8-core chip fears climate

8-core chip first-mock fearlessly returning low proportion of brand customers

Although Qualcomm decided to follow up with Samsung Electronics and MediaTek to join the 8 core mobile phone chip battle, recent domestic and foreign brand customers use a lower proportion of 8-core mobile phone chips, and there are few 8-core mobile phone models. In the short-term, the chip factory still has no intention of smashing price impulses. The industry expects that the 8-core chip in the global smart phone market will hardly become a climate in 2014, and will only have an opportunity to increase volume after 2015.

IC design industry pointed out that Samsung and MediaTek have successively shot up 8 core mobile phone chips and made Qualcomm, which had originally found that the 8-core chip has no real benefit, to take a disadvantage in the supply chain and terminal market, and continuously upgrade its 8-core handset in the face of competitors. The chip product line forced Qualcomm to follow up and announced that it will introduce a new 8-core mobile phone chip solution, making the 8-core chip a hot chip in the global mobile phone chip market.

However, due to the unpredictable growth of Samsung Galaxy S5 shipments, coupled with the low proportion of MediaTek's 8-core chips in the design-in design of the client, the proportion of shipments in 2014 is still not high, and in 2008, 8 core mobile phone chips were The terminal market may have an appalling situation. Not only does it make it difficult for Qualcomm, who is forced to follow up on the 8-core chip market, to be in a dilemma, but it also makes 2014 high-end mobile phone chip competition a recurring variable.

IC design industry said that in the short term mainland and white-brand mobile phone customers still prefer to adopt 4-core mobile phone chip solutions, hoping to first consolidate the global market share of low-level smart phones, and attack the mid-range mobile phone market pie, as High-end mobile phones are waiting in the wings. Although some customers are interested in launching 8-core mobile phones in mid-2014, due to high-end product positioning, the unit price is obviously high, and it is expected that shipments will be difficult to reach with mid-to-low-end smart phone products. compared to.

Samsung is currently the only major international mobile phone brand manufacturers for the 8 core mobile phone products are hot, but the Samsung 8 core chip is mainly to supply their own mobile phone demand, temporarily no external sales, as MediaTek is interested in separating 8-core and 4-core mobile phone chips The price difference, force arch 4 core mobile phone chip shipments, temporarily will not be targeted at 8 core mobile phone chip pricing strategy, making the proportion of mobile phones carrying 8-core chips in 2014 will be low.

IC design industry believes that at this stage, the global 8 core mobile phone chip market is only available from Samsung and MediaTek. Since the 8 core mobile phone chipset still holds the pyramid's top smart phone customer group in the short term, the global 8 core mobile phone chip shipments have grown farther in 2014. It is not expected to be a foregone conclusion. It is feared that there will be an opportunity to wait until after 2015.

MediaTek's dream of becoming an empty dream: Quad-core does not take eight nuclear powers

Sources from the supply chain said that the market share of eight-core processor phones will decline this year. The main reason is that brand manufacturers and Chinese domestic manufacturers also focus on the introduction of quad-core smartphones this year, increasing their share in the low-end market.

Of course, there will still be an eight-core smartphone release this year, and some manufacturers intend to use the real MediaTek eight-core processor MT6592 for future mobile phones. But this will not become the mainstream of this year.

According to sources, the price gap between MediaTek's quad-core processors and eight-core processors is very wide, and MediaTek has not yet prepared to promote MT6592 at a low price.

In addition to MediaTek processors, Samsung also has Exynos processors at home, but it is not used on the Galaxy S5. So far, the Galaxy S5 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor. Whether or not it will release an eight-core S5 in the future is yet to be officially confirmed.

Taunting and being mocked by MediaTek's eight-core road

MediaTek is a topic that cannot be relied on in the history of mobile phone development in China. Over the past few years, this chip company, often dubbed the “father of the cottage”, has been ups and downs with the development of smart phones in China. For this chip company attracting countless eyeballs, the attention of the media has never weakened. The recent topic around the eight-core is even more prosperous...

Yes, MediaTek's eight cores are coming, no matter how the media views them, no matter how their competitors evaluate them, or whether consumers are looking at excitement or anticipation. After MediaTek launched the world’s first three-card solution, it once again released a “true eight-core” white paper. The first eight-core chip “MT6592” will be shipped before the end of the year.

MediaTek "True Eight Cores" Comes: With Taunting

In fact, prior to MediaTek, Samsung had already claimed to use an 8-core processor on top of its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. We know that this processor is a "big.LITTLE" architecture consisting of a quad-core Cortex-A15 processor and a Cortex-A7 processor.

