts a 10 to 18% revenue decline for Q1 2015, suggesting its smartphone SoC shipments are under pressure. Given the fact that the new 4G chips have higher selling prices than existing 3G chips, the revenue decline probably reflects a relatively dramatic decline in shipments of existing 3G solutions, with resulting loss of total market share, although price reductions may also play a role. MediaTek has been affected especially by the late introduction of integrated 4G solutions and the lack of a low-end 4G solution and to a lesser extend the delayed introduction of the high-end MT6795.

Captive mobile SoC use becoming more important


Within the total smartphone SoC market (and also in the tablet maket), captive supply (whereby a smartphone manufacturer uses its own SoCs in its smartphone models) is becoming more important, which affects the market opportunity for companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek. I already mentioned Samsung's increasing use of Exynos processors, which has a significant impact as Samsung is one of the two largest smartphone manufacturers. A major Chinese manufacturr, Huawei, is also increasingly using SoCs from its own HiSilicon division, also extending to lower end models. Apple's gains in market share also has an effect (especially on the high-end market) since it uses proprietary SoCs.

In the tablet market, the low-end and Chinese white-box market is seeing a sharp reduction in shipments in Q1 2015, with market share shifting to brand names (where captive solutions are more important, such as at Samsung) as total shipments are estimated to decline dramatically. This greatly affects traditional players in the tablet SoC market such as Rockchip, Allwinner and MediaTek. Intel's strategy of subsidizing tablet SoCs has also had an impact. According to DigiTimes, the total tablet market will decline 30% sequentially in Q1 2015, with estimates of a decline of 12% for the whole year 2015.


Sources: DigiTimes (tablet market article), DigiTimes (MediaTek results), Qualcomm, MediaTek

  • ✇- SamMobile
  • Samsung phones open to security attacks as they can’t turn off 2GAbid Iqbal Shaik
    Update: As pointed out by our readers, Samsung offers a toggle for turning off the 2G network in some countries. You can check it out in the screenshot below. However, this feature isn't available in most regions. The original story follows… Google has just published an article on the Google Security Blog. It highlights the lack of a feature in Samsung’s smartphones and tablets that could expose people to privacy and security attacks leading them to fall for fraud and scams. Criminals can use u
     
  • ↗️

Samsung phones open to security attacks as they can’t turn off 2G

✇- SamMobile
Od: Abid Iqbal Shaik
2. Srpen 2024 v 14:22

Update: As pointed out by our readers, Samsung offers a toggle for turning off the 2G network in some countries. You can check it out in the screenshot below. However, this feature isn't available in most regions.

Samsung Galaxy Phones And Tablets One UI 2G Toggle

The original story follows…

Google has just published an article on the Google Security Blog. It highlights the lack of a feature in Samsung’s smartphones and tablets that could expose people to privacy and security attacks leading them to fall for fraud and scams.

Criminals can use unsafe 2G network to attack Android devices

In the blog post, Google explains that fraudsters or scamsters can use cell-site simulators, also known as False Base Stations (FBS) or Stingrays, which are radio devices, to create their own 4G and 5G networks. They can then customize those to make them appear as networks provided by well-established carriers.

At this point, mobile phones nearby might start connecting to these fake networks as they might not be able to differentiate between a fake and a real one. Once that happens, criminals force these devices to connect to a 2G network created by them.

Now, the 2G network lacks many crucial security measures that 4G and 5G networks offer. Leveraging the lack of those security features, criminals can send an SMS containing spam to those devices, which could lead their owners to fall for frauds and scams, as well as surveil them and intercept their communications.

Google says turning off 2G network protects you from those attacks

To safeguard from these privacy and security attacks, Google asks people to turn off the 2G network on their Android devices. According to the company, Android has been offering people the option to turn off the 2G network since Android 12.

Unfortunately, Samsung’s phones and tablets don’t offer an option to turn off just 2G network and keep other networks (3G, 4G, and 5G) working, even though Android has been offering it for more than two years. Samsung's devices provide only the network modes that you see in the screenshot below.

Samsung Galaxy Smartphones And Tablets Network Modes

This exposes Galaxy phone and tablet owners to scams and fraud through the attacks mentioned above. We hope that Samsung is taking note of this and offers a software update to all Galaxy devices that adds the ability to turn off just the 2G network.

Additional screenshot: Angel Castro Lagunes 

The post Samsung phones open to security attacks as they can’t turn off 2G appeared first on SamMobile.

  • ✇- SamMobile
  • Massive One UI 7 leak lists several upcoming featuresAsif Iqbal Shaik
    Samsung was expected to release the One UI 7.0 update last week, but that didn't happen. We reported that the company delayed the release, and the One UI 7.0 beta update will likely be released later this month. Ahead of that release, a massive leak has revealed many One UI 7.0 features. Several One UI 7.0 features have leaked weeks before the release Reliable tipster Ice Universe has posted (via Android Authority) a list of some One UI 7.0 features on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo. Accor
     
  • ↗️

Massive One UI 7 leak lists several upcoming features

✇- SamMobile
Od: Asif Iqbal Shaik
2. Srpen 2024 v 11:31

Samsung was expected to release the One UI 7.0 update last week, but that didn't happen. We reported that the company delayed the release, and the One UI 7.0 beta update will likely be released later this month. Ahead of that release, a massive leak has revealed many One UI 7.0 features.

Several One UI 7.0 features have leaked weeks before the release

Reliable tipster Ice Universe has posted (via Android Authority) a list of some One UI 7.0 features on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo. According to the tipster, One UI 7.0 has new app icons, a new background (wallpaper?) interface, and a new control area at the bottom of the lock screen. The lock screen shortcuts now seem to have bigger icons.

He also claims that the notifications area and the quick settings panel can be merged if the user wants to. Those pages can also stay independent (similar to One UI 6). There is apparently a pill-shaped animation that can display ongoing activities from more apps (like the timer). One UI 7.0 reportedly introduces a new animation while unlocking a device's screen.

Samsung has reportedly added animations that can be interrupted by the user (like opening an app from the home screen but stopping it by clicking the home screen). Moreover, the South Korean firm is said to have improved app opening and closing animations. The tipster said One UI 7.0 brings a new battery icon and a bar-shaped charging animation.

The South Korean firm seems to have added several new widgets (of various sizes) for the home screen and the lock screen. The tipster also claimed that One UI 7.0 will bring support for large-sized app folders on the home screen.

Ice Universe also confirmed that One UI 7.0 includes a completely redesigned camera app. The new version of One UI reportedly also supports SMS sending and receiving using the 5G network. There also seem to be new animations for notification pop-ups and closing animations.

Leaked One UI 7.0 features list:

  • New system application icons
  • New background interface
  • A new control area at the bottom of the lock screen
  • Adjustment of shortcut icons (size?) in the left and right corners of the lock screen
  • Pull-down shortcut bar and notification can be independent/merged
  • The pill-shaped UI element in the upper left corner notification bar can display more apps
  • Added interruptible animation and optimized app opening and closing animation curve
  • New battery icon and charging animation bar
  • New camera user interface
  • Added support for 5G SMS messages
  • New notification pop-up animations and closing animations
  • Added unlock animation
  • New button touch and page return animation
  • Added many new desktop widgets of various sizes
  • Added more lock screen widgets
  • Added large folders

Watch the leaked icons for the stock Clock and Samsung Internet apps in our video below. Those icons will be available with the One UI 7.0 update.

Samsung will likely open the One UI 7.0 Beta Program for the Galaxy S24 series before the end of this month. The beta program could be available in China, Germany, India, South Korea, the UK, and the US. However, the company's plans can change, so nothing can be said for sure right now.

The post Massive One UI 7 leak lists several upcoming features appeared first on SamMobile.

Kotaku’s Weekend Guide: 7 Stellar Games We Can’t Wait To Jump Back Into

✇Kotaku
Od: Claire Jackson， Moises Taveras， John Walker， Kenneth Shepard， Carolyn Petit， Ethan Gach， and Alyssa Mercante
2. Srpen 2024 v 21:25

Welcome to the first weekend of August! The weather is still hot in various parts of the world (like, way more so than it’s been lately), so what a wonderful time to stay the hell in doors, in front of an air conditioner, with some video games.

Read more...

  • ✇AndroidPCtv
  • Redmi Pad SE 4G is official, all specifications (low)Josh
    The new Redmi Pad SE 4G has been officially launched in China, a tablet that aims at the entry-level range and reduces its screen to 8.7 inches compared ... The post Redmi Pad SE 4G is official, all specifications (low) first appeared on AndroidPCtv.
     
  • ↗️

Lenovo Xiaoxin Pad Pro 12.7 2025 presentsada with Mediatek Dimensity 8300

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Josh
28. Červenec 2024 v 09:47

The new Lenovo Xiaoxin Pad Pro 12.7 2025 has just been presented and is already on sale in China, which as usual is a substantial improvement over the ...

