An SoC can be defined as a small device in the form of a chip that contains all of the ingredients needed for the functioning of a smartphone.

Unlike a proper computer processor, smartphone SoCs are also referred to as microprocessors and pack all the gizmos used by a phone into the SoC such as the:
1. CPU cores
2. Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
3. RAM
4. ROM
5. Modems (2G, 3G, 4G LTE, 5G)
6. Radio (FM, BT, WiFi)
7. Image Signal Processor (ISP and DSP) for camera performance etc.

These are all squeezed into a small chip the size of a 50 kobo coin.

The brains behind this technology is a company called ARM holdings. ARM designed this type of microprocessors for smaller devices that run on batteries so as to save space as well as battery and to reduce heat emissions. It's no fun to charge a battery for an hour plus, only to use it for 10 mins while it is hot enough to cook raw eggs abi?

ARM holdings do not produce any chips. Instead they produce designs for Mobile computing and sell them to semiconductor companies that actually manufacture these chips. All smartphones uses ARM cortex cores for their CPUs.

ARM cortex cores uses RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing). This means that they're designed to handle less complex tasks or tend to break difficult tasks into smaller sections before attempting to process them. This is different from Intel CPUs on PCs that use CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) that can simply blaze through any task at a go.

The design methods used by ARM is called Architecture.

ARM licenses and sell their design in two forms

1. Core License
A core licensee buys the design and manufactures it as designed by ARM and then sells the hardware or build a device around it.

2. Architecture License
An architecture licensee buys the design and then modifies it to their own taste. Apple bought A9 cortex designs and rewrote the instruction set data size to 64bits while everyone else were still using 32bits. A modified core is called a Custom Core. Examples of custom cores from Apple are Swift, Cyclone, Typhoon, Twister and Bionic. Qualcomm makes Krait and Kryo (Gold and Silver).

Everyone buys from ARM holdings including Apple, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Exynos, Huawei Kirin, Mediatek and Nvidia Tegra.

ARM cortex CPU cores come in data sizes of 32 and 64 bits as well as instruction sets of 16 bit thumb and 32 bit ARM. The larger the number, the better.

If you are buying a phone from a honest manufacturer, they'll put the type of CPU cores in the advertisement. Some of us buying phones must have seen words like ARM cortex 53, 72, 73 etc.

Inside an SoC, there could be several numbers of CPUs inside. These CPUs are called cores. An SoC with 2 CPUs is called a dual core, 4 CPUs is called a Quad core, 6 CPUs is a Hexa core, 8 is an Octa core and 10 is a deca core.

Inside these SoCs, most SoC manufacturers arrange these core into two groups in a method know as big.LITTLE. High performance group/cluster (for heavy tasks but drains battery) and low performance (only for light tasks but saves battery) although the new Snapdragon 865 uses a High-Mid-low three tier arrangement in the SoC.

Here are a list of all the ARM cortex cores made:
(32-bit)
Year Core
2005 Cortex-A8
2007 Cortex-A9
2009 Cortex-A5
2010 Cortex-A15
2011 Cortex-A7
2013 Cortex-A12
2014 Cortex-A17
2016 Cortex-A32

(64-bit)
Year Core
2012 Cortex-A53
2012 Cortex-A57
2015 Cortex-A35
2015 Cortex-A72
2016 Cortex-A34
2016 Cortex-A73
2017 Cortex-A55
2017 Cortex-A75
2018 Cortex-A76
2018 Cortex-A65AE
2018 Cortex-A76AE
2019 Cortex-A77


Instruction sets
The Cortex-A5 / A7 / A8 / A9 / A12 / A15 / A17 cores implement the ARMv7-A architecture. The Cortex-A32 / A34 / A35 / A53 / A57 / A72 / A73 cores implement the ARMv8-A architecture. The Cortex-A55 / A65 / A75 / A76 / A77 cores implement the ARMv8.2-A architecture.

The A30 tier have low performance. The A50 tier have mid performance and the A70 are high performance.


Finally:
How are cores better than each other? Let's look at two ARM cortex cores: A53 and A72.

Build: the A53 is built in a simpler method with less transistors on a larger substrate (mini motherboard) whilst the A72 has more transistors and is built in a more complex way on a smaller substrate.

Processing: The A53 is bigger so it takes a bit more time for information to travel from CPU to RAM to Cache memory but the A72 is smaller so it takes less time/or it's quicker for information to travel from CPU to RAM and cache memory. The cache memory for the A72 is also bigger than that in the A53.

Nice wan op, someone give this man a medal.

Interesting write up
Seems my phone has only 7 cpus according to an app called CPU Z

Karex81:
Nice wan op, someone gives this man a medal.

Karex81:
Nice wan op, someone gives this man a medal.

Thank you.

Thelucifer666:
Interesting write up
Seems my phone has only 7 cpus according to an app called CPU Z

That can't be right. What's the name of your phone?

atheistandproud:


That can't be right. What's the name of your phone?

