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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
174 Comments
View All Comments
PolarisOrbit - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Re: FSBIntel tried to get rid of the FSB several years ago, but it was seen as anti-competitive because they simultaneously locked out 3rd parties like Nvidia Ion. One lawsuit later, Intel was bound to keep the FSB in their low power architectures until 2013 for 3rd party support. Basically Intel wasn't playing fair and Nvidia burned their ship.
DanNeely - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
There was no usable FSB in anything beyond the first series of atom chips. The rest still had it within the die to connect the CPU with the internal northbridge; but the only external interface it offered was 4 PCIe2(?) lanes. ION2 connected to them; not to FSB.Kevin G - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Actually Intel is to keep PCI-e on their chips until 2016 by that anti-trust suit. This allows 3rd part IP, like nVidia's ION, to work with Intel's SoC designs.tipoo - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
This makes me wonder if companies that make in-house SoCs (I guess Apple in specific, since Samsung also sells them to others while Apple just does it for themselves) will ever switch mobile devices to Intel if they just can't match the performance per watt of this and future Atom cores.tipoo - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Also won't the much anticipated SGX 600 series/Rogue be out by around then? That's the GPU that's supposed to take these mobile SoCs to the 200Gflop territory which the 360/PS3 GPUs are around.xTRICKYxx - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
I would think Apple would (or any company) would want all of their software running on the same architecture/platform if they could.R0H1T - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
And kill what a billion or so iDevices sold with incompatibility ? Me thinks you dunno what you're talking about !CajunArson - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Did somebody pay you to post that reply? Because if so, they aren't getting their money's worth.Silvermont Atoms are targeted at smartphones in 2-core configurations and tablets in the 4-core Baytrail configurations. Their power consumption is in a completely different league than even the low-end Temash parts. Let me reiterate: a Temash with a 4 watt TDP is going to have substantially higher real-world power consumption than even a beefy Baytrail and will likely only compete with the microserver Atom parts where Intel intentionally targets a higher power envelope.
I'm sure you can't wait to post benchmarks of a Kabini netbook with a higher power draw than Haswell managing to beat a smartphone Atom as proof that AMD has "won" something, but for those of us on planet earth, these Silvermont parts are very interesting and we appreciate hard technical information on the architecture.
nunomoreira10 - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Jaguar will be available on fanless designs wille haswell wont, you cant realy compare them.The facto is intel still doesn't hás a good enougf CPU for a good experiency on a legacy windows 8 fanless design, there is this big hole in the market that AMD is trying to seek.
raghu78 - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Intel silvermont is the start of the Intelization of the mobile world. within the next 2 - 3 years Intel should have bagged Apple , Google or Samsung. with the world's best manufacturing process which is atleast 2 - 3 years ahead of other foundries and Intel's relentless tick - tock chip development cadence the ARM crowd is going to be beaten to a pulp. Qualcomm might survive the Intel juggernaut but Nvidia will not.