Intel’s Silvermont Architecture Revealed: Getting Serious About Mobile
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 6, 2013 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Silvermont
- SoCs
SoCs and Graphics
Intel isn’t talking about implementations of Silvermont today other than to say that it will show up in smartphones (Merrifield), tablets (Baytrail), automotive (unannounced), communications infrastructure products (Rangeley) and microservers (Avoton). Baytrail, the tablet implementation of Silvermont, will be available by the end of this year running both Windows 8 (8.1/Blue?) and Android. Silvermont based Merrifield phones will show up early in 2014.
What we know about Baytrail is that it will be a quad-core implementation of Silvermont paired with Intel’s own Gen 7 graphics. Although we don’t know clock speeds, we do know that Baytrail’s GPU core will feature 4 EUs - 1/4 the number used in Ivy Bridge’s Gen7 implementation (Intel HD 4000). Ultimately we can’t know how fast the GPU will be until we know clock speeds, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see something at or around where the iPad 4’s GPU is today. Given Intel’s recent announcements around Iris and Iris Pro, it’s clear that the mobile team hasn’t yet had the graphics wakeup call that the Core team just got - but I suspect the Atom group will get there sooner rather than later. Intel’s eDRAM approach to scaling Haswell graphics (and CPU) performance has huge implications in mobile. I wouldn’t expect eDRAM enabled mobile SoCs based on Silvermont, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see something at 14nm.
Penryn-Class Performance
When Atom first came out, I put its CPU performance in perspective by comparing it to older Pentium M based notebooks. It turned out that a 1.6GHz Atom performed similarly to a 1.2GHz Pentium M. So how does Silvermont stack up in PC notebook terms?
On single threaded performance, you should expect a 2.4GHz Silvermont to perform like a 1.2GHz Penryn. To put it in perspective of actual systems, we’re talking about around the level of performance of an 11-inch Core 2 Duo MacBook Air from 2010. Keep in mind, I’m talking about single threaded performance here. In heavily threaded applications, a quad-core Silvermont should be able to bat even further up the Penryn line. Intel is able to do all of this with only a 2-wide machine (lower IPC, but much higher frequency thanks to 22nm).
There’s no doubt in my mind that a Baytrail Android tablet will deliver amazing performance, the real unknown is whether or not a Baytrail Windows 8 detachable/convertible will be fast enough to deliver a good enough legacy Windows experience. I suspect it’ll take Airmont before we really get there by my standards, but it’ll be close this round for sure.
What’ll really be interesting to see is how Silvermont fares in smartphones. Max clock speeds should be lower than what’s possible in a tablet, but not by all that much thanks to good power management. When viewed in that light, I don’t know that there’s a more exciting mobile architecture announced at this point. The ability to deliver 2010 11-inch MacBook Air performance in a phone is insane.
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tech4real - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
"Absolute performance"? Do we consider power constraint here at all? Atom is optimized for power-efficiency. All the current information I've seen so far suggest Silvermont will outperform A15 by a large margin in terms of power efficiency. If we throw away power constraint, Intel has Core to take care of that.Wilco1 - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
I was talking about peak performance, but yes, power consumption matters too. What we've seen so far is Intel marketing suggesting that in 6-9 months time Silvermont will be more efficient than A15 was 12 months earlier. However that's not what Silvermont will have to compete with. At the end of this year A15 will have had 2 process shrinks down to 20nm in addition to a lot of tuning, so it will be far more efficient than it was 12 months ago. And A15 is just one example, Apple, QC and ARM will have new cores as well. It's reasonable to say that Intel will finally be able to compete with Silvermont, but it is far from clear that it is the overall winner like their marketing claims.tech4real - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
TSMC's 20nm process is still in the works, your Q4'13 volumn production estimate seems way too optimistic, especially considering TSMC's pain in 28nm ramp. Also 28nm->20nm shrink without finfet significantly reduces its benefit.Wilco1 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
TSMC have learnt from the 28nm problems. They appear very aggressive this time, and so far the reports are they are 2 months ahead of schedule. Even if it ends up delayed to Q2'14 it's still around the same time Intel is planning to come out with Silvermont phones. The gains are not as large as with FinFETs, but enough to reduce power significantly.tech4real - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
my understanding is Q2'14 volume production with high yield is almost TSMC 20nm best case scenario. Of course, the term "high yield" is such a subjective thing vendors love to manipulate with almost infinite freedom...zeo - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
TSMC 20nm isn't set up for such optimization, but rather focused on cost reductions... The number of nodes, variations supported, etc will be fewer than they did with 28nm as they want to avoid the problems that caused the 28nm delays and that has resulted in a much more streamlined setup.While power leakage issues increase as FAB size is decreased... So without a solution like FinFET the power efficiency would be increasingly harder to keep it where it is, let alone reduce it...
It's one of the reasons why ARM is trying to push other options like Big.LITTLE to boost operational efficiencies and not rely as much on FAB improvements.
While it's also why not all ARM SoCs have moved to 28nm yet as for many the power leakage was still too much of a issue for their designs to make the switch right away, so there could be additional delays for 20nm releases.
Though ARM should get FinFET in time for for the 64bit release... but by that time Intel would be on its way to 14nm...
Jaybus - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Think of it as 2-wide x86 vs. 3-wide RISC. Rather than translating the x86 microcoded instruction into 2 or 3 RISC-like instructions, Intel's decode keeps it a single instruction down the pipeline. The RSIC architecture has to decode more instructions, so needs the 3-wide to keep up with the x86 2-wide.The point about the frequency scaling is this. The tri-gate design has a gate on top of 2 vertical gates. This gives it 3x the surface area as compared to FinFET. The greater surface area allows more electrons to flow within a given area of the die, and that allows a greater range of voltages and/or frequencies for which it can operate efficiently.
Wilco1 - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
Eventhough macro-ops helps decode, they need to be expanded before they are executed. So in terms of execution, macro-ops don't help. Also as I mentioned in an earlier post, most ARMs also support macro-ops, allowing a 2-way ARM to behave like a 4-way. So macro-ops don't give x86 an advantage over RISC.jemima puddle-duck - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Without wishing to be overly cynical, Anandtech has a history of 'NOW Intel will win the mobile war' articles, which get recycled then forgotten in time for the next launch. It's all very clever stuff, but curiously underwhelming also.Roffles12 - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
I don't remember reading any 'NOW Intel will win the mobile war' articles on Anandtech. Perhaps your perception is skewed. Intel articles are typically of a technical nature discussing the inner workings of the architecture and fab process or discussing benchmarks. Intel is really the only company so completely open about how their technology works, so why not make it a point of discussion on a website on a website dedicated to the subject? If your head is clouded by fud from competing companies and the constantly humming rumor mill, maybe you need to back off for a while. At the end of the day, it's up to you to digest this information and form an opinion.