The post Lenovo Xiaoxin Pad Pro 12.7 2025 presentsada with Mediatek Dimensity 8300 first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

Teclast T50 Plus a tablet that debuts with Unisoc T620 processor

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Josh
24. Červenec 2024 v 21:29

It has just been presented in China the new Teclast T50 Plus, a new tablet of the T50 series of this brand that surprises by using a UNISOC ...

The post Teclast T50 Plus a tablet that debuts with Unisoc T620 processor first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

  • ✇AndroidPCtv
  • N-one Npad Ultra a new tablet with 12″ 2K displayJosh
    A new tablet with a large screen, the N-one Npad Ultra with a 12-inch panel and 2K resolution, has appeared in stores. A tablet that has a monobloc ... The post N-one Npad Ultra a new tablet with 12″ 2K display first appeared on AndroidPCtv.
     
  • ↗️
  • ✇Liliputing
  • This 14 inch Windows tablet with AMD Mendocino sells for under $400Brad Linder
    AMD’s Ryzen 7020 “Mendocino” processors launched about two years ago as budget chips for inexpensive laptops with decent performance and long battery life. From time to time they’ve also been used in other devices like handheld gaming PCs. Now Chinese PC company SZBOX has launched a 14 inch Windows tablet with an AMD Mendocino processor […] The post This 14 inch Windows tablet with AMD Mendocino sells for under $400 appeared first on Liliputing.
     
  • ↗️

This 14 inch Windows tablet with AMD Mendocino sells for under $400

✇Liliputing
Od: Brad Linder
31. Červenec 2024 v 15:00

AMD’s Ryzen 7020 “Mendocino” processors launched about two years ago as budget chips for inexpensive laptops with decent performance and long battery life. From time to time they’ve also been used in other devices like handheld gaming PCs. Now Chinese PC company SZBOX has launched a 14 inch Windows tablet with an AMD Mendocino processor […]

The post This 14 inch Windows tablet with AMD Mendocino sells for under $400 appeared first on Liliputing.

  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014Vegator
    Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsu
     
  • ↗️

Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
7. Květen 2015 v 14:22
Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsung LSI. The report mentions that HiSilicon, Intel and MediaTek had bigger growth than Qualcomm in 2014.

Qualcomm's strength based on Snapdragon 800 series wins in higher-tier phones


According to the report, Qualcomm's leadership was largely based on design wins for its Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 805 SoCs in the higher-tier market. Examples of this include the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3. However, as I have previously reported Samsung has increased its use of in-house application processors starting from the second half of 2014, culminating in the exclusive use of Exynos 7420 in the Galaxy S6 in 2015, putting pressure on Qualcomm.

Baseband share in 2014


Strategy Analytics has also published a report with details about baseband (modem) market share in smartphones. According to the report, LTE (4G) basebands accounted for 50% of cellular baseband share in 2014, and the figure is likely to increase significantly in 2015. Qualcomm led in LTE basebands, but HiSilicon, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek and Samsung also increased LTE baseband shipments.

In terms of revenues in the overall baseband market, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Speadtrum, Marvell and Intel had the top positions in 2104. Qualcomm had 66% revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 17% and Speadtrum with 5% sare. Given the product lines of the respective companies in 2014, Qualcomm's revenues are based on both integrated SoC and separate modems, while Intel's sales were mostly separate modem chips, while the other players mostly shipped a mix of integrated SoCs and modem chips.

Comparison with 2013


Comparing with the reports that Strategy Analytics issued for 2013, Qualcomm saws it baseband revenue share remain relatively stable at 66% compared to 64% in 2013. MediaTek saw its AP market share increase from 10% in 2013 to 14% in 2014, and its baseband share increased.

Tablet processor market in 2014


According to another report issued by Strategy Analytics, the market for tablet processors grew 18% in 2014 to $4.2 billion. The top-five revenue share positions were occupied by Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung LSI. Apple led with 27% share (which must be an estimate), followed by Intel with 17% and Qualcomm with 16% share.

Notable is the absence among the top five of traditional leaders in the Chinese white-box market such as Rockchip and Allwinner. This most likely reflects in increase in brand name tablet shipments at the expense of the white-box tablet market, the low selling prices of white-box tablet processor and the encroachment of MediaTek and Intel into that segment.

Source: Strategy Analytics (Smartphone AP market share), Strategy Analytics (cellular baseband market share), Strategy Analytics (Tablet processor market share)

Qualcomm releases new variant of Snapdragon 410 that supports ARMv8, targeting tablets and other applications

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
19. Březen 2015 v 01:24
Qualcomm recently made announcements of products and reference designs based on the APQ8016 SoC, a new modem-less quad-core Cortex-A53-based SoC branded as Snapdragon 410. The chip is targeted at IoT applications, development boards and probably also Wi-Fi-only tablets, supporting Linux, Android and Windows 10. Although branded as Snapdragon 410, the chip is a new design that is likely to fix most of the performance deficiencies of the first-generation MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 SoC that has been targeted at smartphones. For example, the original Snapdragon 410 SoC appears not to support ARMv8 at all, while the new chip is clearly targeted at 64-bit platforms.

Development board released


Qualcomm recently announced the DragonBoard 410c, a development board with support for Linux and Android. It features a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 processor with Adreno 306 GPU, 533 MHZ LPDDR2/LPDDR3 SDRAM, HDMI output and several I/O interfaces. The HDMI output is limited to 30fps at 1080p.

The board is designed to compatible with the 96Boards initiative from Linaro, the non-profit engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

With 64-bit support and a maximum clock speed of 1.2 GHz, the APQ8016 SoC that is used on the board most likely uses a more recent version of the Cortex-A53 core than the original Snapdragon 410 processor for smartphones, while being manufactured using the same 28LP process at TSMC.

New SoC probably targets tablets as volume driver


There are indications that the new chip will be used in Wi-Fi-only tablets, such as recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab A series. There have also been indications that Qualcomm is stepping up its efforts to target Chinese tablet manufacturers.

Qualcomm and MediaTek support mainline Linux kernel with open-source drivers for selected SoCs


Whereas in the past major smartphone SoC companies kept their closed-source drivers separate from the open-source Linux community, more recently companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have started releasing open source contributions for the Linux kernel to support selected SoC products. Both companies have also recently joined Linaro, the engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

For both companies, the SoCs supported in the mainline Linux kernel are applications processors without an integrated modem. Qualcomm is supporting the APQ8016 mentioned above while MediaTek has contributed code for the MT8173 tablet processor.

Sources: Qualcomm (Dragonboard announcement), Qualcomm (Windows 10 IoT platform announcement), CNXSoft (DragonBoard 410c article)
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoCVegator
    ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core. Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016. However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced
     
  • ↗️

Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
10. Březen 2015 v 00:01
ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core.

Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016.

However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced SoCs using the Cortex-A72 core with commercial availability in the second half of 2015, suggesting that the CPU core itself is at an advanced stage of introduction. Already, early benchmarks for MediaTek's MT8173 tablet SoC that incorporates the Cortex-A72 have become available.

Cortex-A72 appears to be enhanced version Cortex-A57 optimized for next-generation processes


In its announcement press release from 3 February 2015, ARM claims that more than ten partners have already licensed Cortex-A72, including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Rockchip. Cortex-A72 is based on ARM's ARMv8-A instruction set architecture, and can be combined with the existing Cortex-A53 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Cortex-A72 seems to be positioned as a replacement for Cortex-A57. The similarities with Cortex-A57 are very apparent, for example in the identically sized L1 instruction and data caches, and a feature set that is otherwise very similar.

On a 16 nm FinFET process, the core can sustain operation at speeds up to 2.5 GHz within the constraints of a mobile power envelope (e.g. smartphones), with scalability to higher speeds for larger form-factor devices. However, the first announced devices, such as MediaTek's MT8173, appear to use older processes such as the tried-and-trusted 28 nm HPM process at TSMC, so they are likely to have a lower maximum clock speed.

ARM claims increased performance and power efficiency, although these claims seem to be based on implementation on next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET that deliver a significant intrinsic improvement in these metrics. ARM mentions micro-architectural improvements that result in enhancements in floating point, integer and memory performance. When implemented on a 16 nm FinFET process, ARM expects Cortex-A57 to provide 85% higher performance when compared to the Cortex-A57 core on a 20 nm process within a similar smartphone power budget.

Overall, the differences with Cortex-A57 appear to be relatively minor, so that Cortex-A72 is best viewed as an enhanced version of Cortex-A57 that is optimized for next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET. Nevertheless, the first SoCs to use the Cortex-A72 core will be manufactured using a less advanced process.

