Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa: Powered by PowerVR SGX 544MP3, not ARM's Mali
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on January 13, 2013 9:09 PM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- Samsung
- Arm
- exynos 5 octa
At CES, Samsung announced its Exynos 5 Octa SoC featuring four ARM Cortex A7s and four ARM Cortex A15s. Unusually absent from the announcement was any mention of the Exynos 5 Octa's GPU configuration. Given that the Exynos 5 Dual featured an ARM Mali-T604 GPU, we only assumed that the 4/8-core version would do the same. Based on multiple sources, we're now fairly confident in reporting that the with the Exynos 5 Octa Samsung included a PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU running at up to 533MHz.
The PowerVR SGX 544 is a lot like the 543 used in Apple's A5/A5X, however with the addition of DirectX 10 class texturing hardware and 2x faster triangle setup. There are no changes to the unified shader ALU count. Taking into account the very aggressive max GPU frequency, peak graphics performance of the Exynos 5 Octa should be between Apple's A5X and the A6X (assuming Samsung's memory interface is just as efficient as Apple's):
| Mobile SoC GPU Comparison | |||||||||||||
| PowerVR SGX 543MP2 | PowerVR SGX 543MP4 | PowerVR SGX 544MP3 | PowerVR SGX 554MP4 | ||||||||||
| Used In | A5 | A5X | Exynos 5 Octa | A6X | |||||||||
| SIMD Name | USSE2 | USSE2 | USSE2 | USSE2 | |||||||||
| # of SIMDs | 8 | 16 | 12 | 32 | |||||||||
| MADs per SIMD | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |||||||||
| Total MADs | 32 | 64 | 48 | 128 | |||||||||
| GFLOPS @ Shipping Frequency | 16.0 GFLOPS | 32.0 GFLOPS | 51.1 GFLOPS | 71.6 GFLOPS | |||||||||
It's good to see continued focus on GPU performance by the major SoC vendors, although I'd like to see a device ship with something faster than Apple's highest end iPad. At the show we heard that we might see this happen in the form of an announcement in 2013, with a shipping device in 2014.
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alex3run - Thursday, January 24, 2013 - link
You are missing that android is more power hungry than IOS. You won't get the same performance on android and IOS with the same GPU.djgandy - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
What has that got to do with delivering performance in test configurations? Are you saying the Mali cannot actually deliver any of its performance promises?alex3run - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
I try to explain that powervr wouldn't be so powerful on android as it seems on IOS. Exynos 5 octa would power android devices, right?kamejoko - Saturday, January 19, 2013 - link
http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/01/19/gpus-compar...544MP2@532MHz = 136Gflops. why anandtech said 544MP3@533MHz = 51.2Gflops?
Who's wrong?
alex3run - Thursday, January 24, 2013 - link
3 cores * 4 SIMD/core * 4 ALU/SIMD * 2 Flops/ALU = 51168 Flops. Mali has similar core structure but it's quad core.blanarahul - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
Mali-T658 is dead. And Nexus 10 will be the second and (most probably) the last device to use Mali-T604.alex3run - Saturday, January 26, 2013 - link
http://arm.com/products/mali-t658.phpIt isn't dead.
djgandy - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Except it is as ARM have pulled all indexing to its product page.blanarahul - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
It doesn't matter. ARM has discontinued their 1st Gen Midguard GPUs (Mali-T604 and T658) for all intents and purposes. If you go to the Mali-T604 page, you see this message:"Did you know about the ARM® Mali™-T624?
Designed for visual computing and using innovative tri-pipe architecture, the ARM® Mali™-T624 GPU Compute is the upgraded version of the Mali-T604. This solution builds upon a track record for high-quality scalable multicore solutions for 2D and 3D graphics. Key APIs supported include OpenGL® ES 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0, DirectX® 11 and OpenCL™ 1.1."
This means that ARM is pushing it's partners to use 2nd Gen Midguard GPUs (Mali-T624, T628 and T678) instead of 1st Gen Midguard GPUs.
ARM has even removed the Mali-T658 page from their servers. In fact the only reason Mali-T604's page is still present on ARM's website is because Nexus 10 has recently been launched. I guess this infuriated Samsung and they decided to leave Mali for the Exynos 5.
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But this isn't the first time ARM's GPUs are being ignored. ARM has launched a total of 9 GPUs till now, out of which only 3 have made it to the market: Mali-200, Mali-400MP, and Mali-T604.
Mali-200: Chinese Android Devices
Mali-400MP: ST-Ericsson Novathor, Samsung Exynos 4, Allwinner A Series SoC.
Mali-T604: Exynos 5 Dual.
mayankleoboy1 - Monday, January 14, 2013 - link
Then join them. No other mobile GPU could beat the PowerVR. The Mali is second best at best. And with high res displays, you need more horsepower.I wonder, why did they not opt for the PowerVR Rogue arch ? That could have been much handy in beating Apple.