As a flagship mobile phone chip, the Dimensity 9300 released by MediaTek at the end of last year can be said to have fought a good turnaround.
Not only the vivo X100 series, but also the OPPO FInd X7 and the upcoming Redmi K70 Extreme Edition all use the Dimensity 9300, which is not inferior to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Apple A17 Pro of the same generation in terms of energy efficiency testing and actual experience.
Among them, at least in MediaTek's view, a very important factor is the "all-large nuclear design". Even in the new generation of flagship chips, MediaTek seems to intend to continue the "all-big core design".
According to the well-known news blogger @Digichat.com, this year's Dimensity 9400 will use Arm's latest generation of CPU architecture, codenamed "BlackHawk", and the Cortex-X5 super-large core has a larger IPC (instructions per clock cycle) than the Apple A17 Pro in internal verification.
Photo/Weibo @ Digital Chat Station
IPC is one of the key indicators to measure the performance of a chip, and the higher the IPC at the same frequency, the stronger the performance.
At the same time, he also pointed out that the Dimensity 9400 will also continue the strategy of all-large core, completely cutting off the traditional "small core".
However, it is obviously not only MediaTek that is in the big core, Qualcomm has actually continued to strengthen the weight of the "big core" in the last two generations, not to mention Apple, which has always attached more importance to the "big core".
But why did MediaTek and Qualcomm begin to learn from Apple and pay attention to the big core?
Qualcomm and MediaTek are moving towards large-scale nucleus
As Qualcomm's latest flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has been well received since its launch, not only with the GPU far ahead, but also with the CPU performance and energy efficiency of the Apple A17 Pro.
In terms of architectural design, Qualcomm has made considerable adjustments. On the basis of the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which has increased the number of large cores and reduced the number of small cores, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 continues to increase the number of large cores to 5 and reduce the number of small cores to 2, forming a "1+5+2" triple cluster architecture.
In terms of frequency, the Cortex-X4 super-core is clocked at 3.3GHz, and the 5 Cortex-A720 cores are divided into two groups, 3.2GHz and 3.0GHz, respectively, and 2 small cores with a 2.3GHz frequency.
MediaTek will be more "radical" and directly announce "opening the era of all-big nuclear computing".
Photo / MediaTek
In terms of CPU, the Dimensity 9300 also comes with 8 cores, but instead of any small cores, it simply consists of 4 Cortex-X4 ultra-large cores and 4 Cortex-A720 large cores.
Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the Dimensity 9300 looks very aggressive at first glance, and before the official release, the outside world was worried about its power consumption performance "exploding". But after the actual reveal, you will find out MediaTek's true "mind".
First of all, the Dimensity 9300's four Cortex-X4 super-cores are actually divided into two groups. One of them is clocked at 3.25GHz, which is about the same as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The other 3 are clocked at 2.85GHz, which is not even as high as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's big core.
Secondly, in terms of large cores, the Dimensity 9300's 4 Cortex-A720s are all limited to 2.0GHz, which is also lower in frequency than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 small core.
So to some extent, the Dimensity 9300 ostensibly adopts a "4+4" dual-cluster architecture, but in fact it is closer to the traditional "1+3+4" three-cluster architecture.
It's not "standing still" at all.
You know, the efficiency of the super-large nucleus is significantly greater than that of the large nucleus, and much larger than that of the small nucleus. In other words, the frequency of running a large core with a super-large core, and the frequency of running a small core with a large core, in addition to the improvement of performance, is more practical in terms of efficiency and energy efficiency.
In fact, the Dimensity 9300 is far ahead of its predecessor, the Dimensity 9200, on the energy efficiency curves measured in Geek Bay.
Photo/Geek Bay
But a few years ago, it might have been hard to imagine this change.
Apple: A big core is good
Many mobile phone enthusiasts may remember that in 2016, MediaTek launched the Helio X20 ten-core processor, which is 2 x 2.5GHz Cortex-A72 large cores, 4 x 2.0GHz Cortex-A53 small cores, and 4 x 1.4GHz A53 small cores.
However, the increase in the number of cores of the Helio X20 does not bring about an improvement in the actual experience, but is affected by the power consumption and heating problems caused by too many inefficient small cores, and only a few cores actually participate in the "work", which can easily lead to the lag of the mobile phone.
Photo/Electronic enthusiast
In contrast, the Snapdragon 835 launched by Qualcomm that year was much better in terms of word-of-mouth. It adopts an octa-core design, with both large and small cores of Kryo280 architecture, 4 large core frequencies of 2.45GHz, and 4 small core frequencies of 1.9GHz, at least without "one drag four".
However, compared to Apple, Qualcomm is still "conservative".
Unlike Qualcomm and MediaTek, Apple does not need to worry about the idea of "customers", and has always advocated the route of "fewer cores and more cores". Also in 2016, Apple released the iPhone 10 series with the A7 chip, and the A10 was also the beginning of Apple's transition from dual-core to quad-core.
However, it is still different from Qualcomm and MediaTek's approach, although the A10 is divided into 2 high-performance cores and 2 efficiency cores, but the actual four cores are all large cores, which are exactly the same in hardware, but through the built-in switch, they take two orientations: high performance and low power consumption.
Photo/Apple
This strategy is reflected in the reality, not only is the A10 far ahead in terms of running scores (especially in the single-core score), but more importantly, in the actual mobile phone experience, the A10 has stronger performance and smoother operation performance under high loads, and has higher efficiency and lower power consumption at low loads. In a nutshell:
More performance and more power saving.
Today, both the A16 and A17 Pro consist of 2 high-performance cores (P-cores) and 4 efficiency cores (E-cores), but in reality, Apple's so-called E-cores are closer to arm's large cores, and P-cores even surpass arm's super-large cores.
So to a certain extent, the Dimensity 9300's "all-big core" is on par with Apple's comprehensive alignment, and Qualcomm is also gradually getting closer.
From small nuclei to large nuclei, what has changed?
In fact, whether it was in the past or now, from the perspective of daily use and CPU scheduling of games, the big core is often the core force of power. And in ARM's big. Under the LITTLE (large and small core heterogeneous processing) architecture, the advantages of low power consumption of small and medium-sized cores in low-load scenarios are often advertised.
But in fact, it is not so much that small cores have the advantage of low power consumption in low-load scenarios, in fact, it is more that small cores cannot bear medium and high loads, and only have some use under low loads.
So from the perspective of experience, the cutting of small cores from mobile phone chips is an absolute progress.
Photo/Qualcomm
However, behind the scenes, I am afraid that there are also reasons for the lack of product innovation and extreme involution in the mobile phone market, so we can see the curvature of the current mobile phone scroll screen, the brightness of the scroll screen, and the volume camera:
The product form is basically fixed, so roll the existing experience to the extreme.
Of course, fluency is an important part of being "rolled", which also forces mobile phone manufacturers to chip manufacturers to continuously optimize the experience, from joint research and development to on-site customization.
Of course, the rising price of flagship phones has also established the foundation for the "all-big core" of mobile phone chips, after all, the Dimensity 9300 with an all-large core configuration must be much more expensive than the Dimensity 9200.
But no matter what, for consumers, the big nucleation of mobile phone chips is a good thing. Chip manufacturers do not need to worry too much about the cost and marketing requirements of mobile phone manufacturers, and can use more reasonable and better architecture design. At the same time, mobile phone manufacturers are gradually getting out of the myth of "benchmark":
Be more honest about the user experience.
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