Benchmarks appear for MediaTek's MT8173


MediaTek's MT8173 is a mid-range tablet processor mainly targeting Wi-Fi-only tablets, since it does not have an integrated modem. It has two Cortex-A72 cores and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. Probably manufactured using the established 28HPM process at TSMC, the maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A57 cores is likely to be lower that the target for 16 nm FinFET, although MediaTek claims a clock speed up to 2.4 GHz, while a much lower frequency is apparent in early benchmarks results.

The chip also features a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which delivers higher performance than the G6200 GPU used inside MediaTek's existing MT8135 and MT6795.

Recently, early benchmarks for a MT8173 development board have appeared both in the Geekbench Browser and in the results database of GFXBench. The first Geekbench results already appeared in December 2014. The latest set of Geekbench results date from the end of February 2015, although they do show a certain amount variation that may reflect thermal throttling.

Single-core performance good, but not spectacular


As expected, the Geekbench results show good single-core performance, albeit not spectacular. As shown in the following table, singe-core performance is in line with Cortex-A57-based SoCs such as Exynos 5433 and Exynos 7420. It should be noted that the MT8173 test SoC is most likely manufactured at 28 nm with a corresponding relatively low maximum CPU clock speed, while Exynos 5433 and 7420 are manufactured using smaller leading edge processes at Samsung.


SoC          "big" CPU                    Arch     JPEG (int)  Lua (int)   Mandelb. (fp)
                                                   Comp. IPC         IPC         IPC
MT8173       2 x 1.6? GHz Cortex-A72      AArch32  1310  2.13  1380  2.10  1064  1.95
Exynos 5433  4 x 1.80 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch32  1456  2.10  1397  1.89  1174  1.91
Exynos 7420  4 x 1.97 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch64  1481  1.97  1409  1.74  1198  1.92

In this table, to determine the IPC index I have made an educated guess about the actual clock speed of MT8173 when running the benchmarks. Geekbench reports a 1.40 GHz clock speed (which probably applies to the Cortex-A53 cores), 1.6 GHz seems to be a good match, providing just a little better IPC than Cortex-A57. Note that Exynos 7420 runs in AArch64 mode, which skews direct IPC comparisons.

Practical implications unclear


Without knowing the exact clock speed of the Cortex-A72 cores, it is hard to draw conclusions about the actual IPC improvement over Cortex-A57. If the MT8173 uses a 28 nm process, the ability to approach the single-core performance of Samsung's Exynos 7420 manufactured using 14 nm FinFET process is impressive. However, although MediaTek demonstrated the MT8173 in an actual tablet at MWC, it is unclear what kind of device the Alps development board in the benchmark entries actually represents, so it remains to be seen whether the benchmarks actually reflect the power budget of a tablet.

The multi-core performance reported is not very impressive, as expected because of the relatively small number of CPU cores. The JPEG Compress multi-core score shows CPU scaling factor of 2.72, which is good and implies utilization of the Cortex-A53 cores. The Mandelbrot floating point benchmark shows similar scaling.

However, the Lua integer benchmark has a very low multi-core scaling factor of 1.41, which is lower than expected, even when allowing for the limited number of cores. For example, MediaTek's MT6795 achieves multi-core scaling of 7.5 in this benchmark, and the Exynos chips range from 3.9 to 5.0. Other chips with a low multi-core scaling factor for Geekbench's Lua subtest include Snapdragon 810 (Cortex-A57-based), MediaTek's MT6595 (Cortex-A17-based) and NVIDIA's Denver-based Tegra-K1 SoC. There are indications that this benchmark test heavily depends on on-chip cache (primarily L2 cache) size and speed.

GPU performance of MT8173's PowerVR GX6250 GPU improves on G6200


The MT8173 test device's GPU performance as shown in GFXBench results database is not overly impressive, but suitable for a mid-range chip and an improvement over the PowerVR G6200 GPU used in other MediaTek SoCs such as MT6595 and MT6795. In the T-Rex Offscreen benchmark, the MT8173 registers a score of 1487, higher than the 1311 of the MT6595 (G6200)-equipped Meizu MX4. In the GFXBench 3.0 low-level tests, alpha blending scores higher than the MT6595 while the other low-level scores are comparable.

Sources: ARM (Cortex-A57 announcement press release), AnandTech (MediaTek MT8173 article), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Geekbench Browser (MT8173 test device results), GFXBench (MT8173 test device result)

Updated 10 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • China tablet processor market declines in Q1Vegator
    According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for th
     
  • ↗️

China tablet processor market declines in Q1

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
6. Březen 2015 v 10:08
According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for the decline in shipments.

MediaTek leads Chinese tablet market in Q1 2015


Based on information published by DigiTimes Research, MediaTek, Rockchip, Allwinner and Intel were the top four providers of tablet processors in China, in that order, in Q4 2014. For Q1 2015, MediaTek is estimated to expand it market share by about 1% to reach 28.5%, although absolute shipments will decline significantly due to the overall market decline.

Rockchip, who was the market share leader for most of 2014, is estimated to see its market share remain stable in Q1 2015, registering a 0.6% increase according to DigiTimes Research, who did not supply a market share figure for Rockchip, although it is probably in the region of 25%. DigiTimes mentioned that Rockchip's new chips launched at the end of 2014 (which includes the Cortex-A7-based RK3126 and RK3128) have not yet reached strong shipments.

Meanwhile, Allwinner continues the trend of a steady decline a market share, being expected to have a share of 15.6% compared to 17.6% in Q4 2014. This allows it to be passed by Intel in terms of market share, with Intel's market share estimated to rise from 15% to 16.3% in Q1 2015.

Intel's global market share has increased and is significant, especially revenue share


It should be noted that in terms of global market share, Intel has a stronger position than what would be inferred just from the Chinese market due to a strong position at brand-name tablet manufacturers outside of China, such as Asus and Acer. The other chip players in the Chinese tablet processor market, especially Rockchip and Allwinner, have a weak position outside of China. Due to the higher-end nature of Intel's product mix, Intel also has a higher revenue share, whereas the sales of companies such as Allwinner are mostly concentrated in low-end processors. It has been reported that Intel is abandoning its "contra-revenue" strategy of subsidizing tablet processor sales, which it probably can afford to do because its chip solutions are fairly competitive on their own.

Global brand names gain share, use different chip suppliers


In the global tablet marker, brand name manufacturers are gaining share and dominate the dollar value of the market, also for semiconductor content. Apple and Samsung, who lead the global tablet market, use a lot of in-house chip solutions (100% in the case of Apple). Samsung also uses suppliers like Qualcomm and Marvell, who otherwise do not have a strong position in the Chinese tablet market.

MediaTek used to have strong market share among Taiwanese tablet manufacturers such as Asus and Acer. However, its market share their seems to have been eroded significantly by strong adoption of Intel's Atom SoCs at these manufacturers (who have strong ties with Intel through PC manufacturing).

Popular tablet SoCs as of Q1 2015


By analyzing the tablet models offered on Chinese e-commerce portals, one can get some idea of what SoCs are currently used the most in tablets from China. I took a look at the tablet offerings on Banggood.com.

Rockchip's RK3188 (which probably means the RK3188T variant in most cases) is still widely used. Originally a mid-range performance segment SoC, there are indications that Rockchip built a significant inventory of this SoC (which is not particularly cheap in terms of manufactuing cost) last year, and the chip has been used in cheaper models as well. Rockchip's RK3126, which is more cost-effective than RK3188, is slowly starting to appear in new tablet models.

Meanwhile, Rockchip's high-end RK3288 is used in several models from Pipo, Teclast and FNF, and these seem to be reasonably popular for a high-end product. I have some concerns about power consumption and battery life regarding these products due to the processor cores used in the SoC.

The most popular MediaTek chips used in tablets are SoCs with 3G connectivity such as the low-end dual-core MT8312 and quad-core MT8382 (the equivalent of the MT6572 and MT6582 smartphone SoCs), as well as the more performance oriented octa-core MT6592/MT8392, which provides good performance and battery-life and has moved down to lower-priced tablet models. Additionally, the new 64-bit MT8752 with 4G (equivalent to the MT6752 smartphone SoC) is starting to appear in new models (Cube, Teclast). For WiFi-only tablets, the MT8127 (which has a relatively powerful GPU for a cheap SoC) is used in some low-to-mid-range tablets.

Allwinner's A31s, which was released in 2013 but perhaps its last successful product introduction, appears to be still used for production. Low-end tablets are available with the A23 and A33 SoCs, although the A33 does not seem to have been very successful and has been affected by weakness in the low-end segment of the tablet market.

Allwinner's new octa-core A83T has started to appear in a few new models, and is probably replacing the high-end A80 Octa which is likely to have had low profit margins.

Finally, Intel's Z3735F, Z3735G and Z3736F Atom SoCs are widely used in tablets, although most prominently in higher-prices models that come equipped with Microsoft Windows.

