The x86 Power Myth Busted: In-Depth Clover Trail Power Analysis
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 24, 2012 5:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Ultimately I don't know that this data really changes what we already knew about Clover Trail: it is a more power efficient platform than NVIDIA's Tegra 3. I summed up the power consumption advantage in the table below (I left out the GPU numbers since I'm not totally clear with what NVIDIA attaches to the GPU power rail on Tegra 3):
| Power Consumption Comparison | ||||||||
| Surface RT | W510 | Surface RT (CPU) | W510 (CPU) | |||||
| Idle | 3.182W | 2.474W | 70.2mW | 36.4mW | ||||
| Cold Boot | 5.358W | 3.280W | 800mW | 216mW | ||||
| SunSpider 0.9.1 | 4.775W | 3.704W | 722mW | 520mW | ||||
| Kraken | 4.738W | 3.582W | 829mW | 564mW | ||||
| RIABench | 3.962W | 3.294W | 379mW | 261mW | ||||
| WebXPRT | 4.617W | 3.225W | 663mW | 412mW | ||||
| TouchXPRT (Photo Enhance) | 4.789W | 3.793W | 913mW | 378mW | ||||
| GPU Workload | 5.395W | 3.656W | 1432mW | 488mW | ||||
Across the board Intel manages a huge advantage over NVIDIA's Tegra 3. Again, this shouldn't be a surprise. Intel's 32nm SoC process offers a big advantage over TSMC's 40nm G used for NVIDIA's Cortex A9 cores (the rest of the SoC is built on LP, the whole chip uses TSMC's 40nm LPG), and there are also the architectural advantages that Atom offers over ARM's Cortex A9. As we've mentioned in both our Medfield and Clover Trail reviews: the x86 power myth has been busted. I think it's very telling that Intel didn't show up with an iPad for this comparison, although I will be trying to replicate this setup on my own with an iPad 4 to see if I can't make it happen without breaking too many devices. We've also just now received the first Qualcomm Krait based Windows RT tablets, which will make another interesting comparison point going forward.
Keeping in mind that this isn't Intel's best foot forward either, the coming years ahead should provide for some entertaining competition. In less than a year Intel will be shipping its first 22nm Atom in tablets, while NVIDIA will quickly toss Tegra 3 aside in favor of the Cortex A15 based 28nm Wayne (Tegra 4?) SoC in the first half of next year. Beating up on Surface RT today may be fun for Intel, but next year won't be quite as easy. The big unknown in all of this is of course what happens when Core gets below 10W. Intel already demonstrated Haswell at 8W - it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume that Intel is gunning for Swift/Cortex A15 with a Core based SoC next year.
Here's where it really gets tricky: Intel built the better SoC, but Microsoft built the better device - and that device happens to use Tegra 3. The days of Intel simply building a chip and putting it out in the world are long gone. As it first discovered with Apple, only through a close relationship with the OEM can Intel really deliver a compelling product. When left to their own devices, the OEMs don't always seem to build competitive devices. Even despite Intel's significant involvement in Acer's W510, the tablet showed up with an unusable trackpad, underperforming WiFi and stability issues. Clover Trail has the CPU performance I want from a tablet today, but I want Apple, Google or Microsoft to use it. I do have hope that the other players will wake up and get better, but for next year I feel like the tune won't be any different. Intel needs design wins among the big three to really make an impact in the tablet space.
The good news is Microsoft is already engaged with Surface Pro. It's safe to bet that there will be a Haswell version coming as well. Now Intel just needs an iPad and a Nexus win.
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dc77gti - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
Looking forward to 22nm Bay Trail-T. Hopefully Intel can get this out before 2014.That's half the battle. The other half lies with Google Android. We'll have to wait and see. With Intel's hardware might and Android's open source project, things will get more exciting.
kyuu - Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - link
*sigh* Everyone seems to have forgotten about AMD's Temash which should be out by mid-2013... hopefully. Hell, I'd even take a Hondo tablet over Clover Trail, if anyone actually made one.thebeastie - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
I don't know about this.. all of a sudden the tables have turned against ARM?Mythbusters do a pretty thorough job on testing, I want them to do the same round of testing on these chips and see what THEY come up with.
