Ever been confused by many top brands behind processors used in mobile phones and android tablets?
Don't worry, I will share a lesser known fact about them that will clear all your doubts.
Firstly note that,
SoC means "System-on-a-chip" architecture. This means that, along with main processor, GPU and other peripherals also are embedded in the same single chip for compactness.
There are mostly only TWO mobile processor architectures in the market !!!!
They are, Intel Atom and, the one and only, ARM processor family.
Out of these two, Intel Atom is not popular at all as it consumes much more power and yet delivers poorer performance as compared to ARM processors.
Thus, finally we are left with only one brand in mobile market ---- ARM.
ARMv7 instruction set is currently in use and will be for the next 5-7 years for mobile devices.
So, what about the other brands, namely,
are some implementations of ARM Cortex A15 model.
Don't worry, I will share a lesser known fact about them that will clear all your doubts.
Firstly note that,
SoC means "System-on-a-chip" architecture. This means that, along with main processor, GPU and other peripherals also are embedded in the same single chip for compactness.
There are mostly only TWO mobile processor architectures in the market !!!!
They are, Intel Atom and, the one and only, ARM processor family.
Out of these two, Intel Atom is not popular at all as it consumes much more power and yet delivers poorer performance as compared to ARM processors.
Thus, finally we are left with only one brand in mobile market ---- ARM.
ARMv7 instruction set is currently in use and will be for the next 5-7 years for mobile devices.
So, what about the other brands, namely,
- Snapdragon by Qualcomm
- OMAP by Texas Instruments
- Exynos by Samsung
- Ax by Apple
- RK3xxx by Rockchip
- A31 by AllWinner
- MTxxxx by MediaTek
Well, the most surprising fact is that all these are basically different implementations of the same ARM processor family.
For example,
- Nvidia Tegra 2/3/4i
- Rockchip RK30xx
- S
- T-Ericsson NovaThor
- Texas Instruments OMAP 4
- Samsung Exynos 4
are all based on the SAME ARM cortex A9 technology and thus may be considered more or less equivalent.
So, instead of going after brands like Qualcomm and Nvidia, we can just check their cortex version number to check
their performance index easily. Even Apple A6 processor used in the iPhone 5 is based on ARMv7 instruction set.
But they have not directly implemented any application processor model like cortex A9 or A15, etc.
Thus, the latest and fastest processor can be easily known by checking it's ARM Cortex generation.
Nvidia Tegra 4,
Samsung Exynos 5 and
Texas Instruments OMAP 5
For further credibility,
The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4 will be using it too!!!
Qualcomm S4 SoC(System-on-chip) has some similarities with ARM Cortex A15 model.
Main advantage of Qualcomm S4 chipsets over others is that Qualcomm SoC has additional hardware like cellular radio, Wi-Fi, GPS/GLONASS and Bluetooth on the same die. This reduces cost and complexity for equipment manufacturers like Samsung, Nokia, LG, Apple, etc.
Qualcomm S4 SoC(System-on-chip) has some similarities with ARM Cortex A15 model.
Main advantage of Qualcomm S4 chipsets over others is that Qualcomm SoC has additional hardware like cellular radio, Wi-Fi, GPS/GLONASS and Bluetooth on the same die. This reduces cost and complexity for equipment manufacturers like Samsung, Nokia, LG, Apple, etc.