Update (15 March): 3G smartphone chip inventory unloaded onto Chinese tablet market


In an article published on 13 March 2015, DigiTimes Research reported that due to a high inventory level of 3G smartphone solutions in China, such chips will be unloaded onto the Chinese tablet market by players such as MediaTek, Qualcomm and Spreadtrum.

3G-enabled chip solutions for tablets are usually very similar to similar solutions for smartphones. For example, MediaTek's smartphone solutions have commonly been used in tablets, while MediaTek's official 3G-enabled tablet solutions most likely consist of a chip virtually identical to the smartphone version, with the main difference being a different model number (e.g. MT6582 vs MT8382). That MediaTek would target any excess inventory of 3G smartphone chipsets at the tablet market is not surprising.

However, I am little sceptical about the volume that may be involved. The Chinese tablet market is clearly contracting in the near term, and the volumes in the tablet market are considerably smaller than the smartphone market, even the declining 3G part of the smartphone SoC market. To put things into perspective, MediaTek's quarterly 3G smartphone chip shipments were on the order of 70 million in Q4 2014, while its 3G tablet chip shipments were probably in the range of 5 to 10 million.

The article also mentions Qualcomm, which in the past has not been a major player in the Chinese white-box tablet market. It mentions rumours that Qualcomm may form a partnership with Allwinner (which has been consistently losing market share) to penetrate the tablet market in China. The article also states that while Intel has introduced 3G tablet solutions, Intel's solutions are unlikely to be widely adopted until Intel introduces the 4G version of its Atom x3 (formerly SoFIA) platform.

Sources: DigiTimes (Q1 2015 China tablet AP market article),  DigiTimes Research (smartphone chips inventory unloaded to tablet market)

Updated 15 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • New mobile SoCs announced at MWCVegator
    At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced. MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets. The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, accord
     
  • ↗️

New mobile SoCs announced at MWC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
2. Březen 2015 v 11:41
At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced.

MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones


MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets.

The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, according to MediaTek. Features include an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU up to 1.5 GHz and a Mali-T720 GPU with an unspecified number of cores. ARM's Mali-T720 GPU is positioned at a significantly lower performance bracket than the Mali-T760 used in the MT6752, positioning the MT6753 below the MT6752 in terms of cost and performance.

The MT6753 is described as being compatible with the previously announced MT6735 for entry-level smartphones. The MT6735 has four Cortex-A53 cores instead of eight but otherwise has a similar configuration with a Mali T720 GPU.

High-performance MT8173 tablet SoC uses small big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A72


The MT8173 is a high-performance tablet processor (without integrated modem) that utilizes ARM's new Cortex-A72 core in a big.LITTLE configuration. By using only two Cortex-A72 cores (clocked up to 2.4 GHz) as well as two Cortex-A53 cores, the chip has a lower cost than would be the case with the four-by-four core configuration commonly used for big.LITTLE designs, while still providing good performance.

The Cortex-A72 core, the successor of Cortex-A57, appears to be seeing quick adoption as Qualcomm has already announced performance-segment smartphone SoCs (Snapdragon 618 and 620) featuring the core.

MediaTek has previously used a similar two-by-two big.LITTLE configuration in its MT8135(V) tablet SoC, which has two Cortex-A15 cores and Cortex-A7 cores. This chip was used in Amazon tablets but otherwise did not see much adoption.

Other features include a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which is part of Imagination's Series 6XT family, with higher performance and efficiency than the G6200 GPU used in chips such as the MT8135 and MT6595.

Other tablet SoCs not yet publicly announced by MediaTek


Meanwhile, tablet product announcements by Lenovo also refer to the MT8161 and MT8165 SoCs, which have not been announced. From the specifications of the Lenovo Tab 2 A8 which is using it, the MT8161 appears to be a tablet SoC without modem with quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU running up to 1.3 GHz, while the MT8165 (used in the Tab 2 A10) is a similar SoC with the CPU running up to 1.5 GHz. The 4G version of the Lenovo tablets come equipped with the MT8735 (Tab 2 A8) and MT8732 (Tab 2 A10). These chips are the tablet versions of the MT6735 and MT6732 smartphone SoCs.

MT6795 renamed to Helio X10


In a closed-door presentation at MWC, MediaTek also presented the Helio X10 smartphone SoC, featuring a 64-bit octa-core CPU up to 2.2 GHz, 120 Hz display refresh rate and H.265 video encode up to 4K2K @ 30 fps. A photograph of a slide taken at the presentation strongly suggests that Helio X10 is nothing other than the delayed MT6795 SoC, whose specifications closely match. Devices using this chip are likely to have already started production. MediaTek also talked about the Helio P series, a high-performance platform, which will make its way into devices before the end of the year.

Qualcomm gives preview of next-generation Snapdragon 820 SoC


In a press release, Qualcomm has given a preview of the Snapdragon 820, which utilizes Qualcomm's new custom 64-bit CPU architecture for mobile devices called Kryo. The chip will start sampling in the second half of 2015 according to Qualcomm, with devices becoming available in 2016. It will be manufactured on a next-generation FinFET process (which probably means TSMC's 16FF+, but Samsung cannot be excluded). In the press release, Qualcomm does not mention whether the chip will conform to ARM's ARMv8 instruction set architecture.

In conjuction with the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm also announced the Zeroth hardware/software platform focusing on device intelligence features including video and audio recognition techniques (such as visual object and face recognition).

Intel introduces tablet and smartphone SoCs with integrated modem


Intel has finally introduced SoCs with an integrated cellular modem in its Atom system-on-a-chip product line. The former SoFIA platform has been renamed to Atom X3 and features multi-core 64-bit Atom processors with integrated 3G or 4G LTE modem technology. The following products are available:
  • Atom X3-C3130, which has dual-core Atom CPU running up to 1.0 GHz and integrates a 3G modem. It features Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Maximum display resolution is 1280x800. It appears to be in the same market segment as MediaTek's previous-generation 3G SoCs such as MT6572 and MT6582 and other SoCs that are already on the market.
  • Atom X3-C3230RK, which was developed by Intel partner Rockchip following the agreement announced last year. It has quad-core Atom CPU, integrates a 3G modem and features a Mali-450 MP4 GPU.
  • Atom X3-C3440, a quad-core Atom CPU platform that integrates a Cat 6 LTE 4G modem. It has an Mali-T720 MP2 GPU. This product appears to be one that is most likely to succeed in the market.
All feature a 32-bit memory interface with support for LPDDR2 (and DDR3/DDR3L with the X3-C3230RK). These are the first Intel products that have features (such as the integrated modem) that make them specifically suitable for the smartphone market. They also target cellular-enabled tablets.

The 3G products are a little behind the times, and their success is uncertain. It will be interesting observe whether Rockchip was able to develop the X3-C3230RK in time (one would expect Intel to have greater expertise/resources so that the other products will appear on the market first).

One notable fact is that these are among the first SoCs to integrate an ARM GPU core with a non-ARM CPU.

Intel announces first 14 nm Atom SoCs for tablets and all-in-ones


Intel also rolled out its first 14 nm Atom SoCs, the Atom x5 and x7 processor series (formely codenamed Cherry Trail) with  Intel Gen 8 graphics, targeting tablets and small screen all-in-ones.

Intel has also introduced a new stand-alone modem chip, XMM 7360, which support LTE Cat 10 and download speeds up to 450 Mbps, as well as wireless connnectivity products (including WiFi/Bluetooth, GNSS/GPS and NFC solutions).

Sources: MediaTek (MT6753 announcement), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Qualcomm (Snapdragon 820/Zeroth platform preview), Intel (MWC announcements), Intel Atom x3 Processor Series Brief
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC marketVegator
    Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015. Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not se
     
  • ↗️

Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC market

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
17. Únor 2015 v 08:46
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015.

Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer


In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not selected the Snapdragon 810 processor for an upcoming flagship product. This is widely believed to refer to Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6. In fact the trend of increasing use of in-house Exynos processors already started last year, as models such as Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy S5 Mini and Galaxy Note 4 already saw increasing use of Samsung's own Exynos processors, including modem technology in some cases.

Qualcomm also mentions a share shift among major OEMs that will result in relatively more modem chips as opposed to SoCs (clearly referring to Apple, which only uses Qualcom's modem chips), as well as heightened competition in China. Recently, Qualcomm also recently announced a resolution of the anti-trust investigation by authorities in China, which amounts to a reduction in the patent royalty rate it charges to customers in China.

Qualcomm's total market share currently still strong


At the moment, Qualcomm's market share for smartphone SoCs is still strong as shown by unit shipments and revenues for Q4 2014 and Qualcomm's estimates for Q1 2015, although its product mix has shifted to lower-end products. In comparison to competitor MediaTek, Qualcomm is doing much better in terms of maintaining or growing unit shipments (with Qualcomm in fact seeing a 14% increase in unit shipments in Q4 2014), suggesting that Qualcomm is taking market share from MediaTek as products such as Snapdragon 410 and the new Snapdragon 210 take over large parts of the low-end cost-sensitive market (especially in China) where MediaTek's 3G solutions where previously dominant.