Unfortunately, although it is known by many media as an "eight-core" processor, eight cores cannot be run at the same time. At best, it is only a 4+4 core processor. Even MediaTek has made various sarcastic comments on Samsung in the slide show, desperately advocating its own MT6592 is true eight core. The following pictures are from MediaTek's official website. From this we can see the similarities and differences between MediaTek's "true eight core" concept and its competitors (including Samsung).

The existing eight cores can only operate four cores at the same time. The Trumpchi eight-core solution has eight concurrent cores.

Interestingly, at the same time, MediaTek questioned the “fake eight cores” of opponents, and it also attracted many questions:

ARM brand adhesive “sticks” Eight Media processors from MediaTek

After MediaTek announced the release of the "True Eight Core" processor MT6592, it was questioned by many people in the industry. Some media commented that: MTK's work is actually very simple - ARM has long provided "universal "Glue" - Since A15 and A7 cores can be glued together using ARM's "big.LITTLE" structure, then LITTLE.LITTLE is also possible - two sets of quad-core Cortex A7 are glued together with glue, one The eight-core processor was born (if the MTK is willing, big.big must have been no difficulty).

In other words, the MT6592 also only uses the glue to glue the two sets of quad-core Cortex A7 together. It is entirely possible to regard the MT6592 “eight cores” as “two quads” if the MT6592 uses less than four cores. , then the overall performance will naturally not be any difference with the quad-core A7. If the load increases, the number of cores enabled by the MT6592 exceeds four, or the enabled cores reside in different groups. Due to the I/O bandwidth limitations, asynchronous bus overhead, and cache coherence issues, the MT6592 will not be too big. Out of color performance. Expecting it to challenge quad-core Cortex A15 processors such as the Snapdragon 800, Exynos 5410, and Tegra 4 is a mystery.

Performance questioned Qualcomm: cars can be installed without 8 engines

The rapid development of smart mobile technology has made the processor more and more demanding. However, if you want to significantly increase processing power, the fastest way is to implant more cores on a single chip. Is this concept correct?

Regarding the question of whether the number of cores directly affects performance, Tim McDonough, vice president of mobile computing marketing at Qualcomm, did not directly answer, but used a conference as an example. He said: "When you participate in a bad meeting, many people who are not clear-headed try to throw out ideas to solve difficult problems. This will only make the meeting more inefficient."

If you look at the concept of a meeting, Macdonald believes that manufacturing mobile processors should focus on how to build a powerful core, rather than simply increase the number of core chips, after a variety of tests, and then decided to play the strongest The core number of performance.

McDonnell uses a modified car as an example to define a good mobile device. He said that when a revamper increases the efficiency of a car, he does not blindly install eight engines on the car. Instead, he chooses the most based on the performance and mileage. The right engine. However, McDonald emphasized that to build a good car with excellent performance, in addition to a good engine, many good quality components are also needed.

Coincidentally, Yang Xu, president of Intel China, once pointed out on many occasions that "multi-core" is just a conceptual hype, and smart phones do not actually require multi-core.

The true meaning of eight cores: market competition strategy

For most consumers, the difference between true and false eight cores is not their concern. Eight cores can only cause misleading to them: the more the better the nuclear!

Samsung's use of the concept of size and size is also for market competition strategy, because for the vast majority of consumers, the so-called eight-core is just a gimmick, and no more than the performance of the four A15 nuclear, at least before the introduction of the third call model of the Galaxy Note 3 listed So, Samsung is just so that it is far ahead of its competitors in terms of configuration, such as Apple, HTC, SONY and even Moto. Today, as mobile phones become more and more standardized, the differentiation is obvious enough, especially for computer-based thinking extending to mobile phones. For consumers, the lethality is huge.

MediaTek's introduction of eight-core MT6592 adopting eight A7s is more like market behavior than simply pursuing product performance. This kind of configuration freaks that many people can't read out can only be said to be caused by consumers' misunderstandings. After all, There are not many companies that judge the definition of products by themselves in addition to Apple. Most manufacturers define products based on consumers' preferences. MediaTek can't be wrong in this strategy, but whether consumers will pursue the same number of cores as last year is still a Unknown, the past few years have only been the popularity of smart phones. Consumers are still thinking in the weird way of thinking. The world is changing and consumers may become more and more rational.

So, the eight-core processor, marketing significance is more important than the real significance. For the average consumer, only through the advertising marketing method, the eight cores have a significant improvement in performance, which in turn increases their willingness to buy. It is exactly what chip manufacturers and handset manufacturers expect, and the eight cores are very good in marketing specifications. The theme of play. With the advent of MediaTek's original 8-core SoC, how it will disrupt the action market will be worth following.

In any case, MediaTek’s eight-core may be the tipping point for the next “nuclear” battle. Whether it is the initiative or the entry of the market, this war may start.