Next 2020/2021: alternatives to rk3588?

[back2future]

What's possible beyond rk3588, 8nm class, quadA76/quadA55/G52/NPU2.0, ~Q1/Q2 2020 ?
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Rockchip- ... 239.0.html
https://www.96rocks.com/blog/2019/04/24 ... -and-more/

[Insights into Future Technology Trends and Consumer Spending
https://www.arm.com/-/media/Files/pdf/a ... 804917e6e2]

[kafan1986]

What's possible beyond rk3588, 8nm class, quadA76/quadA55/G52/NPU2.0, ~Q1/Q2 2020 ?
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Rockchip- ... 239.0.html
https://www.96rocks.com/blog/2019/04/24 ... -and-more/

[Insights into Future Technology Trends and Consumer Spending
https://www.arm.com/-/media/Files/pdf/a ... 804917e6e2]

I can't see price reduction and actual stable SBC till 2nd half of 2021.

[back2future]

Apple (A13/A13x...A14?)¹ engineers (Nuvia, Phoenix) could present what, if there would have been competitors to their Thunderbolt 3 lately (USB3.2 is getting closer with 20Gb/s, but still only half of TB3_2015 top bandwidth. Also means USB has lower consumer prices and will be sufficient for most of today's user demand. Even for external, distant-cabled (ePCI-E) GPUs and multi-netusb @2.5-5Gbps.)
Was looking for graphical Roadmaps (Intel, AMD, ARM, ...), but this article seems more appropriate (with ~30min for reading):
https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/12/16 ... -and-gpus/

[ It's not only about hardware: fp32 vs bfloat16 shows intelligent progress with handling demand: Both express number ranges ~1e-38 - 3e38, but need 32bit vs 16bit memory space, while bfloat16 is not suitable for integer based calculations. Being precisely for IEEE 754 32-bit base-2 floating-point variable: "Integers in [-16777216,16777216] can be exactly represented". That's ±2^24.]


Intel: Roadmap (not official) for starting Comet,Tiger,Rocket,Skyhawk,Elkhart Lake <2020]
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1334612
https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-in ... #gs.befn91
hpc: https://www.hwsw.hu/kepek/hirek/2018/07 ... 2638534728
AMD: Roadmap for Picasso,Matisse,Castle Peak
https://videocardz.com/75217/amd-ryzen- ... and-renoir
ARM: Roadmap for A76,Neoverse,Deimos,Hercules <2020]
https://www.arm.com/company/news/2018/0 ... erformance
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/arm_holdin ... eoverse_n1
arm devices with DS-5: https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-sof ... ed-devices

Mali graphics: https://www.google.de/url?sa=i&source=i ... 3544935204, https://images.anandtech.com/doci/12834/7.PNG
Imagination Technologies, 12/2019 (PowerVR, 10th) IMG A-Series .¹
Nvidia_gpus: Roadmap for Pascal,Volta/Turing,Ampere for 2016-2020
https://appuals.com/based-nvidia-ampere-architecture/
Qualcomm Adreno .¹

LPDDR5 (androidheadlines.com/2019/02/jedec-lpddr5-ram.html):
"Samsung has been developing LPDDR5-based chips since at least 2017, and the South Korean tech giant already unveiled the first LPDDR5 DRAM chip back in July 2018.
This product is manufactured using the 10nm process node technology, and it offers a capacity of 8GB and data transfer speeds of 6,400Mbps."
"Samsung plans to launch LPDDR5-based solutions for smartphones by 2020, and it may first appear inside the flagship smartphone offering of the South Korean tech giant. Another major semiconductor firm, Micron, also announced that it will release LPDDR5 RAM chips in 2020."

large and growing markets (TAM³ by 2020: PC 30B$,graphics 10B$,datacenter 25B$,automotive/inference 10B$,machine learning 11B$):
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads ... origin.png



AFAIK: Rockchip rk3588 will be at a performance level comparable or even above H2's Celeron Gemini Lake platform.
"According to ARM, the A76 is expected to offer twice the performance of an A73 and is targeted beyond mobile workloads. The performance is targeted at "laptop class", including Windows 10 devices, competitive with Intel's Kaby Lake."²
Most likely LPDDR5 on mobiles is already standardized when arriving on Desktops or armDesktops (would avoid naming like "Desktop replacement" or "light Desktop", since ARM-cores seem to be above that performance ((cost*energy)/cpu) level already)?
( rk3588 would be comparable with todays mobile Snapdragon 855, Exynos 9820 or Kirin 980 series, but earlier gpu? )

and thx for contribution to all.

[ 1) https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple ... 38668.html https://macdailynews.com/2019/04/17/wha ... t-deliver/ https://macdailynews.com/2019/02/22/app ... 20-iphone/ beyond A14_2020: “Kuo also believes that Apple’s advanced driver assistance systems in a still-evolving Apple Car project will get a TSMC chip at launch at some point between 2023 and 2025, with it supporting either high automation of driver’s tasks, or complete automation, including navigation and driving.”
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A76
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_add ... _about_TAM ]
4) 5nm towards 3nm is a bigger step: https://m.eet.com/media/1311009/NodeCostsIBS-min.png
5) 5nm for pcie 6.0 0.96pJ/bit @ 130Gb/s PAM-4


[ Don't forget about more important development to support til 2025, please:
Water for life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-sta ... stillation ]

[back2future]

A73 About the Cortex-A73 processor functions
Amlogic S922X, gpu Mali G52
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/co ... 62065.html
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/co ... BIJIC.html (A53)

