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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Jaybus - Monday, May 13, 2013 - link
In the full Win 8 tablet market, I don't think any low power SoC is going to be adequate to compete against 13 W Ivy Bridge.1d107 - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Did I miss memory bandwidth comparison with A6X? Will it support hi-res displays with acceptable performance? And by performance I mean not playing Angry birds on a so 1366x768 or even 1080p, but smooth scrolling and fast text rendering on a 3840x2400 screen. This would be cool for a descent Windows tablet with an external display attached.I'm afraid that by the time Silvermont is released and incorporated into actual products, Apple will have iPad 5 already shipping with A7X chip that will have twice the battery life, while maintaining better performance than A6X. They will need it for the iPad mini, but full-sized iPads will benefit also.
fteoath64 - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
One cannot know what the A7X can deliver but can take a couple of guesses. Here: 1) Optimise Swift further with pipeline shortening but still staying on A9 architecture, 2) Leap to A15 dual core with minimal optimization. On gpu side, it becomes more tricky as Pvr554 being used is Max out at 4 cores, they would have to either jack that up(6 cores ?) or jack up the clock rate.Remember that S800 and T4 products are yet to be announced so there is some time to watch the progression.
Intel's key weakness here is STILL on gpu side. To put 3 cores of PVR 554 would eat a lot of power while giving it respectable performance. Going 1/4 HD4000 is just a dumb idea as the drivers are very bad and will remain so. Again too much power budget to slot in 8EU on SIlvermont quad.
On thing is for sure: Silvermont is going to make a wicked NAS cpu!.
thunng8 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
1) Swift is not A9 architecture.2) A7X will likely get the next generation PVR graphics chip (SGX Series 6 aka Rogue).
nunomoreira10 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
considering the power budget, 1/4 hd4000 is quite goodhd4000 consumes around 10w during games, 1/4 with clock cut down and power improvements we should expect 1-2w which is the max they could allow.
drivers are good for the games normally played on tablets.
BSMonitor - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Awesome review! This is the one we have been waiting for from Windows Phone / Windows Tablets!!Anand, is it the next Lumia that Intel has scored a design win?? x86 Windows 8 on a next gen Lumia??
warezme - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Sounds like Intel is going hammer time on the mobile SOC arena. It's gonna get ugly but very interesting.futbol4me - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Can someone out there answer a few questions for me?(1) If Intel Atom powered tablet were running android, do APPS available on Google Play need to be recompiled for the platform?
(2) Will a Windows8 Intel Atom powered tablet have enough horsepower to run android effectively as a Virtual Machine?
Do you think there is enough
biertourist - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
To answer Question #2: Yes. Current Intel Atom tablets can run Android apps ala the "BlueStacks" app currently.rootheday - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
re #1, Android apps written in Dalvik/Java require no recompile because they are compiled against a virtual machine spec. Android apps written as "native" against ARM instruction set -> Intel has implemented a binary translation capability called Houdini that converts them to x86 on the fly and optimizes them in the background.