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Imagination introduces Catapult RISC-V CPU cores
As expected, Imagination Technologies is giving another try to the CPU IP market with the Catapult RISC-V CPU cores following their previous unsuccessful attempt with the MIPS architecture, notably the Aptiv family.
Catapult RISC-V CPUs are/will be available in four distinct families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs.
The new 32-/64-bit RISC-V cores will be scalable to up to eight asymmetric coherent cores-per cluster, offer a "plethora of customer configurable options", and support optional custom accelerators. What you won't see today are block diagrams and detailed technical information about the cores because apparently, all that information is confidential even though some Catapult RISC-V cores are already shipping "in high-performance Imagination automotive GPUs". The only way to get more details today is to sign an NDA.
Also at AnandTech and Phoronix.
Previously: Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU
Imagination Technologies Plans to Design RISC-V Cores
Related: Innosilicon Graphics Cards Based on "Fantasy One" GPU Feature Up to 32GB GDDR6X Memory
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 07 2021, @04:20PM (1 child)
> how many "bomble"-flops do you really need to carry around to make a phone call?
I was trying to reduce active (not idle) power consumption* on my phone (playing podcasts burns through the battery at around 3% per hour), and experimented with disabling cpu cores.
It has a Snapdragon 730G A55 and A76 cores.
I disabled all but one A55 "small" core, and the phone was very painful to use. But, with two A55 cores, web browsing (with ublock origin), calls, messaging, UI navigation, podcast player, etc., were all fine. So, for my use case, I apparently don't need anywhere close to the maximum "bomble-flops" available on my phone.
*Even with only a single A55 core enabled, it didn't help with active power consumption, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 07 2021, @04:34PM
Phone manufacturers have tuned the hell out of basic power efficiency at this point for RUNNING software.
The only thing you can do to significantly increase your power efficiency is turn down your screen brightness and disable software/services that you don't give a damn about but that the phone manufacturer or software companies do, generally for the purposes of spying on you to collect marketing data.