Tag: chip

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with new camera, gaming and audio features

At Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit, the company unveiled its latest chipset technology, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. This new chip will be available in new flagship Android devices throughout the year, including Canada’s version of Samsung’s S23 series.

However, Qualcomm is working with companies like Asus, Motorola, OnePlus and ZTE, so the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be featured in several more devices by the end of the year.

Qualcomm says that Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s upgraded Hexagon Processor offers its most advanced Qualcomm AI Engine ever, with features like multi-language translation and transcription, advanced AI Cinematic video and its Sensing Hub, which offers dual-AI processors for the first time, with new experiences like direct-to-app voice assistance to control your favourite apps. Further, you should expect 4.35x faster AI performance and Micro Tile Inferencing.

With the 8 Gen 2, you should expect better camera performance in devices sporting the chip. The 8 Gen 2 is also compatible with 200-megapixel photo capture, which is rumoured to be coming to the upcoming S23 Ultra. Further, expect 8K HDR video capture in 10-bit HDR.

This is also the first Snapdragon platform with AI-powred Always Sensing Camera. The Always-Sensing Camera offers features like allowing the camera to scan QR codes with the phone being turned off, and a new privacy option which kills notifications if it notices a secondary person looking at your phone. Qualcomm says this Always-Sensing Camera technology is entirely on-device and in its Sensing Hub. The company also added a second AI processor to the chip that increased AI performance by 2x and features 50 percent more memory.

Away from the camera, the Sensing Hub will also support experiences that enable custom wake words, and additional features from the Qualcomm AI Stack, including AI Studio, to allow developers to create even better next-gen AI apps.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports Unreal Engine 5 and Metahuman framework for realistic human characters. It also features Vulkan 1.3 API that supports Ray Tracing. With its Ray Tracing capabilities, the 8 Gen 2 can bring lifelike lighting effects like shadows, reflections and illumination to your games. The Adreno GPU offers up to 25 percent faster performance with up to 45 percent better power efficiency. Kryo CPU improves performance by up to 35 percent, while new micro-architecture allows up to 40 percent more power efficiency.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also brings HDR Vivid, a China-based standard in addition to HDR 10, HDR 10+ and Dolby Vision.

The 8 Gen 2 sports Snapdragon X70 5G Modem RF System, the world’s first and only mobile platform with a dedicated 5G AI processor. Additionally, it works with Wi-Fi 7 due to its Fast Connect 7800 Mobile Connectivity System. Also, expect blazing speeds of up to 5.8Gbps, which is more than double than Wi-Fi 6. It features 5G Dual-SIM Dual-Active, which lets you simultaneously use two 5G SIM cards, alongside enhanced Face Unlock for its security.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 supports spatial audio with dynamic head tracking for ultra-immersive gaming and multimedia experiences. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports 48kHz lossless music streaming technology and the lowest-ever latency at 48ms for better gaming.

Image credit: Qualcomm

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Next year’s Pro iPhones will get A17, non-Pro models will get older chips

The new iPhones aren’t even generally available to the public yet, and already details about the iPhone 15 have started to emerge. According to a new report, the iPhone 15 Pro devices will feature an A17 chip made by TSMC, while the non-Pro models will once again get an older chip.

According to Nikkei Asia (via 9to5Mac), the A17 chip will use TSMC’s second-gen 3nm process (dubbed N3E), which is expected to be available in the second half of next year. Currently, the A17 processor is under development. The report also suggests that some M-series chips will take advantage of the smaller 3nm process too.

Nikkei cites people “familiar with the matter” as the source of the information. Specifically, it notes that the A17 will be used in the “premium entry in the iPhone lineup slated for release in 2023,” which will likely be called the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.

The report should hardly come as a surprise, however. Apple’s new iPhone 14 line was the first to differentiate between Pro and non-Pro by only giving the Pro iPhones the latest chip. The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max sport Apple’s A16 Bionic chip, while the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus feature last year’s A15 Bionic chip with an extra GPU core.

Presumably, the non-Pro iPhone 15 models will use the A16 and not the A15 again, but it remains to be seen.

Apple’s efforts to differentiate the Pro and non-Pro iPhone models are likely an attempt to drive sales of the more expensive Pro models. For several years now, the non-Pro iPhone models have arguably been the best option in terms of value — the latest and greatest hardware for less money, with the Pro models really only offering slightly better screens and better cameras. However, by reusing older chips in the lower-priced models, the value argument isn’t as strong. Plus, it’s hard to argue an iPhone 13 owner should get a 14 when there’s practically no difference between the devices.

