Silver and Celeron) 2017

Few weeks ago Intel announced that they are planning to re-brand their current and future generation Pentium processor to “Pentium Gold” and “Pentium Silver” chips.

Recently Intel has launched new processors which are based on “Gemini Lake” and made for affordable PCs.

Six new models for desktop and laptop has been launched. J series processor are for desktops and N series are for laptops. Pentium Silver N5000 is of 6 W TDP (Thermal Design Point i.e. is the maximum amount of heat generated by computer chip) other wise all processor are of 10 W TDP.

  • Pentium Silver J5005 running upto 2.8 GHz
  • Pentium Silver N5000 running upto 2.7 GHz
  • Celeron J4105 running upto 2.5 GHz
  • Celeron J4005 running upto 2.7 GHz
  • Celeron N4100 running upto 2.4 GHz
  • Celeron N4000 running upto 2.6 GHz

Pentium Silver processors have Intel’s UHD 605 graphics while Celeron processors have Intel’s UHD 600 graphics.

These processors have Gigabit Wi-Fi 802.11 ac which Intel says is better than wired Gigabit Ethernet.

Intel claims that Pentium Silver processors will deliver upto 58% better productivity as compared to 4 years old PCs

Thanks for reading. Like, share and comment on this post. Subscribe us to get notifications about new tech post.

Intel Atom x7 SoC

Intel has designed the Ultra low voltage 32 bit and 64 bit processors for netbooks, embedded systems, smart phones etc. and named them as “Intel Atom” series. Atom x7-Z8750 is mainly used in entry level laptops and tablets launched in 2016.

  • Intel Atom x7-Z8750 has a code name “Cherry Trail”
  • Lithography– It’s based on 14 nm fabrication process
  • CPU– It has a 64 bit “Airmount architecture” based Quad-core processor with base frequency of 1.6 GHz and turbo frequency of 2.56 GHz
  • GPU- It has Intel’s HD graphics 405 GPU running at 200 MHz frequency which can go to 600 MHz in turbo mode
  • It supports DDR3L RAM of upto 8 GB capacity
  • USB: It can support 3x USB 3.0
  • Cache: 2 MB

But these processor didn’t go to the top as Intel has done in desktop processors range. The one of the reason of this failure is that Intel doesn’t make its Atom SoCs for specific products which makes it need of other chipsets for interfacing to USB, Ethernet etc. And makes it’s bulky in comparison with its rivals like Qualcomm’s snapdragon SoCs which are specifically designed for particular devices with very good performance.

Thanks for reading. Like, share and comment on this post. Subscribe me to get notifications of new interesting tech posts.

Nvidia Tegra X1 SoC

Nvidia is the world’s largest manufacturer of GPUs with approx. 74% market share. Latest SoC by Nvidia is Tegra X1 which has the following specifications. Nvidia has Tegra X1 for smartphones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile internet devices.

  • Fabrication 20nm process TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company)
  • CPU– Based on ARM architecture 4x A57 64bit ARM CPU running @ 1.02 GHz frequency
  • GPU– Nvidia 2nd generation Maxwell 256 core GPU
  • Video- 4K 60fps video, 1080@ 120fps
  • USB- USB 2.0/3.0
  • Tegra X1 is equal to your thumbnail size and draws under 10 watts of power
  • 60 fps 4K video [H.265, H.264, VP9]. Those who don’t know about H.265. It’s also called “High Efficiency Video Coding”, is a video compression standard. H.264 and VP9 are also the standards for video compression

See other mobile processor in this series ……………….

Thanks for reading. Like, share and comment on this post. Subscribe me to get notifications about new interesting tech posts.

Huawei Kirin 970 SoC

Kirin 970 is based on ARM’s design with improvements made by Huawei owned company HiSilicon.

  • Fabrication: It is based on TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 10nm process with amazing 5.5 billion transistors on thumbnail sized chip. The number of transistors are more than Apple A11 “Bionic” SoC
  • CPU: Huawei Kirin 970 is 64 bit ARM based Octa core SoC. It has 4 x ARM Cortex A73 cores running at 2.4 GHz and 4 x ARM Cortex A53 cores running at 1.8 GHz
  • Performance: It is 20% better in performance and 20% less power consuming than Kirin 960
  • GPU: It has ARM’s 12 core Mali G72 GPU running at 850 GHz
  • ISP (Image Signal Processor): It has dual ISPs with the capability ofmotion detection and low light enhancement
  • Video: 4 K playback at 60 fps, 4 K recording at 30 fps
  • Modem: High speed 1.2 Gbps category 18 Modem
  • NPU (Neural Network Processing Unit): NPU of Kirin 970 is half of the size of CPU but 25 x times faster and delivers 1.92 TFLOPs speed
  • Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.2

You would see this SoC in Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. See other SoCs in this series.

Thanks for reading. Like, share and comment on this post. Subscribe me to get notifications about tech posts.

Apple A11 “Bionic chip” SoC

It’s a 64 bit, 6 core processor embedded in iPhone 8, iPhone 8 plus and iPhone X. This is the best mobile SoC that is available in the market till now.

  • CPU- 4.3 billion transistors, 6 cores which has 2 performance corescalled “Mosoon” running at 2.39 GHz and 4 power efficiency corescalled “Mistral”. You can use all six cores simultaneously unlike which was not possible in A10
  • A11 is 25% more powerful than A10 chip10 nm FinFET manufacturing technique is used for the fabrication technology by TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company)
  • GPU– It has Ist time apple designed GPU which is said to be 30% faster than A10’s GPU
  • Neural Engine – A11 has special hardware called “Neural Engine” which is capable of doing 600 billion operations per second and is used for Face ID, Animoji type of machine learning processes

Check other companies mobile processors in other posts.

Thanks for reading. Like, share and comment on this post. Subscribe me to get notifications about new interesting posts.