In the following series of posts, we’re going to be doing an Introduction to Smartphone SoCs series. If you missed the one I did two years ago. This is a chance to catch.

This introduction to Smartphone SoCs series is designed to familiarize users with smartphone SoCs and why they’re very important.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKUFm7oPe-U

Background
Once upon a time, you only had one device for one task. That was the way it was. This was the case when I was a child, all the way through to my teens and early to mid 20s.

It’s only in the last 7 years that I have started really seeing devices that are truly all in one.

If you wanted to play games, you had to get a purpose built device designed to play games. In the late 90s, Sega Mega Drive 2 and Nintendo NES owners used to argue bitterly about whose system was superior.

I had no console myself. My dad hated games with a passion, but a classmate of mine had a Sega Mega Drive 2. So I was on the Sega side.

Later on, the Sony Playstation One was basically the only console that was popular in my area without competition, at least before the PlayStation vs Xbox rivalry started.

If you wanted to watch movies, it was VHS tapes and VCR players to Video CDs and VCD players. Then DVDs and DVD players became the defacto medium of choice.

You wanted to play music? There were these little cassettes with side A and side B. Sometimes out of boredom, I used Bic pens to rewind them. Later on there were ipods and ipod knockoffs.

Radio? You needed a Tape radio or those other small radios that became popular in the mid 2000s.

You wanted to type a document, check mail, do PowerPoint or Excel…get a PC (Windows or Mac)

But now you can do all of these with one device. Your phone. This was unthinkable just a few years ago. Sometimes I look back and I marvel at how much the world has changed in my lifetime.

I remember when I could afford to buy my first playstation 1 and I would lie down waiting for electricity to come on. Now I have an emulator on my phone and can play whenever I choose.

Read: What is an SoC?

Introduction to Smartphone SoCs
All of these advances are due mostly to the SoC or System on a Chip. Most people, myself included, call it a processor when trying to explain it to other people who aren’t as tech savvy.

But the word processor doesn’t give you a full idea of how revolutionary the SoC is.

The SoC is called a System on a Chip because that’s what it actually is. An entire system on one chip.

That is on an SoC, there are several different CPUs that carry out different functions but they all work together as a single unit.

On most SoCs today, you will find

1. CPUs or CPU cores
2. GPU
3. ISPs
4. APUs or NPUs
5. Display chip
6. Modems/radios
Etc.

These parts all work together to enable you to do a lot of things on your smartphone.

Read: What are CPU cores?

CPU cores
The CPU core are the main computing hub on your smartphone. This is the part of an SoC that lots of power users and gamers are interested in.

This is because the power of the CPU cores determines the amount of processing load or tasks that a phone can handle.

Think of your phone as a house, the appliances as apps or tasks and your CPU cores are the power generator.

If you own a fridge and use several TVs, lights, fans etc. Common sense should tell you that a small tiger generator would be totally inadequate for the tasks that you have.

But if you buy a big 4.5kVA Elepaq generator. It would have a lot more power and would handle tasks and appliances better.

This is why it is very important for people to know the type of users that they are.

Most people really don’t know the type of users that they are. This is very funny and annoying at the same time.

Someone messaged me recently and talked about whether the Helio P35 powered Vivo Y15S would be good for video recording. The answer is firmly no.

I understand that all fingers are not equal but many people do not know how to match their expectations and usage patterns to their budget.

Read: What is a GPU?

GPUs
After the CPU cores, you’ve got the GPUs. While CPUs tackle the data and processing aspects, the CPU forwards everything graphics to the GPU. These include video, apps, UI, games and so much more.

The CPU and GPU act together to process data as a single unit. Their strength or ability level will determine what videos you can watch or what apps or games you can play with your phone.

I told this story last year about a corp member in my vicinity who was using a Tecno Pop 2 but was obsessed with Snapchat. After handling my stock cam, she said she didn’t like Snapchat anymore.

She would want to record videos on my device and transfer to hers. But me understanding the capability of her own device would try to reduce the video quality to 720p.

She noticed and protested. So I set the quality back to 4K. I went to buy a cold bottle of coke and waited for the drama to begin.

She recorded several videos each around 30s of time. I opened Xender for her to transfer and collected my phone back.

Next thing I heard was “Hey J, why is the video skipping?”

Me: ��

The next thing I heard was “Oh crap! My phone is stuck! J, your video has gotten my phone stuck!” ����

It took almost an hour to get the phone to come back on.

Tecno Pop 2 uses a really weak CPU + GPU set-up and those video were too heavy for it to process. It couldn’t and crashed apparently.