Samsung note 9

Thelucifer666:

Samsung note 9

PLATFORM
OS Android 8.1 (Oreo), upgradable to Android 10.0; One UI 2.0

Chipset Exynos 9810 (10 nm) - EMEA
Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 (10 nm) - USA/LATAM, China

CPU Octa-core (4x2.7 GHz Mongoose M3 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A55) - EMEA
Octa-core (4x2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4x1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver) - USA/LATAM, China

GPU Mali-G72 MP18 - EMEA
Adreno 630 - USA/LATAM, China


Copied from GSM Arena

Thelucifer666:

Samsung note 9

Your Samsung Note has an Octa core SoC and the phone uses 4 Exynos Mongoose cores which are custom cores designed by Samsung to run really fast and 4 normal ARM Cortex A55 cores for lesser tasks to save battery.

atheistandproud:



PLATFORM
OS Android 8.1 (Oreo), upgradable to Android 10.0; One UI 2.0

Chipset Exynos 9810 (10 nm) - EMEA
Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 (10 nm) - USA/LATAM, China

CPU Octa-core (4x2.7 GHz Mongoose M3 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A55) - EMEA
Octa-core (4x2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4x1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver) - USA/LATAM, China

GPU Mali-G72 MP18 - EMEA
Adreno 630 - USA/LATAM, China


Coped from GSM Arena

Sorry
It's 8, seems I'm getting blind due to old age.

Nice tech info

Thelucifer666:

Sorry
It's 8, seems I'm getting blind due to old age.

Lol. No reason am.

romoruyi:
Nice tech info

Thank you.

�

reaky:
�

Bro, I hope you know that regular emoji from our keyboards don't work on Nairaland.

I have to say this is one "s+" article. The link up of all the aspects to mention when discussing mobile SoCs is flawless.
nice one op.

atheistandproud:



Bro, I hope you know that regular emoji from our keyboards don't work on Nairaland.

Yea bro ☺️

atheistandproud:


Your Samsung Note has an Octa core SoC and the phone uses 4 Exynos Mongoose cores which are custom cores designed by Samsung to run really fast and 4 normal ARM Cortex A55 cores for lesser tasks to save battery.

It's snapdragon.
Exynos is a joke

talut:
I have to say this is one "s+" article. The link up of all the aspects to mention when discussing mobile SoCs is flawless.
nice one op.

Thank you very much.

Thelucifer666:

It's snapdragon.
Exynos is a joke

I assumed you were using the Exynos version and jumped the gun. I apologize sincerely.

There's an issue with the Exynos chips and variants. Unlike Snapdragon that packs everything into a single chip which then acts as one entity.

Exynos purchases Mali GPUs and installs it as a separate entity in the motherboard. This causes some latency in processing as well as data transfer between the SoC and GPU. Also Mali GPUs are not that good and struggle with graphics intensive tasks. The Exynos design itself could have a bug or two

Samsung needs to put it's house in order.

atheistandproud:


I assumed you were using the Exynos version and jumped the gun. I apologize sincerely.

There's an issue with the Exynos chips and variants. Unlike Snapdragon that packs everything into a single chip which then acts as one entity.

Exynos purchases Mali GPUs and installs it as a separate entity in the motherboard. This causes some latency in processing as well as data transfer between the SoC and GPU. Also Mali GPUs are not that good and struggle with graphics intensive tasks. The Exynos design itself could have a bug or two

Samsung needs to put it's house in order.

Interesting, thanks for the info.

atheistandproud:
An SoC can be defined as a small device in the form of a chip that contains all of the ingredients needed for the functioning of a smartphone.

Unlike a proper computer processor, smartphone SoCs are also referred to as microprocessors and pack all the gizmos used by a phone into the SoC such as the:
1. CPU cores
2. Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
3. RAM
4. ROM
5. Modems (2G, 3G, 4G LTE, 5G)
6. Radio (FM, BT, WiFi)
7. Image Signal Processor (ISP and DSP) for camera performance etc.

These are all squeezed into a small chip the size of a 50 kobo coin.

The brains behind this technology is a company called ARM holdings. ARM designed this type of microprocessors for smaller devices that run on batteries so as to save space as well as battery and to reduce heat emissions. It's no fun to charge a battery for an hour plus, only to use it for 10 mins while it is hot enough to cook raw eggs abi?

ARM holdings do not produce any chips. Instead they produce designs for Mobile computing and sell them to semiconductor companies that actually manufacture these chips. All smartphones uses ARM cortex cores for their CPUs.

ARM cortex cores uses RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing). This means that they're designed to handle less complex tasks or tend to break difficult tasks into smaller sections before attempting to process them. This is different from Intel CPUs on PCs that use CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) that can simply blaze through any task at a go.

The design methods used by ARM is called Architecture.

ARM licenses and sell their design in two forms

1. Core License
A core licensee buys the design and manufactures it as designed by ARM and then sells the hardware or build a device around it.

