The Bay Trail Preview: Intel Atom Z3770 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on September 11, 2013 12:00 PM ESTFinal Words
At its Silvermont disclosure, Intel promised performance better than any other ARM based core in the market today. Looking at our Android results, Intel appears to have delivered on that claim. Whether we’re talking about Cortex A15 in NVIDIA’s Shield or Qualcomm’s Krait 400, Silvermont is quicker. It seems safe to say that Intel will have the fastest CPU performance out of any Android tablet platform once Bay Trail ships later this year.
The power consumption, at least on the CPU side, also looks very good. From our SoC measurements it looks like Bay Trail’s power consumption under heavy CPU load ranges from 1W - 2.5W, putting it on par with other mobile SoCs that we’ve done power measurements on.
On the GPU side, Intel’s HD Graphics does reasonably well in its first showing in an ultra mobile SoC. Bay Trail appears to live in a weird world between the old Intel that didn’t care about graphics and the new Intel that has effectively become a GPU company. Intel’s HD graphics in Bay Trail appear to be similar in performance to the PowerVR SGX 554MP4 in the iPad 4. It’s a huge step forward compared to Clover Trail, but clearly not a leadership play, which is disappointing.
The big unknowns are things like video decode power efficiency, perf and quality of their ISP and idle power efficiency vs. Qualcomm.
Bay Trail looks like a good starting point for Intel in mobile, and the performance of Silvermont makes me excited for Merrifield in phones next year. What Intel needs to do going forward is simply continue to iterate and execute for the next few generations after Bay Trail and it will have a real chance at success in mobile.
My biggest concern is about the design wins we see based around Bay Trail. Although Intel is finally in a spot where it can be in devices on the market, none of those devices thus far have been any good. Bay Trail is attractive enough to garner more design wins for certain, the question is whether or not the quality of those wins will improve as well. In the tablet market there’s the iPad and the Nexus lines that are really the most interesting, and I don’t expect Bay Trail to be in either. Whether or not the quality of the rest goes up this generation and we find a Bay Trail in one of those devices remains to be seen.
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Bob Todd - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
Where are all the people that kept claiming it was impossible for Silvermont to have better CPU performance than Kabini in previous articles? It's either as fast or faster with significantly less power draw than the AMD part. GPU performance is a bit of a downer but right inline with what I expected based on a cut down HD4000. Kabini's GPU kicks its ass, but it's not like either of them is fast enough for me to play real PC games on so it's immaterial to me for now. I'd like this in an 8" or 10" with a 2560x1440 display, a reasonably fast IO solution, and Windows 8.1 for ~$500.Nagorak - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
Anyone who was saying that was an idiot. Intel's way ahead of AMD on both their production process and their CPU architecture. If this part weren't way better it would have been surprising.fteoath64 - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
"Intel's way ahead of AMD", by 30% is good but not great. I would say by 60% would be great but it is not the case. AMD is also on generation older process node, so it is not that bad for them as their gpu makes up the difference in some ways.Tangey - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
In your valley view overview a while back, you expressed amazement that imaginations video decode hardware was present, but you were certain it was. Has this now been dropped in baytrail ?tabascosauz - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
I was going to be excited about Silvermont and all was well until I saw the GPU charts and changed my mind. Absolutely miserable performance.Come on, Intel. At this rate you would have been better off using IT GPUs. Care to explain using only 25% of HD 4000's EUs? I don't think heat is an excuse here, and power consumption shouldn't be either.
MyOpinionDoesNotMatter - Saturday, September 14, 2013 - link
It took Intel a few generations to optimise their CPUs for low TDP....in time they will likely do the same for their integrated GPUs. Probably what the Intel engineers are focusing on right now.shywho - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
I do not see any DSP on this chip - similar to the Hexagon DSP on the QualComm Snapdragon or the Icera on the Tegra. Is this supposed to be external to the chip?althaz - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
This is interesting and somewhat impressive, but to be truly relevant there's a couple of other things required:* +50% graphics performance
* Integrated modem
* Release it last year
ET - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
This shatters AMD's tablet aspirations. If the Z3770 performs around the A4-5000, then AMD's low power APU, with 2 cores and running at 1GHz, using more power, is pretty much a no go. From the few benchmarks here it looks like the new Atom's GPU performance will be around that of the 225MHz AMD GPU.All in all, while I'd love even better GPU performance, I think I'll be happy with a Z3770 tablet, and in CPU performance it will be an upgrade to my E-350 laptop. I'll be waiting to see what Airmont brings next year.
silverblue - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
AMD needs a Kabini which is clocked at A4-5000 levels but has a much smaller GPU. That in itself might make for a more balanced chip.