A76 Register descriptions
Rockchip rk3588, gpu Mali G52?
"The Cortex‑A76AE core is implemented inside the DynamIQ Shared Unit-AE (DSU-AE) cluster. For more information, see the Arm® DynamIQ Shared Unit-AE Technical Reference Manual.
The Cortex‑A76AE core cannot be instantiated as a single core. The Cortex‑A76AE core must be used in a core pair configuration with a maximum of two core pairs in each cluster, for a total of four cores."
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/co ... 79207.html
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/co ... 55166.html (A55)

A77 Register descriptions
MediaTek 5G SoC, cpu Cortex A77, gpu Mali G77 (11/27/2019 Dimensity 1000)
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/co ... 79207.html
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/co ... 72689.html (A57)

Arm flexible access: licensing details (since 07/2019)

(edit 11/16/2019)
RISC-V membership agreement
Cores are no entire SoC:
RISC-V: Cores and SoCs
RISC-V microarchitectures
The RISC-V Instruction Set Manual
MIT: CNFET (carbon) RISC-V
Nvidia NV-RISCV

[tekz24]

Hi,

I think rk3588 will be outed by Snapdragon 865, even the 855 is a powerful and trusted processor in the market. In 2020 the devices will be taken over by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 chip and if we talk about the devices then there are many tabs and Smartphones in 2020 (www.thebestadvices.com/upcoming-smartphones) are rumored with this chip. So i think they should bring an upgrade to rk3588.

[elatllat]

The Xuantie 910 looks interesting.

[back2future]

Thx for informing

[elatllat]

Also https://libre-riscv.org/3d_gpu/

[DrM]

Why not have an SBC with an 8cx?

[back2future]

[ Seems having to technically compete with Microsoft® SQ1™ (Adreno 685 gpu, fourth-generation AI Engine), like powering a Surface Pro X tablet (with slim pen) starting at $1099,99 and comparable to "Intel Core i5 8th gen U-series (e.g. i5-8250U)" performance (that's far off a possibly lower cost rk3588 board including display)?

"Beyond the custom CPU’s competitiveness, the cancellation likely is tied to both Samsung’s and Arm’s future CPU roadmaps and timing. Following Deimos (Cortex-A77) and Hercules (Cortex-A78?), Arm is developing a new high-performance CPU on the new ARMv9 architecture, and we expect a major new v9 little core to also accompany the Matterhorn design." ]

[elatllat]

> Speculative Yes
They should have just made ARMv9 non-speculative and recommended SOCs throw in ~20 cores.

[rooted]

Yeah the SQ1 coming in at 3ghz with a 2 tflop GPU is quite impressive for an ARM device, I would love to have a tablet powered by this running Linux with a proper touch UI. I'm not using Windows 10 and find it hard to believe it has 11 hour battery life running such a heavy OS.

[AreaScout]

That would be a cool SoC https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/m ... xynos-990/ It uses an external modem processor so you can leave this out if you are going to use it for application purpose only like we do.

But it's a new premium processor so it will be very expensive I think

RG

[elatllat]

I wonder if a NPU is any more popular than a modem on SBCs though.

[rooted]

I think hardkernel should definitely release a device capable of battery operation with a good NPU, there is a nice size market for such a device.

[AreaScout]

NPU and M.2 Slot for i.e FPGA board compatibility would be fine

RG

[back2future]

[ SoC with possible V52 (for comparison) could be a Mediatek S900 in smartTV consumer markets on early 2020.
or Mediatek MT8183 ]

Helio P90/G90
Helio M70 MT6885 ¹ Q1/2020

[back2future]

AMlogic S908X .¹
Realtek RTD1319 .¹

[mad_ady]

Frankly I hope to see a new Rockchip Odroid product. N1 has good software support because it's based on a soc better supported by its manufacturer...

[meveric]

I agree with @mad_ady... the ODROID N1 might be the first board that runs on default OS Kernel and drivers, with panfrost and mesa support.

[back2future]

[ fw: Kunpeng 920 desktop board, possible 64GB uDIMM, including pcie 3.0 x16/x4/x1 (while SoC supports pcie 4.0), but ATX power_supply standard (and dependency) ]
Noteworthy for the poll question above: Awareness of software support for available hardware has been getting stronger emphasis by voters here since starting it (thx for contribution also)

[odroidn2user]

Well, I don't know much about hardware capability for next Odroid devices, but hardware capability without software support is pretty meaningless. So the choice would/should probably be decided by what actually comes with decent, working drivers.
Depending on the goodwill of the community for arranging the hardware support perhaps isn't the best way to go.

[rooted]

Unfortunately the selection of SoC's with great software support is very limited, nearly non-existent.

Look how long it took to get the XU4 supported so well, only because it was the most powerful device available when released is it still so relevant today.

[back2future]

["I'm getting more and more enthusiastic about the near future of the Odroid N2 device! "]
Depending on the goodwill of the community for arranging the hardware support perhaps isn't the best way to go.

What's the manhandling advice therefore?

[back2future]

Frankly I hope to see a new Rockchip Odroid product. N1 has good software support because it's based on a soc better supported by its manufacturer...

What background information, beside their products itself, helps to understand what AMlogic and Rockchip are aiming for and who they are (considering their production philosophies, customer relations, support to environment and society, etc.)?

[back2future]

* XU4 * the most powerful device available when released is it still so relevant today.

It's a pity that Samsung has no cheap SoC @themoment, that is furthering this high level into sbc market. There are other SoC assemblers now (but fewer core developers [outside of China]).

[back2future]

NPU and M.2 Slot for i.e FPGA board compatibility would be fine

RG

Not to forget AI offerings for communication platforms for more appropriate time usage and efficiency on bandwidth and load balancing (not only in support for commercial business)?

[elatllat]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15228/sa ... iscv-cores