Source: Nikkei Asia Via: 9to5Mac

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Apple will reserve new A-series chips for high-end Pro iPhones: report

Over the last few months, several rumours and reports said Apple would include a more powerful A16 chipset exclusively in the upcoming high-end iPhones — presumably called iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.

The lower-cost iPhone 14 and 14 Max (a rumoured new, 6.7-inch screen iPhone set to replace the less popular iPhone mini) would still use the A15 chip currently available in the iPhone 13 line.

Initially, the rumours suggested the change was because of ongoing chip shortages, but now reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims Apple will continue the tiered chip strategy going forward. In a blog post, Kuo wrote:

“The latest processor chip will be exclusive to iPhone high-end models in the future, so a high shipment proportion of iPhone high-end models will be the norm, favoring high-end camera component suppliers.”

Kuo goes on to explain that the shift towards tiered chips in iPhones will likely push sales of the high-end models, which have the new chipset. Kuo expects the high-end iPhone 14 Pro models to account for roughly 55 to 60 percent of shipments in 2022 compared to the roughly 40 to 50 percent split seen with previous models.

The change marks a significant departure from how Apple has handled iPhones for years. New iPhone models almost always include the same chip, meaning customers could get similar levels of performance whether they bought the cheapest option or the most expensive. Typically, differentiating factors included display and camera hardware. With this change, the iPhone would follow a similar hardware model to Apple’s iPad and Mac lines with lower-cost options using older or slower chips.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out with customers in the long run. Those who purchase the lower-end iPhone models will likely have less incentive to upgrade. For example, iPhone 13 and 13 mini owners will likely have little or no reason to upgrade to the iPhone 14 if it uses the same A15 chip. Sure, the change could push upgrades from the iPhone 13 series to the iPhone 14 Pro line, but typically those buying the non-Pro iPhones don’t need the extra features.

Regardless, we won’t know exactly what Apple has planned until the company unveils its new iPhones in September. Kuo is typically reliable, but as with any rumour like this, it’s important to maintain a healthy level of skepticism.

Source: Kuo Via: 9to5Mac

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Samsung starts production on 3nm chips, boasts performance gains over 5nm

Samsung announced that it started producing 3nm chips, beating rival TSMC to the punch.

TSMC, which makes chips for Apple devices like the iPhone and Mac, leads the market in contract chip production. However, the company isn’t expected to start mass-producing 3nm chips until the second half of 2022.

Samsung, however, unveiled its 3nm fabrication process in a press release. According to the South Korean company, its new 3nm process is 45 percent more power-efficient than its previous 5nm process. Moreover, the 3nm process offers a 23 percent performance gain and uses 16 percent less surface area.

Going forward, Samsung hopes to further push 3nm by reducing power consumption and size by 50 percent and 35 percent, respectively, in its second generation of the process. The company also plans for second-gen 3nm to increase performance by 30 percent.

Initially, Samsung will produce 3nm chips for “high performance, low power computing” and eventually plans to bring 3nm to mobile.

Samsung’s facility in Hwaseong, South Korea, will produce 3nm chips to start, followed by the Pyeongtaek facility. Samsung could eventually produce 3nm chips at its Texas chip plant, but the facility won’t start mass manufacturing until 2024.

Header image credit: Samsung

Source: Samsung Via: Bloomberg, The Verge

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Report shows Pixel 6, 6 Pro carved out a tiny spot for Tensor in global chip market

Source: https://blog.google/products/pixel/google-tensor-debuts-new-pixel-6-fall/

Google’s 2021 flagships, the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, brought a lot of new and interesting things. Chief among them was Google’s Tensor chip, which has surprisingly carved out a tiny space in the market.

Despite only being available in two phones, which themselves are only sold in about a dozen countries worldwide, it appears Tensor nabbed a tiny 1 or 2 percent space at the high-end of the Android phone chipset market.

Counterpoint Research recently published a breakdown of the global Android chipset market. Unsurprisingly, it shows Qualcomm and Samsung dominating the high-end and premium segments. Qualcomm also holds the majority of the mid-to-high end market, with MediaTek covering the majority of the lower end.

Moreover, the report looks at 2021. That means for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro’s impact only came in the last two months’ worth of data included in the chart. So, while Tensor’s impact is small, it’s still impressive considering the timeline.

If Google continues to pump out impressive Pixel devices sporting Tensor chips, in a couple of years we could Google make a larger impact on the global chip market.

Judging by the rumours, Google’s upcoming Pixel 6a will use Tensor, so Google could soon make an impact in the lower end of the chart too.