Apples A6 still reams the Atom so its not really that great.
Anyway ARMs real kryptonite has been price. Intel might sell thee chips cheap as a last ditch stand one off or two off but they can't do it forever before what matters to them most falls apart.... and thats making a lot of money.
puppies - Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - link
I think most of us realise that intels biggest problem right now is that in the desktop environment (their main source of income from the public) a 3 or 4 year old chip is more than adequate for 99% of tasks that the average pc user wants to perform. Software just isn't being developed (or is there much need for it) that requires a quad core 3.5ghz cpu with turbo and HT when a 2.5ghz dual core will more than suffice.If however they can push the performance envelope of these ultra low voltage parts to a point where software starts being developed that can utilise those chips to their potential then ARM will not be a viable option for anyone who needs that performance.
Most tablet reviews state something along the lines of "it is ok for a few last minute corrections to a presentation but you might want something more powerful for when you aren't on the train/plain etc". If intel changes that to "This ultra portable tablet has enough grunt for all your word/powerpoint/excel creation needs" and ARM can't keep up then Intel becomes the required CPU for business users, intel really doesn't care about $200 tablet sales. They are generally bought as presents for kids and there just isn't the profit available that intel seems to desire.
Combine this with the fact that no company is going to want to deal with the headache of trying to sync workloads between X86 office pcs and ARM based ultra portables and intel suddenly has a reason to charge the big bucks again.
FunBunny2 - Friday, December 28, 2012 - link
I expect the reality is: for consumers, the need for anything much more than a 486 is, well, past. Not much computation outside of Excel. Pretty pixels, on the other hand...If M$ could write a yet more bloated OS, then the old Wintel symbiotic monopoly might return. Fact is, we're still where Xerox PARC put us 3 decades ago. The hardware isn't much different, save for touch, either. There was a time when PCs shipped with monochrome tubes, by default. And the OS was a command line ark.
war59312 - Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - link
Hey,This image as linked on page 5, the very last image appears to be broken:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/SoC/Intel/CTvT...
Thanks,
Will
Veteranv2 - Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - link
Reading this review, it makes me realize how websites are abused as a marketing gimmick.Keep this in mind:
- It is all teste on Win8.
- Win8 is primarely Win7 but with ARM support
- Windows has been optimized for X86 in any way, they just recently added support.
- Who says ARM support on Win8 is any good for ARM performance? It is compatible, but x86 has enjoyed +20 years of optimization
If anandtech would have wanted to do this right they would have used this:
- A6X or A15 ARMcores
What has anandtech proven:
- Win8 is bad for ARM
- Tegra3 on 40nm has worse power consumtion then a 32nm part
- It is a marketing tool for intel which is struggling in the tablet market and needs positive things like this
- That it cannot objectively make differences clear between architectures, cause this review has nothing to do with architectures...
A sad day for anandtech...
thebeastie - Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - link
I guess I could agree with this, Anandtech is my absolute favorite tech site for the truth but some times he just seems to be a little bit too much of an Intel fan. But alternatively I do see that he is ready to hand out credit where it is due, and Intel is all too often the company to beat.Ultimately I think his heading was a poor choice of words and is just as much appeared to be skewed towards headline grabbing as much has being an accurately balanced review.
I guess that will always be part of the game with "the press"
CeriseCogburn - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
You guys missed the bucket of fudge, and forgot the nvidia hate.Thus the Tegra3. you've missed the bias boat, bros.
Anand got screwed on nVidia gpu's a long while back, and they AND Tom's have never forgotten the slight.
It was the (made notorious) "rebranded" nVidia 9800x, where Anand just reused another of the nVidia gpu's they had in house and adjusted the clocks and claimed they thus tested the "new" nVidia release.
The deep hatred has been seething here ever since, in every article, pumping up the amd fanboys, and only recently has that latter group somewhat receded, due to continual epic fails by amd.
powerarmour - Friday, December 28, 2012 - link
Agreed