Read: Image Signal Processor

ISP + AI

Then there’s the ISP. The ISP refers to the Image Signal Processor. This is the part of the SoC that handles anything that is captured with the cameras.

So when you capture a picture or video, it goes to your ISP first for processing.

The ISP also helps the GPU with the decoding and playback of video as well.

Most ISPs are paired with an AI unit known as a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) or AI processing unit (APU).

Most phones are smart devices that are designed to carry our smart tasks such as seeing and recognizing things in their environment. Phones can also read and translate language as well.

The eyes of the phone are the camera. So therefore, the AI has to be attached to the cameras inorder to “see” and carry out it’s functions.

This is why you can use Google lens to recognize stuff or scan and copy text without having to write a single word. I used to wow coworkers by miraculously typing documents with 70+ plus pages overnight.

All I has to do was scan each page, copy the text and paste to Microsoft word. Sometimes I could do 15 pages at a go and paste to word.

The only work I had to do was edit the words that the AI misspells.

The AI unit also helps the ISP edit/process pictures before they appear on your screen. Sometimes when photos look better on your phone, than in real life, you may have to thank your AI unit for that.

The Display chip determines the resolution of display that the SoC can support.

Network radios
The last area I’m going to look at are the network modems.

The reasons why Laptops and PCs can’t browse the net by themselves is that they lack a network modem or radio that is capable of connecting to a network.

Our phones have no such problem. They can connect readily and easily to any network. So long as a SIM card and data are present

Besides the network radios, there’s also radios for Bluetooth and WiFi as well.

So that’s a full introduction on the subject. I’ll be wrapping up at this juncture. Comments are highly welcome.

https://inquisitiveuniverse.com/2022/02/19/introduction-to-smartphone-socs/

Nice one



Thanks for educating.

Good read

This is front page worthy. By the way, where is thepoweruser?

MubarakMukhtar:
Nice one



Thanks for educating.

You're welcome

atheistandproud:
In the following series of posts, we’re going to be doing an Introduction to Smartphone SoCs series. If you missed the one I did two years ago. This is a chance to catch.

This introduction to Smartphone SoCs series is designed to familiarize users with smartphone SoCs and why they’re very important.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKUFm7oPe-U

Background
Once upon a time, you only had one device for one task. That was the way it was. This was the case when I was a child, all the way through to my teens and early to mid 20s.

It’s only in the last 7 years that I have started really seeing devices that are truly all in one.

If you wanted to play games, you had to get a purpose built device designed to play games. In the late 90s, Sega Mega Drive 2 and Nintendo NES owners used to argue bitterly about whose system was superior.

I had no console myself. My dad hated games with a passion, but a classmate of mine had a Sega Mega Drive 2. So I was on the Sega side.

Later on, the Sony Playstation One was basically the only console that was popular in my area without competition, at least before the PlayStation vs Xbox rivalry started.

If you wanted to watch movies, it was VHS tapes and VCR players to Video CDs and VCD players. Then DVDs and DVD players became the defacto medium of choice.

You wanted to play music? There were these little cassettes with side A and side B. Sometimes out of boredom, I used Bic pens to rewind them. Later on there were ipods and ipod knockoffs.

Radio? You needed a Tape radio or those other small radios that became popular in the mid 2000s.

You wanted to type a document, check mail, do PowerPoint or Excel…get a PC (Windows or Mac)

But now you can do all of these with one device. Your phone. This was unthinkable just a few years ago. Sometimes I look back and I marvel at how much the world has changed in my lifetime.

I remember when I could afford to buy my first playstation 1 and I would lie down waiting for electricity to come on. Now I have an emulator on my phone and can play whenever I choose.

Read: What is an SoC?

Introduction to Smartphone SoCs
All of these advances are due mostly to the SoC or System on a Chip. Most people, myself included, call it a processor when trying to explain it to other people who aren’t as tech savvy.

But the word processor doesn’t give you a full idea of how revolutionary the SoC is.

The SoC is called a System on a Chip because that’s what it actually is. An entire system on one chip.

That is on an SoC, there are several different CPUs that carry out different functions but they all work together as a single unit.

On most SoCs today, you will find

1. CPUs or CPU cores
2. GPU
3. ISPs
4. APUs or NPUs
5. Display chip
6. Modems/radios
Etc.

These parts all work together to enable you to do a lot of things on your smartphone.

Read: What are CPU cores?

CPU cores
The CPU core are the main computing hub on your smartphone. This is the part of an SoC that lots of power users and gamers are interested in.

This is because the power of the CPU cores determines the amount of processing load or tasks that a phone can handle.

