Chinese processor maker is going after Taiwanese chip giant Mediatek with their own Allwiiner A80 Octa-core processor.
Allwinner have taken a different approach for their 8-core chip and have gone for a ARM’s big.LITTLE technology similar to Samusung’s Exynos chip, but can also switch to all 8-cores if the power is needed.
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In theory this should make the A80 more power efficient than the Mediatek MT6592, which runs all 8-cores at once.
The Allwinner A80 octa is due to launch by the end of the year, so Mediatek will have a few months head-start on the Chinese brand, but the competition is great to see, we just hope Allwinner will support Open source better than their rivals.
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Not sure why people keep saying the MT 8 core is running all 8 at the same time, always. As far as I understand it is a big.LITTLE dual quad core just like the samsung octacore and it switcches on the second quad if and when needed.
What’s the point doing that if they’re all A7 cores?
I agree with you. Allwinner have taken the same approach as Mediatek’s one describe on their website : http://www.mediatek.com/_en/Event/201307_TrueOctaCore/biglittle.php
The second cluster of quad-core is only activated when needed in a dual cluster mode which still different than Samsung until Exynos octa-pella CPUs appear.
I’m not sure that the link you provided is right, Mètre Pouces — you name is “meter inches” isn’t it? 🙂
That link does describe a standard big.Little architecture, and their product line does call for big.Little design coming in the next several months. But the current MediaTek 8-core design is not the same.
Still, I think you guys are both right, somewhere in the mediatek documentation there is something that suggests that they can power on/off individual cores, going from 1 to 8 cores as needed, with the current 8-core (non big.Little design).
hate to give a second response but I just reread that “True Octa-core big.Little” page. I wanted to point out that according to them, the SoC and driver for big.Little designs already supports HMP, meaning that you can either swap whole clusters at the same time, or turn off individual cores one at a time (going from 1-8 cores as needed).
So you will get granular core power control either way, with the first gen 8 core (T6592) and later big.Little designs.
”In theory this should make the A80 more power efficient than the Mediatek MT6592, which runs all 8-cores at once.”
Why? You do not know if the cores are 40nm or 28nm that makes a big difference in power consumption to. The A31(s) did still use 40nm making it cheaper but more power consuming then when made 28nm. (smaller chip = less power needed).
True. If they switch to 28nm they ll make very good chipsets..Now A31 is a powerfull CPU but also battery eater
Just a little notice, in the first sentence it says Allwiiner 😛