Source: Counterpoint Research Via: 9to5Google

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Apple unveils new ‘monster’ M1 Ultra chip

Apple announced its latest chip during its ‘Peek Performance’ event on March 8th: the M1 Ultra chip.

In short, the new chipset uses Apple’s ‘UltraFusion’ architecture to connect two M1 Max chips to boost performance. Apple claims UltraFusion offers four times more bandwidth than other leading chip interconnect technologies.

The M1 Ultra appears as one chip to software despite effectively being two separate chips.

M1 Ultra also supports up to 128GB of RAM, has a 20-core CPU with 16 high-performance and four high-efficiency cores, plus a 64-core GPU. Apple says M1 Ultra is nearly eight times faster than Apple’s M1 chip.

Moreover, Apple claims that M1 Ultra delivers higher performance than leading 16-core PC desktop chips while using significantly less power. The company claims Ultra used 1/3rd the power of the leader “popular discrete GPU,” although Apple didn’t specify what that GPU was.

Apple also boasted about the tight integration between its M1 silicon and macOS, which brings performance and security benefits.

More to come…

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Samsung unveils Exynos 2200 chip with Xclipse graphics based on AMD RDNA 2

Source: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/exynos/products/mobileprocessor/exynos-2200/

Samsung announced its latest mobile processor, the Exynos 2200, sporting a new graphics processing unit (GPU) using AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture dubbed ‘Xclipse.’

Samsung has teased plans to include AMD graphics tech in its mobile chips for a while now, and in June 2021 announced that its upcoming Exynos chip would offer ray-tracing capabilities. The Exynos 2200 delivers on that promise with hardware-accelerated ray tracing in Xclipse.

Ray tracing, for those unfamiliar with the tech, attempts to simulate how light physically behaves. In video games, ray tracing can help produce more realistic-looking lighting effects, including light that can bounce off reflective surfaces. However, so far ray tracing has proven to be difficult for GPUs to handle and often brings a significant performance hit compared to other lighting solutions.

Still, it’s impressive to see the technology come to mobile chips. It’ll be interesting to see how well it works in practice. Moreover, Samsung shared this surprisingly weird video touting the capabilities of the Exynos 2200 GPU:

Aside from the benefits of AMD RDNA 2 and ray tracing in Xclipse, the Exynos 2200 chip sports other benefits. Samsung says the chip uses a 4nm extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) process and is one of the first in the mark to integrate Arm’s latest ARMv9 CPU cores. The ARMv9 cores offer a significant improvement over ARMv8 in both performance and security.

Specifically, the octa-core Exynos 2200 sports a tri-cluster structure with a single ARM Cortex-X2 core, three performance and efficiency balanced Cortex-A710 ‘big cores’ and four power-efficient Cortex-A510 ‘little cores.’

Exynos 2200 also support powerful on-device artificial intelligence (AI) thanks to an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU) and both sub-6 and mmWave 5G through an improved modem.

Finally, Samsung touted the chip’s image signal processor (ISP), which has a redesigned architecture that supports resolutions of up to 200 megapixels. When recording video at 30fps, the ISP supports up to 108 megapixels in single camera mode and 64+36 megapixels in dual camera mode. The ISP can connect up to seven individual image sensors and drive four sensors simultaneously for multi-camera set-ups. The ISP also supports up to 4K HDR or 8K recording.

While the Exynos 2200 certainly sounds impressive, Canadians might not get to try it out. Samsung typically launches its flagship phones in Canada with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips instead of its own Exynos (usually, Exynos chips power Samsung devices outside of North America). Of course, we won’t know for certain until devices rocking the Exynos 2200 release — for now, though, it’s probably safe to assume we won’t get those devices in Canada.

Those interested in learning more about the Exynos 2200 can check out all the details on Samsung’s website.

Image credit: Samsung

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Apple’s rumoured AR glasses to use M1-based chip, arrive at end of 2022

Apple’s long-rumoured augmented reality (AR) glasses will be as powerful as its Mac computers when they reportedly launch at the end of 2022.

The prediction comes from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a decent track record when it comes to predicting future Apple products and features. Kuo shared the AR glasses prediction in a note sent to investors Friday (via CNBC).

However, the prediction shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Apple’s been moving towards using its own silicon across basically all of its products. The iPhone and iPad use A-series chips designed by Apple, and more recently the company transitioned its Mac line from Intel’s x86 CPUs to Apple-designed M-series ARM chips.

Specifically, Kuo noted that Apple’s glasses would run on a processor based on the M1. Apple’s M1 chip impressed with its excellent performance and low power consumption. The latter would be a major benefit in something like AR glasses where size and weight are significant factors (more efficiency means Apple could shrink the batteries and thus get a smaller, lighter product).