2. Architecture License
An architecture licensee buys the design and then modifies it to their own taste. Apple bought A9 cortex designs and rewrote the instruction set data size to 64bits while everyone else were still using 32bits. A modified core is called a Custom Core. Examples of custom cores from Apple are Swift, Cyclone, Typhoon, Twister and Bionic. Qualcomm makes Krait and Kryo (Gold and Silver).

Everyone buys from ARM holdings including Apple, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Exynos, Huawei Kirin, Mediatek and Nvidia Tegra.

ARM cortex CPU cores come in data sizes of 32 and 64 bits as well as instruction sets of 16 bit thumb and 32 bit ARM. The larger the number, the better.

If you are buying a phone from a honest manufacturer, they'll put the type of CPU cores in the advertisement. Some of us buying phones must have seen words like ARM cortex 53, 72, 73 etc.

Inside an SoC, there could be several numbers of CPUs inside. These CPUs are called cores. An SoC with 2 CPUs is called a dual core, 4 CPUs is called a Quad core, 6 CPUs is a Hexa core, 8 is an Octa core and 10 is a deca core.

Inside these SoCs, most SoC manufacturers arrange these core into two groups in a method know as big.LITTLE. High performance group/cluster (for heavy tasks but drains battery) and low performance (only for light tasks but saves battery) although the new Snapdragon 865 uses a High-Mid-low three tier arrangement in the SoC.

Here are a list of all the ARM cortex cores made:
(32-bit)
Year Core
2005 Cortex-A8
2007 Cortex-A9
2009 Cortex-A5
2010 Cortex-A15
2011 Cortex-A7
2013 Cortex-A12
2014 Cortex-A17
2016 Cortex-A32

(64-bit)
Year Core
2012 Cortex-A53
2012 Cortex-A57
2015 Cortex-A35
2015 Cortex-A72
2016 Cortex-A34
2016 Cortex-A73
2017 Cortex-A55
2017 Cortex-A75
2018 Cortex-A76
2018 Cortex-A65AE
2018 Cortex-A76AE
2019 Cortex-A77


Instruction sets
The Cortex-A5 / A7 / A8 / A9 / A12 / A15 / A17 cores implement the ARMv7-A architecture. The Cortex-A32 / A34 / A35 / A53 / A57 / A72 / A73 cores implement the ARMv8-A architecture. The Cortex-A55 / A65 / A75 / A76 / A77 cores implement the ARMv8.2-A architecture.

The A30 tier have low performance. The A50 tier have mid performance and the A70 are high performance.


Finally:
How are cores better than each other? Let's look at two ARM cortex cores: A53 and A72.

Build: the A53 is built in a simpler method with less transistors on a larger substrate (mini motherboard) whilst the A72 has more transistors and is built in a more complex way on a smaller substrate.

Processing: The A53 is bigger so it takes a bit more time for information to travel from CPU to RAM to Cache memory but the A72 is smaller so it takes less time/or it's quicker for information to travel from CPU to RAM and cache memory. The cache memory for the A72 is also bigger than that in the A53.

This is educative bro. Now I know the exact meaning of SoC and a little about ARM architecture. I'll hope to see a write up about GPU to know which is better. Thanks for the knowledge

BenDanor:

This is educative bro. Now I know the exact meaning of SoC and a little about ARM architecture. I'll hope to see a write up about GPU to know which is better. Thanks for the knowledge

You're welcome my oga.

BenDanor:

This is educative bro. Now I know the exact meaning of SoC and a little about ARM architecture. I'll hope to see a write up about GPU to know which is better. Thanks for the knowledge

Generally speaking, for Androids, Qualcomm's Adreno GPUs are the best. Adreno GPUs are only used by Snapdragon SoCs.

The other two GPU brands used for Androids are Mali GPU (Mediatek, Exynos and Kirin) and Power VR (Mediatek mostly and sometimes Exynos).

atheistandproud:


Generally speaking, for Androids, Qualcomm's Adreno GPUs are the best. Adreno GPUs are only used by Snapdragon SoCs.

The other two GPU brands used for Androids are Mali GPU (Mediatek, Exynos and Kirin) and Power VR (Mediatek mostly and sometimes Exynos).

Thanks for the info

BenDanor:

Thanks for the info

You're welcome.

This write-up is damn informative and interesting to read. Hoping to see more posts on GPU, binning (not pixel binning) and clocking

KrazyDave16:
This write-up is damn informative and interesting to read. Hoping to see more posts on GPU, binning (not pixel binning) and clocking

Thanks. Initially, I wanted to write on Snapdragon chipsets but somehow I sidetracked and ended up writing on this instead. My brain get mind of its own sometimes. Lol.

atheistandproud:



Thanks. Initially, I wanted to write on Snapdragon chipsets but somehow I sidetracked and ended up writing on this instead. My brain get mind of its own sometimes. Lol.

Nothing spoil.

KrazyDave16:


Nothing spoil.

Ok bro.

Nice one op...
ARM will design, while TSMC will manufacture for the chips companies