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takyon writes:

Samsung Confirms Custom CPU Development Cancellation

The fate of Samsung's custom CPU development efforts has been making the rounds of the rumour mill for almost a month, and now we finally have confirmation from Samsung that the company has stopped further development work on its custom Arm architecture CPU cores. This public confirmation comes via Samsung's HR department, which last week filled an obligatory notice letter with the Texas Workforce Commission, warning about upcoming layoffs of Samsung's Austin R&D Center CPU team and the impending termination of their custom CPU work.

The CPU project, said currently to be around 290 team members large, started off sometime in 2012 and has produced the custom ARMv8 CPU microarchitectures from the Exynos M1 in the Exynos 8890 up to the latest Exynos M5 in the upcoming Exynos 990.

Over the years, Samsung's custom CPU microarchitectures had a tough time in differentiating themselves from Arm's own Cortex designs, never being fully competitive in any one metric. The Exynos-M3 Meerkat cores employed in the Exynos 9810 (Galaxy S9), for example, ended up being more of a handicap to the SoC due to its poor energy efficiency. Even the CPU project itself had a rocky start, as originally the custom microarchitecture was meant to power Samsung's custom Arm server SoCs before the design efforts were redirected towards mobile use.

See also:
Samsung Is Shutting Down Its Custom CPU Core Department; Will License ARM's Performance Cores for Future SoCs
Samsung Might Still Design Semi-Custom Cores; AMD-based GPU Nearing Commercialization
Samsung sadly sings of memory, all alone in the moonlight, as downturn slashes profits by 56%

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 launched: First 5 nm Windows PC SoC with four Cortex-X1 cores at 3 GHz, 6 nm Snapdragon 7c+ Gen 3 announced too

Qualcomm today unveiled the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 and Snapdragon 7c+ Gen 3 Compute Platforms that will power the next wave of Windows-on-ARM Always On Always Connected PCs. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is the first 5 nm SoC for the PC and features a 4+4 CPU with Cortex-X1 and Cortex-A78 cores along with other Qualcomm connectivity and security features.

[...] With the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, PCs are all set to get their first taste of the 5 nm architecture albeit on ARM. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is about 85% faster in CPU and 60% faster in GPU performance. The exact comparative parameters were not disclosed during the presentation, however.

The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is also slated to offer 29+ TOPS of AI performance. Once again, the comparisons aren't really obvious, but we can hazard a guess that this could be with respect to the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2.

Previously, ARM SoCs have had only a single Cortex-X core, with the exception of Google's Tensor, found in the Pixel 6, which has 2x Cortex-X1 cores.

Also at CNX Software.

See also: Qualcomm 8cx Gen 3: Too dangerous to deploy

Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 8 Gen 1: Flagship SoC for 2022 Devices

At this year's Tech Summit from Hawaii, it's time again for Qualcomm to unveil and detail the company's most important launch of the year, showcasing the newest Snapdragon flagship SoC that will be powering our upcoming 2022 devices. Today, as the first of a few announcements at the event, Qualcomm is announcing the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the direct follow-up to last year's Snapdragon 888.

takyon writes:

Arm Immortalis Flagship GPU Includes Hardware-Based Ray Tracing

Arm has announced a new GPU family, targeting ultimate gaming experiences on next-gen flagship smartphones. The first of its new 'beyond-Mali' breed is the Immortalis-G715, and it comes with a sizable and realistically lit feather in its cap. It's "the first Arm GPU to offer hardware-based ray tracing support on mobile." Immortalis won't replace Mali graphics, though, and this is evidenced by Arm announcing two new Mali GPUs today, with many advanced graphical quality and performance features.

It's interesting to see Arm launching hardware accelerated ray tracing on mobile, at a time when even beefy desktop PCs with GPUs eating hundreds of watts require complementary technologies such as DLSS and FSR for the sake of frame rates and responsiveness. There are some technologies available for Arm GPUs that might help boost frame rates, though. Immortalis and new Mali GPUs both support Variable Rate Shading (VRS) and Adaptive Performance in Unity titles, for example. Additionally, the new GPUs from Arm are all said to offer 15% better rasterization performance and improved efficiency compared to the previous generation.

[...] Interestingly, Arm says that the ray tracing hardware in the Immortalis GPU only uses 4% of the shader core area, while delivering more than a 300% performance improvement through the hardware acceleration.

Press release.

Related: Samsung Announces Exynos 2200 SoC with AMD RDNA2 Graphics

Original Submission