Is Samsung Pursuing The Server Market?

It is certain that Korean electronics giant Samsung will soon be entering the server chip market.

Reports are coming in that the company has been picking up key server personnel from Intel and AMD. Samsung has been focused on developing ARM chips and stayed clear of the x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD.
But the companies latest hires seem to indicate that might change.

Samsung’s latest recruits include veterans of the chip business like Jim Mergard, Frank Helms, who is a Fusion APU architect, Brad Burgess who designed the Bobcat APU and Patrick Patla (VP of AMD’s server business). Patla was behind the success of the Opteron chip set and has done well using the x86-server system.

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Will Samsung Release A Quad-Core Processor?

Samsung is reportedly developing a new quad-core chip that will power its next generation Galaxy series flagship smartphone.

According to androidandme.com, the Korean giant is preparing a new 32nm quad-core chip, the Exynos 4412. The new chip is based on the A9 architecture and it will run at speeds of up to 1.5GHz. Moreover, Samsung went for ARM Mali-400 graphics in the current Exynos 4210, so there is a good chance the new chip will include next generation Mali-604 graphics.

In terms of performance, the new chip could be a rather impressive beast. Compared to Nvidia’s Tegra 3, the Exynos could squeeze out a bit more performance per watt, thanks to its superior manufacturing process. On the graphics front, it could also sneak ahead of both Tegra 3 and Apple’s A5, with the SGX 543MP2 graphics core. The new chip should debut in early 2012 if all goes well.

Interestingly, Samsung has been keen to embrace processors and graphics solutions from a number of companies in the past. Even now, the company is selling a rather awkward mix of phones and tablets based on Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments chips. Basically Samsung is in bed with everyone, but it is obviously taking mobile chip development seriously and we could see some if not all third-party suppliers phased out sometime in the future.

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Will Cortex A7 Accelerate Android?

Texas Instruments (TI) said ARM’s heterogeneous ‘Big.little’ architecture helps it accelerate Google’s Android operating system.

TI, which designs the popular range of OMAP system-on-chip (SoC) processors found in many smartphones told The INQUIRER that ARM’s newly unveiled Big.little architecture will help improve overall performance of the Android operating system.

Avner Goren, GM of OMAP Strategy at TI told The INQUIRER that ARM’s Big.little architecture, which uses Cortex A7 and Cortex A15 cores, addresses a different need than that of multi-core processors made up of identical cores.

Goren said, “We have been using heterogeneous multi-cores since 2002, we always had an ARM CPU coupled to accelerators for video, graphics, DSPs, image processing. This [Big.little] doesn’t change anything in this idea. On the contrary, it builds on this concept and it is another dimension. None of what was held here changes what we are doing in the rest of the system.”

Goren continued by saying that Big.little is a natural progression from the multi-core, accelerator-aided processors of yesteryear. “What we have held today doesn’t change the fact I would continue doing accelerators, DSPs, video accelerators and use [Cortex] M3s inside, but it changes what I’m doing on the high-level Android side.”

When ARM’s multi-core processors tipped up at Mobile World Congress earlier this year firms were banging on about it would be a golden age of power efficiency due to being able to run multiple cores at lower frequencies. Now less than a year later and with dual-core smartphones still having relatively poor battery life, it looks like that strategy has gone for a Burton. Goren admits that homogenous multi-core architectures do have a problem.

“Multicores give you scalability in a range, performance goes up and down within this range based on how many cores are active and what is the voltage level for these cores. On the other hand it has a floor, this floor is when you have one core running at the lowest voltage. What we have identified is a need for general processing power, meaning running Android, even at a lower [power] level,” said Goren.

Goren said ARM’s A7 processor will allow TI to ramp up the Cortex A15 core without hurting the ‘idle’ performance of the more frequently used Cortex A7 core.

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2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon

According to Asian sources, Samsung is apparently developing an ARM based 2GHz dual-core processor.  The smartphone is expected to be the first on the market next year about of the Samsung’s Exynos line.

Apparently, this news was leaked from an executive at Samsung who also said the company intends to offer the new processors on its competitors to put on their smartphones and tablets.  Samsung is also claiming that the processor will offer PC performance.  Our question is what will the performance be based upon?

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Software Issues Plague ARM Servers

PC World is reporting software issues are hurting the ARM Processors and may inhibit it from being a serious contender to x86 Processors.  Dell Computer started testing some of the processors in low-end servers to appease some of their larger clients.  It appears that these companies were interested in the low power and density in data centers.

Dell’s General Manager of Server Platforms stated “he had major concerns about the weak software ecosystem surrounding ARM. He said that there are lots of advantages from the architecture even if it means  porting your code over to that new instruction set and maintaining two different software stacks. But he said that there are time and cost issues associated with porting software from x86 to ARM.”  Read More….

Intel MeeGO Tablets Expected In June

Intel announced that it intends to launch tablets based on the tablet version of MeeGo 1.2 in June 2011.

It is understood that most of them will launch final hardware in Q3 2011. The tablet preview program has already started and some developers are submitting applications as we speak. Intel’s App Up center for tablet should also be ready in Q3 2011.

With the big launch slated for Q3 2011 we are sure that Intel can have some designs ready for a hardware launch rather than a paper event. Intel’s tablet strategy also relies on Windows 7 as well as on Gingerbread and Honeycomb, whatever can help the golden goal of selling more Atoms. ……Read more

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