At the same time, the high performance of an M1-based chip could help set Apple’s glasses apart from competitors by allowing the glasses to perform intensive tasks without needing to offload work to a connected smartphone.

That doesn’t mean the Apple AR glasses won’t need a connected phone — previous reports say that the glasses will require a connected iPhone. However, that connection will likely be something more like the Apple Watch, which uses its connection to the iPhone to share data rather than processing.

Kuo backed that up, writing that Apple would position the glasses as an accessory for the iPhone, not a replacement.

Augmented reality refers to technology used to overlay digital images and information over the real world. Tech enthusiasts have looked to smart glasses as the main avenue to deliver AR experiences, although many smartphones now have built-in AR capabilities. Should Apple’s glasses prove successful, it could push the market forward and encourage other companies to release their own versions of AR glasses.

Source: CNBC

Categories
Mobile Syrup

MediaTek fixed chip flaws that could allow apps to eavesdrop on users

Vulnerabilities in the artificial intelligence (AI) and audio processing components of recent MediaTek chips could have allowed eavesdropping on device owners. However, the flaw was reportedly never exploited in the wild.

MediaTek has fixed the vulnerabilities as of October, according to Check Point Research (via Android Police). While resolved, the vulnerabilities were quite serious and impacted a wide range of devices. As of Q2 2021, MediaTek powered about 43 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, making it the number one phone chip manufacturer by volume.

Although a list of impacted devices and/or chipsets wasn’t made available, Android Police reports that it sounds like the vulnerabilities affected modern MediaTek Dimensity chips and other MediaTek chips that use the ‘Tensilica’ APU platform.

In total, Check Point found four vulnerabilities that, when exploited together, could allow an app to pass commands to the audio interface. In other words, a malicious app could interact with the audio interface in ways that it shouldn’t be able to do and, in some cases, could even hide malicious code in the audio chip itself.

Researchers claim that malicious apps could have eavesdropped on customers using the vulnerability. Worse, device manufacturers could have used to create an eavesdropping campaign. However, the vulnerabilities weren’t caught being exploited in the wild.

In a statement to Android Police, MediaTek said:

“Regarding the Audio DSP vulnerability disclosed by Check Point, we worked diligently to validate the issue and make appropriate mitigations available to all OEMs. We have no evidence it is currently being exploited. We encourage end users to update their devices as patches become available and to only install applications from trusted locations such as the Google Play Store.”

If your phone has a MediaTek chip in it, you should make sure to install the latest security updates if you haven’t already.

Source: Check Point Research Via: Android Police

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Apple unveils new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips for its pro MacBooks

Apple unveiled highly anticipated new MacBooks at its ‘Unleashed’ event on October 18th. One of the key components behind the new computers is the company’s new, more powerful M1 chips.

Dubbed the ‘M1 Pro,’ the first new chip scales up the M1 architecture with support for up to 32GB of memory at three times faster speed than M1. Additionally, M1 Pro boasts two times more transistors than M1 and is available in up to 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU versions.

Overall, the new M1 Pro boasts two times faster graphics performance than M1 and can handle two streams of 4K video at once through the new ‘Display Engine’ for handling output to multiple displays.

Along with the new M1 Pro, Apple unveiled the M1 Max chip, boasting an insane two times performance uplift over the M1 Pro and six times uplift over the M1.

M1 Max can support up to 64GB of unified memory, boasts a 32-core CPU and two times faster video encoding. Apple says the M1 Max supports output to up to four external displays. In typical Apple fashion, the company also showed off several charts comparing performance between M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max compared to PCs.

The charts are somewhat vague, but showcase the company’s bold claims. For example, Apple claims the M1 Pro and Max chips boast 1.7x more performance than an “8-core PC laptop chip” while using significantly less power. Similarly, Apple claims the GPU in the M1 Pro offers similar performance to “discrete PC laptop graphics” while using 70 percent less power.

Moreover, some of these benefits come from how Apple adapts macOS to work with its in-house silicon. For example, Apple says that macOS can take advantage of the performance and efficiency cores by targeting different tasks to them to ensure performance or save power when necessary. Similarly, macOS can make use of the M1 chips’ unified memory, which can improve performance by avoiding the need to copy data between memory for discrete components.

However, it remains to be seen how well the new M1 Pro and Max perform in real-world testing. I’m especially curious to see how professional users feel about the new chips since they appear to target that market.

Finally, Apple also provided an update on its transition to universal apps made for the company’s M1 chips. There are now over 10,000 universal apps.