MediaTek losing market share despite successful new products


Meanwhile, although MediaTek has seen widespread adoption of its new MT6752 and MT6732 SoCs with integrated LTE modem for the cost-sensitive mid-range market, the company saw lower unit shipments in Q4 2014 and predicts a 10 to 18% revenue decline for Q1 2015, suggesting its smartphone SoC shipments are under pressure. Given the fact that the new 4G chips have higher selling prices than existing 3G chips, the revenue decline probably reflects a relatively dramatic decline in shipments of existing 3G solutions, with resulting loss of total market share, although price reductions may also play a role. MediaTek has been affected especially by the late introduction of integrated 4G solutions and the lack of a low-end 4G solution and to a lesser extend the delayed introduction of the high-end MT6795.

Captive mobile SoC use becoming more important


Within the total smartphone SoC market (and also in the tablet maket), captive supply (whereby a smartphone manufacturer uses its own SoCs in its smartphone models) is becoming more important, which affects the market opportunity for companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek. I already mentioned Samsung's increasing use of Exynos processors, which has a significant impact as Samsung is one of the two largest smartphone manufacturers. A major Chinese manufacturr, Huawei, is also increasingly using SoCs from its own HiSilicon division, also extending to lower end models. Apple's gains in market share also has an effect (especially on the high-end market) since it uses proprietary SoCs.

In the tablet market, the low-end and Chinese white-box market is seeing a sharp reduction in shipments in Q1 2015, with market share shifting to brand names (where captive solutions are more important, such as at Samsung) as total shipments are estimated to decline dramatically. This greatly affects traditional players in the tablet SoC market such as Rockchip, Allwinner and MediaTek. Intel's strategy of subsidizing tablet SoCs has also had an impact. According to DigiTimes, the total tablet market will decline 30% sequentially in Q1 2015, with estimates of a decline of 12% for the whole year 2015.


Sources: DigiTimes (tablet market article), DigiTimes (MediaTek results), Qualcomm, MediaTek

Unveiling ugee UE16 Drawing Monitor – Embrace the Essence of Colors Enriched

✇Gizchina Latest News
Od: Martin Fabian
24. Červen 2024 v 16:53
UE16

On the step of rendering a vibrant world for artistic participants, as well as serving as a upgraded version of UE12, ugee has once again ...

The post Unveiling ugee UE16 Drawing Monitor – Embrace the Essence of Colors Enriched appeared first on Gizchina.com.

CHUWI Hi10 Max: a 2-in-1 with Intel N100, 2.8K display and Windows 11

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Josh
20. Červen 2024 v 13:55

It has just been presented the new CHUWI Hi10 Max, a 2 in 1 that this time comes with Windows 11 Home as operating system and a 12.96” ...

The post CHUWI Hi10 Max: a 2-in-1 with Intel N100, 2.8K display and Windows 11 first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

Teclast P30T a tablet that sinks its price in AliExpress Summer Sale

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Josh
18. Červen 2024 v 13:29

Great price reduction for the new entry-level TECLAST P30T tablet, which features Android 14 and good wireless connectivity, thanks to its Wifi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4. This is ...

The post Teclast P30T a tablet that sinks its price in AliExpress Summer Sale first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

💾

Teclast T50HD an 11″ tablet with Android 14 now available

✇AndroidPCtv
Od: Kim
13. Červen 2024 v 15:01

New Thursday with the AliExpress Big Save Day, where today we find among its offers the new Teclast T50HD, a tablet with a good size screen with its ...

The post Teclast T50HD an 11″ tablet with Android 14 now available first appeared on AndroidPCtv.

With eight speakers, the Lenovo Tab Plus is basically a portable audio device that’s also an 11.5 inch Android tablet

✇Liliputing
Od: Brad Linder
20. Červen 2024 v 18:11

Most smartphones, tablets, and laptops have built-in speakers. And most of them aren’t great, because it’s difficult to cram a decent set of speakers into thin and light designs that are common these days. The speakers often feel like an afterthought. That’s not the case with the new Lenovo Tab Plus. Its eight built-in speakers are […]

The post With eight speakers, the Lenovo Tab Plus is basically a portable audio device that’s also an 11.5 inch Android tablet appeared first on Liliputing.

  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014Vegator
    Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsu
     
  • ↗️

Smartphone and tablet processor market share in 2014

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
7. Květen 2015 v 14:22
Strategy Analytics has published its yearly report detailing global smartphone application processor market share in 2014. The total market had sales of about $21 billion with robust growth of 21%. The report shows that Qualcomm continued to lead the market in terms of revenue share with 52%, followed by Apple with 18% and MediaTek with 14%. The Apple number most likely reflects an estimate because Apple does not sell its chips to third parties. In fourth and fifth place were Speadtrum and Samsung LSI. The report mentions that HiSilicon, Intel and MediaTek had bigger growth than Qualcomm in 2014.

Qualcomm's strength based on Snapdragon 800 series wins in higher-tier phones


According to the report, Qualcomm's leadership was largely based on design wins for its Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 805 SoCs in the higher-tier market. Examples of this include the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3. However, as I have previously reported Samsung has increased its use of in-house application processors starting from the second half of 2014, culminating in the exclusive use of Exynos 7420 in the Galaxy S6 in 2015, putting pressure on Qualcomm.

Baseband share in 2014


Strategy Analytics has also published a report with details about baseband (modem) market share in smartphones. According to the report, LTE (4G) basebands accounted for 50% of cellular baseband share in 2014, and the figure is likely to increase significantly in 2015. Qualcomm led in LTE basebands, but HiSilicon, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek and Samsung also increased LTE baseband shipments.

In terms of revenues in the overall baseband market, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Speadtrum, Marvell and Intel had the top positions in 2104. Qualcomm had 66% revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 17% and Speadtrum with 5% sare. Given the product lines of the respective companies in 2014, Qualcomm's revenues are based on both integrated SoC and separate modems, while Intel's sales were mostly separate modem chips, while the other players mostly shipped a mix of integrated SoCs and modem chips.

Comparison with 2013


Comparing with the reports that Strategy Analytics issued for 2013, Qualcomm saws it baseband revenue share remain relatively stable at 66% compared to 64% in 2013. MediaTek saw its AP market share increase from 10% in 2013 to 14% in 2014, and its baseband share increased.

Tablet processor market in 2014


According to another report issued by Strategy Analytics, the market for tablet processors grew 18% in 2014 to $4.2 billion. The top-five revenue share positions were occupied by Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung LSI. Apple led with 27% share (which must be an estimate), followed by Intel with 17% and Qualcomm with 16% share.

Notable is the absence among the top five of traditional leaders in the Chinese white-box market such as Rockchip and Allwinner. This most likely reflects in increase in brand name tablet shipments at the expense of the white-box tablet market, the low selling prices of white-box tablet processor and the encroachment of MediaTek and Intel into that segment.

Source: Strategy Analytics (Smartphone AP market share), Strategy Analytics (cellular baseband market share), Strategy Analytics (Tablet processor market share)

Qualcomm releases new variant of Snapdragon 410 that supports ARMv8, targeting tablets and other applications

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
19. Březen 2015 v 01:24
Qualcomm recently made announcements of products and reference designs based on the APQ8016 SoC, a new modem-less quad-core Cortex-A53-based SoC branded as Snapdragon 410. The chip is targeted at IoT applications, development boards and probably also Wi-Fi-only tablets, supporting Linux, Android and Windows 10. Although branded as Snapdragon 410, the chip is a new design that is likely to fix most of the performance deficiencies of the first-generation MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 SoC that has been targeted at smartphones. For example, the original Snapdragon 410 SoC appears not to support ARMv8 at all, while the new chip is clearly targeted at 64-bit platforms.

Development board released


Qualcomm recently announced the DragonBoard 410c, a development board with support for Linux and Android. It features a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 processor with Adreno 306 GPU, 533 MHZ LPDDR2/LPDDR3 SDRAM, HDMI output and several I/O interfaces. The HDMI output is limited to 30fps at 1080p.

The board is designed to compatible with the 96Boards initiative from Linaro, the non-profit engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

With 64-bit support and a maximum clock speed of 1.2 GHz, the APQ8016 SoC that is used on the board most likely uses a more recent version of the Cortex-A53 core than the original Snapdragon 410 processor for smartphones, while being manufactured using the same 28LP process at TSMC.

New SoC probably targets tablets as volume driver


There are indications that the new chip will be used in Wi-Fi-only tablets, such as recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab A series. There have also been indications that Qualcomm is stepping up its efforts to target Chinese tablet manufacturers.

