By: Brett (ggtgp.delete@this.yahoo.com), July 28, 2012 3:32 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
jp (jipe4153.delete@this.gmail.com) on July 28, 2012 11:04 am wrote:
> In the future we'll have ARM+GPU (ie Maxwell)
> on the same die which means the discrete graphics cards would be able to also
> handle the strictly serial components of the algorithms, the big gain here being
> that a closely coupled GPU+CPU (a bit like fusion) via an interconnect or L3
> cache would mean that even smaller workloads could be offloaded. This is border
> line speculation but it does seem to be on the horizon.
All of the phones and tablets I know of have a CPU and GPU on the same die.
http://androidnexus.com/guides/the-ultimate-android-cpu-gpu-comparison-guide
http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/recent-teardowns/2012/03/the-apple-a5x-versus-the-a5-and-a4-–-big-is-beautiful/
Here is a teardown showing the DRAM dies stacked on the CPU/GPU inside the chip package:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple-A4-Teardown/2204/1
Besides the CPU you just have a bunch of networking chips which I assume have special
fab process steps for dealing with analog signals, and touchpad chips which also may
have analog drivers/receivers or high pin count keeping it off the SOC, and Flash chips.
There is clearly some cost saving to be had from combining the analog chips, but it
is a bunch of different companies using different fabs and different fab processes.
It will take time.
> In the future we'll have ARM+GPU (ie Maxwell)
> on the same die which means the discrete graphics cards would be able to also
> handle the strictly serial components of the algorithms, the big gain here being
> that a closely coupled GPU+CPU (a bit like fusion) via an interconnect or L3
> cache would mean that even smaller workloads could be offloaded. This is border
> line speculation but it does seem to be on the horizon.
All of the phones and tablets I know of have a CPU and GPU on the same die.
http://androidnexus.com/guides/the-ultimate-android-cpu-gpu-comparison-guide
http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/recent-teardowns/2012/03/the-apple-a5x-versus-the-a5-and-a4-–-big-is-beautiful/
Here is a teardown showing the DRAM dies stacked on the CPU/GPU inside the chip package:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple-A4-Teardown/2204/1
Besides the CPU you just have a bunch of networking chips which I assume have special
fab process steps for dealing with analog signals, and touchpad chips which also may
have analog drivers/receivers or high pin count keeping it off the SOC, and Flash chips.
There is clearly some cost saving to be had from combining the analog chips, but it
is a bunch of different companies using different fabs and different fab processes.
It will take time.
