Samsung Chromebook (XE303) Review: Testing ARM's Cortex A15
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 31, 2012 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The move to ARM doesn't fundamentally change the performance or usability of the Chromebook. It's still a slow (relative to more expensive notebooks), limited use notebook. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to be aware of what you're getting into with this thing.
The display is functional but not very good. Build quality is decent but the new Chromebook is still a plastic notebook. Thankfully the keyboard and trackpad are both pretty decent.
For a basic web browsing and glorified typewriter platform, the Chromebook really does get the job done. It's a very focused, simple device that serves its purpose well. I don't know how big the Chromebook niche is, but Google has targeted it very well. At $249 if you need a physical keyboard and only need basic web browsing support, I don't know that there's a better solution. As an almost-disposable notebook for writing and browsing the web, I'm happy with the Chromebook. Good ultraportables are much more expensive, and even low cost PCs don't come with any sort of solid state storage. Admittedly the eMMC solution in the Chromebook isn't setting any records, but it does deliver consistent IO performance which is more than I can say for a cheap 5400 RPM 2.5" hard drive.
Ultimately the Chromebook puts pressure on the traditional PC notebook ecosystem from below. Tablets have been doing that for a while but they are a physically different form factor. For those who still want a traditional notebook form factor, there hasn't been much low-cost competition. The Chromebook applies a good amount of pressure there. Compared to a $1000 notebook, the Chromebook's display isn't great but move down into the $500 - $700 range and it doesn't look all that bad thanks to many PC makers failing to invest in good quality panels. If a $249 Chromebook delivers a competitive keyboard, trackpad, display resolution and quality experience to your $499 PC notebook, it's time for a change. With Apple pushing at the top and Google working the bottom, the hope is that the entire PC notebook stack gets better.
On the SoC side, our first look at ARM's Cortex A15 is quite positive from a performance standpoint. I'm still not convinced on its power consumption for smartphone use (big.LITTLE must exist for a reason) but from a performance standpoint, it's going to make current smartphone/tablet SoCs feel very slow. And that's something we can all look forward to in 2013.
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wumpus - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I would assume that the real issue is if you can wipe chromeOS and replace with the linux of your choice. By the security choices you list, I wouldn't be using any type of windows box. From the comments below, there doesn't appear to be a "plug a USB stick in and hit a button" linux disto yet.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Look into ixquick if you are worried about search privacy.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
"I'm not sure, but I think there's no choice for editing text apart from Google Docs?"If you are really tied to MS office you can use MS's cloud based office suite.
jjj - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Nice perf numbers.On power consumption both the software and the hardware are a lot different form a phone so maybe it's not as bad as you think.Now all we need is quad A15 :D (might be doable in tablets/notebooks with bigLITTLE or Nvidia's 4+1 even on 28nm)
Roland00Address - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
It will be 4 A15 cores plus a low power companion core. Who knows when it will be actually in devices.I have not heard any announcements for quad core A15 from other sources (such as Samsung) that said it is going to happen sometime even if it has not been announced.
Jorange - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Excellent I've been waiting for this review. Exynos 5250 does seem a power hungry chap, which kinda destroys my hopes for a quad-core 5450 / Mali T658 in the next Galaxy phone, unless Samsung move to a new node. There is mention of 28nm process on Samsung's foundry site, combined with Big.little maybe my dreams are alive.Anand, any news when Samsung will adopt a new process node, and will it be 28nm or 22nm?
Work is already underway to port Ubuntu to it:)
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/ubuntu-12-04-up...
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I share your excitement, I have SGS3 and I'm so looking forward to SGS4 and what it can bring to the table. Hopefully some sort of big.LITTLE design to lower the power draw, also there is a trend of bigger battery, hopefully the trend continues without much increasing in the physical size.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Why? Samsung will do it just like Nvidia with Tegra 4, and put 1 or 2 Cortex A7 chips next to the A15's, which will handle 80% of the tasks.Aenean144 - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
I'm curious how big.LITTLE is going to work in practice. The auto switching between discrete graphics and integrated graphics on laptops may give us a clue on how well it works.Hitting 9 W peak at 1.7 GHz? That's Haswell territory, and I'd surmise Haswell will crush any ARM, even the 64 bit ones in 2014, with a 10 W TDP envelope.
Secondarily, either Samsung is binning some low power parts for the Nexus 10 and prospective smartphones, or they have to downclock. The big question would be how much would they have to downclock.
On to the Nexus 10 analysis.
Kevin G - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Very respectable performance from the Cortex A15. It'll be interesting to see how it'll fair in a smart phone but the bar has been set.