Qualcomm and MediaTek support mainline Linux kernel with open-source drivers for selected SoCs


Whereas in the past major smartphone SoC companies kept their closed-source drivers separate from the open-source Linux community, more recently companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have started releasing open source contributions for the Linux kernel to support selected SoC products. Both companies have also recently joined Linaro, the engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture.

For both companies, the SoCs supported in the mainline Linux kernel are applications processors without an integrated modem. Qualcomm is supporting the APQ8016 mentioned above while MediaTek has contributed code for the MT8173 tablet processor.

Sources: Qualcomm (Dragonboard announcement), Qualcomm (Windows 10 IoT platform announcement), CNXSoft (DragonBoard 410c article)
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoCVegator
    ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core. Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016. However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced
     
  • ↗️

Early benchmarks appear for Cortex-A72-based SoC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
10. Březen 2015 v 00:01
ARM recently announced the new Cortex-A72 processor core, which is an improved version of the existing high-performance Cortex-A57 processor core.

Alongside the Cortex-A72 CPU core, ARM also announced the CCI-500 interconnect technology as well as the high-end Mali-T880 GPU. Devices incorporating the combination of these technologies are expected to become available in 2016.

However, SoCs using the Cortex-A72 CPU are likely to become available earlier. Qualcomm and MediaTek have both announced SoCs using the Cortex-A72 core with commercial availability in the second half of 2015, suggesting that the CPU core itself is at an advanced stage of introduction. Already, early benchmarks for MediaTek's MT8173 tablet SoC that incorporates the Cortex-A72 have become available.

Cortex-A72 appears to be enhanced version Cortex-A57 optimized for next-generation processes


In its announcement press release from 3 February 2015, ARM claims that more than ten partners have already licensed Cortex-A72, including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Rockchip. Cortex-A72 is based on ARM's ARMv8-A instruction set architecture, and can be combined with the existing Cortex-A53 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Cortex-A72 seems to be positioned as a replacement for Cortex-A57. The similarities with Cortex-A57 are very apparent, for example in the identically sized L1 instruction and data caches, and a feature set that is otherwise very similar.

On a 16 nm FinFET process, the core can sustain operation at speeds up to 2.5 GHz within the constraints of a mobile power envelope (e.g. smartphones), with scalability to higher speeds for larger form-factor devices. However, the first announced devices, such as MediaTek's MT8173, appear to use older processes such as the tried-and-trusted 28 nm HPM process at TSMC, so they are likely to have a lower maximum clock speed.

ARM claims increased performance and power efficiency, although these claims seem to be based on implementation on next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET that deliver a significant intrinsic improvement in these metrics. ARM mentions micro-architectural improvements that result in enhancements in floating point, integer and memory performance. When implemented on a 16 nm FinFET process, ARM expects Cortex-A57 to provide 85% higher performance when compared to the Cortex-A57 core on a 20 nm process within a similar smartphone power budget.

Overall, the differences with Cortex-A57 appear to be relatively minor, so that Cortex-A72 is best viewed as an enhanced version of Cortex-A57 that is optimized for next-generation processes such as 16 nm FinFET. Nevertheless, the first SoCs to use the Cortex-A72 core will be manufactured using a less advanced process.

Benchmarks appear for MediaTek's MT8173


MediaTek's MT8173 is a mid-range tablet processor mainly targeting Wi-Fi-only tablets, since it does not have an integrated modem. It has two Cortex-A72 cores and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. Probably manufactured using the established 28HPM process at TSMC, the maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A57 cores is likely to be lower that the target for 16 nm FinFET, although MediaTek claims a clock speed up to 2.4 GHz, while a much lower frequency is apparent in early benchmarks results.

The chip also features a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which delivers higher performance than the G6200 GPU used inside MediaTek's existing MT8135 and MT6795.

Recently, early benchmarks for a MT8173 development board have appeared both in the Geekbench Browser and in the results database of GFXBench. The first Geekbench results already appeared in December 2014. The latest set of Geekbench results date from the end of February 2015, although they do show a certain amount variation that may reflect thermal throttling.

Single-core performance good, but not spectacular


As expected, the Geekbench results show good single-core performance, albeit not spectacular. As shown in the following table, singe-core performance is in line with Cortex-A57-based SoCs such as Exynos 5433 and Exynos 7420. It should be noted that the MT8173 test SoC is most likely manufactured at 28 nm with a corresponding relatively low maximum CPU clock speed, while Exynos 5433 and 7420 are manufactured using smaller leading edge processes at Samsung.


SoC          "big" CPU                    Arch     JPEG (int)  Lua (int)   Mandelb. (fp)
                                                   Comp. IPC         IPC         IPC
MT8173       2 x 1.6? GHz Cortex-A72      AArch32  1310  2.13  1380  2.10  1064  1.95
Exynos 5433  4 x 1.80 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch32  1456  2.10  1397  1.89  1174  1.91
Exynos 7420  4 x 1.97 GHz Cortex-A57r1p0  AArch64  1481  1.97  1409  1.74  1198  1.92

In this table, to determine the IPC index I have made an educated guess about the actual clock speed of MT8173 when running the benchmarks. Geekbench reports a 1.40 GHz clock speed (which probably applies to the Cortex-A53 cores), 1.6 GHz seems to be a good match, providing just a little better IPC than Cortex-A57. Note that Exynos 7420 runs in AArch64 mode, which skews direct IPC comparisons.

Practical implications unclear


Without knowing the exact clock speed of the Cortex-A72 cores, it is hard to draw conclusions about the actual IPC improvement over Cortex-A57. If the MT8173 uses a 28 nm process, the ability to approach the single-core performance of Samsung's Exynos 7420 manufactured using 14 nm FinFET process is impressive. However, although MediaTek demonstrated the MT8173 in an actual tablet at MWC, it is unclear what kind of device the Alps development board in the benchmark entries actually represents, so it remains to be seen whether the benchmarks actually reflect the power budget of a tablet.

The multi-core performance reported is not very impressive, as expected because of the relatively small number of CPU cores. The JPEG Compress multi-core score shows CPU scaling factor of 2.72, which is good and implies utilization of the Cortex-A53 cores. The Mandelbrot floating point benchmark shows similar scaling.

However, the Lua integer benchmark has a very low multi-core scaling factor of 1.41, which is lower than expected, even when allowing for the limited number of cores. For example, MediaTek's MT6795 achieves multi-core scaling of 7.5 in this benchmark, and the Exynos chips range from 3.9 to 5.0. Other chips with a low multi-core scaling factor for Geekbench's Lua subtest include Snapdragon 810 (Cortex-A57-based), MediaTek's MT6595 (Cortex-A17-based) and NVIDIA's Denver-based Tegra-K1 SoC. There are indications that this benchmark test heavily depends on on-chip cache (primarily L2 cache) size and speed.

GPU performance of MT8173's PowerVR GX6250 GPU improves on G6200


The MT8173 test device's GPU performance as shown in GFXBench results database is not overly impressive, but suitable for a mid-range chip and an improvement over the PowerVR G6200 GPU used in other MediaTek SoCs such as MT6595 and MT6795. In the T-Rex Offscreen benchmark, the MT8173 registers a score of 1487, higher than the 1311 of the MT6595 (G6200)-equipped Meizu MX4. In the GFXBench 3.0 low-level tests, alpha blending scores higher than the MT6595 while the other low-level scores are comparable.

Sources: ARM (Cortex-A57 announcement press release), AnandTech (MediaTek MT8173 article), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Geekbench Browser (MT8173 test device results), GFXBench (MT8173 test device result)

Updated 10 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • China tablet processor market declines in Q1Vegator
    According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for th
     
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China tablet processor market declines in Q1

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
6. Březen 2015 v 10:08
According to a recent article published by DigiTimes Research, tablet applications processor unit shipments to Chinese manufacturers grew by 4.7% in Q4 2014 to reach 34.7 million units. However, shipments are estimated to decline by 24% in Q1 2015 when compared to Q4 2104. Year-over-year, shipments are expected to drop by about 8%, which marks the first time quarterly tablet processor shipments in China experience a year-over-year decline. Excess inventory from Q4 2014 is given as a cause for the decline in shipments.

MediaTek leads Chinese tablet market in Q1 2015


Based on information published by DigiTimes Research, MediaTek, Rockchip, Allwinner and Intel were the top four providers of tablet processors in China, in that order, in Q4 2014. For Q1 2015, MediaTek is estimated to expand it market share by about 1% to reach 28.5%, although absolute shipments will decline significantly due to the overall market decline.

Rockchip, who was the market share leader for most of 2014, is estimated to see its market share remain stable in Q1 2015, registering a 0.6% increase according to DigiTimes Research, who did not supply a market share figure for Rockchip, although it is probably in the region of 25%. DigiTimes mentioned that Rockchip's new chips launched at the end of 2014 (which includes the Cortex-A7-based RK3126 and RK3128) have not yet reached strong shipments.