Think of your phone as a house, the appliances as apps or tasks and your CPU cores are the power generator.

If you own a fridge and use several TVs, lights, fans etc. Common sense should tell you that a small tiger generator would be totally inadequate for the tasks that you have.

But if you buy a big 4.5kVA Elepaq generator. It would have a lot more power and would handle tasks and appliances better.

This is why it is very important for people to know the type of users that they are.

Most people really don’t know the type of users that they are. This is very funny and annoying at the same time.

Someone messaged me recently and talked about whether the Helio P35 powered Vivo Y15S would be good for video recording. The answer is firmly no.

I understand that all fingers are not equal but many people do not know how to match their expectations and usage patterns to their budget.

Read: What is a GPU?

GPUs
After the CPU cores, you’ve got the GPUs. While CPUs tackle the data and processing aspects, the CPU forwards everything graphics to the GPU. These include video, apps, UI, games and so much more.

The CPU and GPU act together to process data as a single unit. Their strength or ability level will determine what videos you can watch or what apps or games you can play with your phone.

I told this story last year about a corp member in my vicinity who was using a Tecno Pop 2 but was obsessed with Snapchat. After handling my stock cam, she said she didn’t like Snapchat anymore.

She would want to record videos on my device and transfer to hers. But me understanding the capability of her own device would try to reduce the video quality to 720p.

She noticed and protested. So I set the quality back to 4K. I went to buy a cold bottle of coke and waited for the drama to begin.

She recorded several videos each around 30s of time. I opened Xender for her to transfer and collected my phone back.

Next thing I heard was “Hey J, why is the video skipping?”

Me: ��

The next thing I heard was “Oh crap! My phone is stuck! J, your video has gotten my phone stuck!” ����

It took almost an hour to get the phone to come back on.

Tecno Pop 2 uses a really weak CPU + GPU set-up and those video were too heavy for it to process. It couldn’t and crashed apparently.

Read: Image Signal Processor

ISP + AI

Then there’s the ISP. The ISP refers to the Image Signal Processor. This is the part of the SoC that handles anything that is captured with the cameras.

So when you capture a picture or video, it goes to your ISP first for processing.

The ISP also helps the GPU with the decoding and playback of video as well.

Most ISPs are paired with an AI unit known as a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) or AI processing unit (APU).

Most phones are smart devices that are designed to carry our smart tasks such as seeing and recognizing things in their environment. Phones can also read and translate language as well.

The eyes of the phone are the camera. So therefore, the AI has to be attached to the cameras inorder to “see” and carry out it’s functions.

This is why you can use Google lens to recognize stuff or scan and copy text without having to write a single word. I used to wow coworkers by miraculously typing documents with 70+ plus pages overnight.

All I has to do was scan each page, copy the text and paste to Microsoft word. Sometimes I could do 15 pages at a go and paste to word.

The only work I had to do was edit the words that the AI misspells.

The AI unit also helps the ISP edit/process pictures before they appear on your screen. Sometimes when photos look better on your phone, than in real life, you may have to thank your AI unit for that.

The Display chip determines the resolution of display that the SoC can support.

Network radios
The last area I’m going to look at are the network modems.

The reasons why Laptops and PCs can’t browse the net by themselves is that they lack a network modem or radio that is capable of connecting to a network.

Our phones have no such problem. They can connect readily and easily to any network. So long as a SIM card and data are present

Besides the network radios, there’s also radios for Bluetooth and WiFi as well.

So that’s a full introduction on the subject. I’ll be wrapping up at this juncture. Comments are highly welcome.

https://inquisitiveuniverse.com/2022/02/19/introduction-to-smartphone-socs/

Simplified for the tech dummies.
Thumbs up bro.

Thumbs up, Atleast with this information, one brand will not be able to play on the intelligence of Nigerians by selling a Unisoc processor phone for 66k.

Great. I like that you're building an authority for yourself. Keep it up

Hakeem12:
This is front page worthy. By the way, where is thepoweruser?

It's prolly gonna end up here. I don't care. People actively looking for knowledge should find it. Those who are waiting to be spoonfed. Well I dunno.

scarycuteface:
Good read

Thank you.

Prinzton:



Simplified for the tech dummies.
Thumbs up bro.

Yes oh lol

masterfactor:
Thumbs up, Atleast with this information, one brand will not be able to play on the intelligence of Nigerians by selling a Unisoc processor phone for 66k.

I know what you're talking about but lemme no talk

Eyanbahose:
Great. I like that you're building an authority for yourself. Keep it up

Have been since 2020. Thanks anyways.

atheistandproud:


Have been since 2020. Thanks anyways.

kudos