The ARM vs x86 Wars Have Begun: In-Depth Power Analysis of Atom, Krait & Cortex A15
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 4, 2013 7:32 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Intel
- Samsung
- Arm
- Cortex A15
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- SoCs
Krait: WebXPRT 2013 Community Preview 1
I also included Principled Technologies' new HTML5/js web test suite WebXPRT in our power analysis. Intel and Qualcomm remain quite close in these tests. I didn't run the Qualcomm tests at the same time as the Intel tests the charts graphs aren't perfectly aligned, as a result it looks like Intel took longer to complete the test when in reality the opposite is true. Once again at the platform level, the W510 beats the XPS 10, but at the CPU level Krait manages to do better than Atom. Looking at GPU power consumption alone, Intel/Imagination are once again more power efficient. As 3D performance doesn't matter much here, the Qualcomm/Adreno 225 3D performance advantage does nothing - it just costs more power.
Once again there's no contest when we include Tegra 3 in the comparison. Atom/Krait are in a different league. It'll be interesting to see how Tegra 4 will do here...
TouchXPRT 2013
As our first native client test, we turned to PT's TouchXPRT 2013. As there is no "run-all" functionality in the TouchXPRT benchmark, we had to present individual power curves for each benchmark. Unlike the previous tests where Qualcomm was consistently slower than Intel, many of the TouchXPRT tests show the two competitors performing quite similarly. This gives us a better idea of how these two fare when performance is equal. For the most part, Acer/Intel seem to win at the platform and GPU levels, while Qualcomm takes the win at the CPU level. Once again, it's not abundantly clear to me how much of Qualcomm's CPU core power advantage is due to the fact that we're not taking into account power consumption of the L2 cache.
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gryer7421 - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
aaaand then looses where it matters, the rest of the platform. one more process shrink and both will be on even terms in cpu power usage and then as a whole platform will start punching arm in the face.Wolfpup - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
Huh? Did you read the article? Atom built on 32nm is competitive with ARM built on 28nm. Not only that, but it's looking like Haswell will realistically be able to compete here too, and we've got the second gen Atom coming up this year too...but TODAY'S Atom at an older process is competitive with ARM...what you're claiming is exactly the opposite of what the article says.JumpingJack - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
I don't think we are looking at the same data, overall Atom appears to uses the same or less power than Krait and offers better performance in general.Homeles - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
"Anyone with half a brain" would read the article before making such an idiotic statement.Rezurecta - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
wow. Way to belittle Anand's hard work...Great article! One of the many reasons I love this site. :)
Death666Angel - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
The Star Wars theme to play in my head! Thanks for that! :DDeath666Angel - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
"I wonder what an 8W Haswell would look like in a similar situation."Me too. However, considering that they 17W ULV parts only reach those numbers by throttling as well, I don't expect a lot.
carancho - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
Amazing work. Congratulations! A couple of presentation suggestions:Next time please smooth some of the most important charts. The volatility makes it hard to see where the averages are. Take this chart: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/SoC/Intel/CTvK... it could really benefit to have another copy with some additional smoothing.
Also, in power charts like this http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/SoC/Intel/CTvK... it would be helpful to have as a summary followup chart the power calculation done and presented as bar charts; otherwise we have to resort to calculate the differences in the areas below the lines with our eyes, and they can be deceiving.
carancho - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
I hadn't reached the A15 part yet when writing this. Ignore the 2nd comment.amorlock - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
I'm frankly amazed and impressed that Intel can get Haswell down to 8W but it's hard to imagine it in a mid range mobile device because of the likely unit cost. The reason Atom has stagnated until recently is because Intel doesn't want to create a chip that cuts into it's very profitable mainstream CPU market.