Meanwhile, Allwinner continues the trend of a steady decline a market share, being expected to have a share of 15.6% compared to 17.6% in Q4 2014. This allows it to be passed by Intel in terms of market share, with Intel's market share estimated to rise from 15% to 16.3% in Q1 2015.

Intel's global market share has increased and is significant, especially revenue share


It should be noted that in terms of global market share, Intel has a stronger position than what would be inferred just from the Chinese market due to a strong position at brand-name tablet manufacturers outside of China, such as Asus and Acer. The other chip players in the Chinese tablet processor market, especially Rockchip and Allwinner, have a weak position outside of China. Due to the higher-end nature of Intel's product mix, Intel also has a higher revenue share, whereas the sales of companies such as Allwinner are mostly concentrated in low-end processors. It has been reported that Intel is abandoning its "contra-revenue" strategy of subsidizing tablet processor sales, which it probably can afford to do because its chip solutions are fairly competitive on their own.

Global brand names gain share, use different chip suppliers


In the global tablet marker, brand name manufacturers are gaining share and dominate the dollar value of the market, also for semiconductor content. Apple and Samsung, who lead the global tablet market, use a lot of in-house chip solutions (100% in the case of Apple). Samsung also uses suppliers like Qualcomm and Marvell, who otherwise do not have a strong position in the Chinese tablet market.

MediaTek used to have strong market share among Taiwanese tablet manufacturers such as Asus and Acer. However, its market share their seems to have been eroded significantly by strong adoption of Intel's Atom SoCs at these manufacturers (who have strong ties with Intel through PC manufacturing).

Popular tablet SoCs as of Q1 2015


By analyzing the tablet models offered on Chinese e-commerce portals, one can get some idea of what SoCs are currently used the most in tablets from China. I took a look at the tablet offerings on Banggood.com.

Rockchip's RK3188 (which probably means the RK3188T variant in most cases) is still widely used. Originally a mid-range performance segment SoC, there are indications that Rockchip built a significant inventory of this SoC (which is not particularly cheap in terms of manufactuing cost) last year, and the chip has been used in cheaper models as well. Rockchip's RK3126, which is more cost-effective than RK3188, is slowly starting to appear in new tablet models.

Meanwhile, Rockchip's high-end RK3288 is used in several models from Pipo, Teclast and FNF, and these seem to be reasonably popular for a high-end product. I have some concerns about power consumption and battery life regarding these products due to the processor cores used in the SoC.

The most popular MediaTek chips used in tablets are SoCs with 3G connectivity such as the low-end dual-core MT8312 and quad-core MT8382 (the equivalent of the MT6572 and MT6582 smartphone SoCs), as well as the more performance oriented octa-core MT6592/MT8392, which provides good performance and battery-life and has moved down to lower-priced tablet models. Additionally, the new 64-bit MT8752 with 4G (equivalent to the MT6752 smartphone SoC) is starting to appear in new models (Cube, Teclast). For WiFi-only tablets, the MT8127 (which has a relatively powerful GPU for a cheap SoC) is used in some low-to-mid-range tablets.

Allwinner's A31s, which was released in 2013 but perhaps its last successful product introduction, appears to be still used for production. Low-end tablets are available with the A23 and A33 SoCs, although the A33 does not seem to have been very successful and has been affected by weakness in the low-end segment of the tablet market.

Allwinner's new octa-core A83T has started to appear in a few new models, and is probably replacing the high-end A80 Octa which is likely to have had low profit margins.

Finally, Intel's Z3735F, Z3735G and Z3736F Atom SoCs are widely used in tablets, although most prominently in higher-prices models that come equipped with Microsoft Windows.

Update (15 March): 3G smartphone chip inventory unloaded onto Chinese tablet market


In an article published on 13 March 2015, DigiTimes Research reported that due to a high inventory level of 3G smartphone solutions in China, such chips will be unloaded onto the Chinese tablet market by players such as MediaTek, Qualcomm and Spreadtrum.

3G-enabled chip solutions for tablets are usually very similar to similar solutions for smartphones. For example, MediaTek's smartphone solutions have commonly been used in tablets, while MediaTek's official 3G-enabled tablet solutions most likely consist of a chip virtually identical to the smartphone version, with the main difference being a different model number (e.g. MT6582 vs MT8382). That MediaTek would target any excess inventory of 3G smartphone chipsets at the tablet market is not surprising.

However, I am little sceptical about the volume that may be involved. The Chinese tablet market is clearly contracting in the near term, and the volumes in the tablet market are considerably smaller than the smartphone market, even the declining 3G part of the smartphone SoC market. To put things into perspective, MediaTek's quarterly 3G smartphone chip shipments were on the order of 70 million in Q4 2014, while its 3G tablet chip shipments were probably in the range of 5 to 10 million.

The article also mentions Qualcomm, which in the past has not been a major player in the Chinese white-box tablet market. It mentions rumours that Qualcomm may form a partnership with Allwinner (which has been consistently losing market share) to penetrate the tablet market in China. The article also states that while Intel has introduced 3G tablet solutions, Intel's solutions are unlikely to be widely adopted until Intel introduces the 4G version of its Atom x3 (formerly SoFIA) platform.

Sources: DigiTimes (Q1 2015 China tablet AP market article),  DigiTimes Research (smartphone chips inventory unloaded to tablet market)

Updated 15 March 2015.
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • New mobile SoCs announced at MWCVegator
    At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced. MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets. The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, accord
     
  • ↗️

New mobile SoCs announced at MWC

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
2. Březen 2015 v 11:41
At the Mobile World Congress this week, several new mobile SoCs are being announced.

MediaTek announces cost-reduced MT6753 for smartphones


MediaTek anounced two mobile SoCs, the MT6753 for smartphones and the MT8173 for tablets.

The MT6753 appears to be a cost-reduced version of the successful MT6752, equpped with "WorldMode" modem technology. By offering compatibility with the CDMA2000 standard, it gives customers worldwide greater diversity and flexibility in their product layouts, according to MediaTek. Features include an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU up to 1.5 GHz and a Mali-T720 GPU with an unspecified number of cores. ARM's Mali-T720 GPU is positioned at a significantly lower performance bracket than the Mali-T760 used in the MT6752, positioning the MT6753 below the MT6752 in terms of cost and performance.

The MT6753 is described as being compatible with the previously announced MT6735 for entry-level smartphones. The MT6735 has four Cortex-A53 cores instead of eight but otherwise has a similar configuration with a Mali T720 GPU.

High-performance MT8173 tablet SoC uses small big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A72


The MT8173 is a high-performance tablet processor (without integrated modem) that utilizes ARM's new Cortex-A72 core in a big.LITTLE configuration. By using only two Cortex-A72 cores (clocked up to 2.4 GHz) as well as two Cortex-A53 cores, the chip has a lower cost than would be the case with the four-by-four core configuration commonly used for big.LITTLE designs, while still providing good performance.

The Cortex-A72 core, the successor of Cortex-A57, appears to be seeing quick adoption as Qualcomm has already announced performance-segment smartphone SoCs (Snapdragon 618 and 620) featuring the core.

MediaTek has previously used a similar two-by-two big.LITTLE configuration in its MT8135(V) tablet SoC, which has two Cortex-A15 cores and Cortex-A7 cores. This chip was used in Amazon tablets but otherwise did not see much adoption.

Other features include a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, which is part of Imagination's Series 6XT family, with higher performance and efficiency than the G6200 GPU used in chips such as the MT8135 and MT6595.

Other tablet SoCs not yet publicly announced by MediaTek


Meanwhile, tablet product announcements by Lenovo also refer to the MT8161 and MT8165 SoCs, which have not been announced. From the specifications of the Lenovo Tab 2 A8 which is using it, the MT8161 appears to be a tablet SoC without modem with quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU running up to 1.3 GHz, while the MT8165 (used in the Tab 2 A10) is a similar SoC with the CPU running up to 1.5 GHz. The 4G version of the Lenovo tablets come equipped with the MT8735 (Tab 2 A8) and MT8732 (Tab 2 A10). These chips are the tablet versions of the MT6735 and MT6732 smartphone SoCs.

MT6795 renamed to Helio X10


In a closed-door presentation at MWC, MediaTek also presented the Helio X10 smartphone SoC, featuring a 64-bit octa-core CPU up to 2.2 GHz, 120 Hz display refresh rate and H.265 video encode up to 4K2K @ 30 fps. A photograph of a slide taken at the presentation strongly suggests that Helio X10 is nothing other than the delayed MT6795 SoC, whose specifications closely match. Devices using this chip are likely to have already started production. MediaTek also talked about the Helio P series, a high-performance platform, which will make its way into devices before the end of the year.

Qualcomm gives preview of next-generation Snapdragon 820 SoC


In a press release, Qualcomm has given a preview of the Snapdragon 820, which utilizes Qualcomm's new custom 64-bit CPU architecture for mobile devices called Kryo. The chip will start sampling in the second half of 2015 according to Qualcomm, with devices becoming available in 2016. It will be manufactured on a next-generation FinFET process (which probably means TSMC's 16FF+, but Samsung cannot be excluded). In the press release, Qualcomm does not mention whether the chip will conform to ARM's ARMv8 instruction set architecture.

In conjuction with the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm also announced the Zeroth hardware/software platform focusing on device intelligence features including video and audio recognition techniques (such as visual object and face recognition).

Intel introduces tablet and smartphone SoCs with integrated modem


Intel has finally introduced SoCs with an integrated cellular modem in its Atom system-on-a-chip product line. The former SoFIA platform has been renamed to Atom X3 and features multi-core 64-bit Atom processors with integrated 3G or 4G LTE modem technology. The following products are available:
  • Atom X3-C3130, which has dual-core Atom CPU running up to 1.0 GHz and integrates a 3G modem. It features Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Maximum display resolution is 1280x800. It appears to be in the same market segment as MediaTek's previous-generation 3G SoCs such as MT6572 and MT6582 and other SoCs that are already on the market.
  • Atom X3-C3230RK, which was developed by Intel partner Rockchip following the agreement announced last year. It has quad-core Atom CPU, integrates a 3G modem and features a Mali-450 MP4 GPU.
  • Atom X3-C3440, a quad-core Atom CPU platform that integrates a Cat 6 LTE 4G modem. It has an Mali-T720 MP2 GPU. This product appears to be one that is most likely to succeed in the market.
All feature a 32-bit memory interface with support for LPDDR2 (and DDR3/DDR3L with the X3-C3230RK). These are the first Intel products that have features (such as the integrated modem) that make them specifically suitable for the smartphone market. They also target cellular-enabled tablets.

The 3G products are a little behind the times, and their success is uncertain. It will be interesting observe whether Rockchip was able to develop the X3-C3230RK in time (one would expect Intel to have greater expertise/resources so that the other products will appear on the market first).

One notable fact is that these are among the first SoCs to integrate an ARM GPU core with a non-ARM CPU.

Intel announces first 14 nm Atom SoCs for tablets and all-in-ones


Intel also rolled out its first 14 nm Atom SoCs, the Atom x5 and x7 processor series (formely codenamed Cherry Trail) with  Intel Gen 8 graphics, targeting tablets and small screen all-in-ones.

Intel has also introduced a new stand-alone modem chip, XMM 7360, which support LTE Cat 10 and download speeds up to 450 Mbps, as well as wireless connnectivity products (including WiFi/Bluetooth, GNSS/GPS and NFC solutions).

Sources: MediaTek (MT6753 announcement), MediaTek (MT8173 announcement), Qualcomm (Snapdragon 820/Zeroth platform preview), Intel (MWC announcements), Intel Atom x3 Processor Series Brief
  • ✇Mobile semiconductors blog
  • Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC marketVegator
    Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015. Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not se
     
  • ↗️

Qualcomm and MediaTek see challenges in smartphone SoC market

✇Mobile semiconductors blog
Od: Vegator
17. Únor 2015 v 08:46
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter of Q4 2014 and made projections for future periods. Both companies are seeing challenges that are already affecting their revenues and market share now or later in 2015.

Qualcomm lowers forecast for 2015 due to weakness at major customer


In their financial report for Q4 2014, Qualcomm lowered their outlook for 2015, citing as one of the reasons reduced demand from a major customer as that customer has not selected the Snapdragon 810 processor for an upcoming flagship product. This is widely believed to refer to Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6. In fact the trend of increasing use of in-house Exynos processors already started last year, as models such as Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy S5 Mini and Galaxy Note 4 already saw increasing use of Samsung's own Exynos processors, including modem technology in some cases.

Qualcomm also mentions a share shift among major OEMs that will result in relatively more modem chips as opposed to SoCs (clearly referring to Apple, which only uses Qualcom's modem chips), as well as heightened competition in China. Recently, Qualcomm also recently announced a resolution of the anti-trust investigation by authorities in China, which amounts to a reduction in the patent royalty rate it charges to customers in China.

Qualcomm's total market share currently still strong


At the moment, Qualcomm's market share for smartphone SoCs is still strong as shown by unit shipments and revenues for Q4 2014 and Qualcomm's estimates for Q1 2015, although its product mix has shifted to lower-end products. In comparison to competitor MediaTek, Qualcomm is doing much better in terms of maintaining or growing unit shipments (with Qualcomm in fact seeing a 14% increase in unit shipments in Q4 2014), suggesting that Qualcomm is taking market share from MediaTek as products such as Snapdragon 410 and the new Snapdragon 210 take over large parts of the low-end cost-sensitive market (especially in China) where MediaTek's 3G solutions where previously dominant.

MediaTek losing market share despite successful new products


Meanwhile, although MediaTek has seen widespread adoption of its new MT6752 and MT6732 SoCs with integrated LTE modem for the cost-sensitive mid-range market, the company saw lower unit shipments in Q4 2014 and predicts a 10 to 18% revenue decline for Q1 2015, suggesting its smartphone SoC shipments are under pressure. Given the fact that the new 4G chips have higher selling prices than existing 3G chips, the revenue decline probably reflects a relatively dramatic decline in shipments of existing 3G solutions, with resulting loss of total market share, although price reductions may also play a role. MediaTek has been affected especially by the late introduction of integrated 4G solutions and the lack of a low-end 4G solution and to a lesser extend the delayed introduction of the high-end MT6795.

Captive mobile SoC use becoming more important


Within the total smartphone SoC market (and also in the tablet maket), captive supply (whereby a smartphone manufacturer uses its own SoCs in its smartphone models) is becoming more important, which affects the market opportunity for companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek. I already mentioned Samsung's increasing use of Exynos processors, which has a significant impact as Samsung is one of the two largest smartphone manufacturers. A major Chinese manufacturr, Huawei, is also increasingly using SoCs from its own HiSilicon division, also extending to lower end models. Apple's gains in market share also has an effect (especially on the high-end market) since it uses proprietary SoCs.

In the tablet market, the low-end and Chinese white-box market is seeing a sharp reduction in shipments in Q1 2015, with market share shifting to brand names (where captive solutions are more important, such as at Samsung) as total shipments are estimated to decline dramatically. This greatly affects traditional players in the tablet SoC market such as Rockchip, Allwinner and MediaTek. Intel's strategy of subsidizing tablet SoCs has also had an impact. According to DigiTimes, the total tablet market will decline 30% sequentially in Q1 2015, with estimates of a decline of 12% for the whole year 2015.


Sources: DigiTimes (tablet market article), DigiTimes (MediaTek results), Qualcomm, MediaTek

  • ✇- SamMobile
  • Galaxy Tab A9+ finally gets One UI 6.1 updateAbid Iqbal Shaik
    Usually, Samsung rolls out a new software update to all the devices in a series together. However, that was not the case with the last software update to the Galaxy Tab A9 series. Last week, the company released One UI 6.1 to the Galaxy Tab A9 but not the Galaxy Tab A9+. Well, the tech giant is now rolling out One UI 6.1 to the Galaxy Tab A9+ as well. One UI 6.1 brings many new features to the Galaxy Tab A9+. You can check out all the features it offers in our article dedicated to the topic or i
     
  • ↗️

Galaxy Tab A9+ finally gets One UI 6.1 update

✇- SamMobile
Od: Abid Iqbal Shaik
10. Červen 2024 v 18:03

Usually, Samsung rolls out a new software update to all the devices in a series together. However, that was not the case with the last software update to the Galaxy Tab A9 series. Last week, the company released One UI 6.1 to the Galaxy Tab A9 but not the Galaxy Tab A9+. Well, the tech giant is now rolling out One UI 6.1 to the Galaxy Tab A9+ as well.

One UI 6.1 brings many new features to the Galaxy Tab A9+. You can check out all the features it offers in our article dedicated to the topic or in our video below. To give you a quick rundown, it brings additional options to customize the user interface, including wallpapers, edit images and videos in the Gallery app, share files with Galaxy phones and tablets and other Android devices, protect your data in the tablet and the device’s battery, check the weather, multitask, and type.

Currently, Samsung is rolling out One UI 6.1 to the international variant of the Galaxy Tab A9+, which carries the model number SM-X216B, in many regions around the globe, including Europe and India. The new software update has firmware version X216BXXU2CXF1. Along with the new software, the update also brings the May 2024 security patch to the Galaxy Tab A9+. It fixes 45 security issues. To get the update, go to Settings » Software update » Download and install.

The post Galaxy Tab A9+ finally gets One UI 6.1 update appeared first on SamMobile.

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