First, a confession: I didn’t read the full report. It would have cost me nearly €7,000 (or nearly $8,000 US). But fortunately, Don Scansen apparently did, and wrote a good but too brief summary of APU – Smartphone SoC Floorplan Comparison 2024, the Yole Group’s study of smartphone application processors that was published in the EETimes last month.
The study focused on the leading device manufacturers, and on the designs that were the most current as of the study date. (So, there may already be new products out there, as this is a dynamic and very competitive market.)
The products included in the study were:
- Apple A17 SoC in iPhone 15 Pro
- Google Tensor G3 SoC in Pixel 8 Pro
- HiSilicon Kirin 000s SoC in Huawei Mate 60 Pro
- MediaTek Dimensity 9300 SoC
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC
- Samsung Exynos 2400 in Galaxy S24 SM-S921U1
Scansen noted that there is one key feature that all six design groups have in common: the processors all rely on ARM designs. After that, things start to diverge. Apple uses ARM IP, “but assembles the logical functions into their own physical designs,” an approach that makes sense since Apple is the only company on the list that has responsibility for both hardware and software in their products. The other design teams deployed hard macros from ARM.
The A17 design stands apart in other details, as well. The standard approach to CPU architecture is to have performance cores for the most demanding tasks and smaller efficiency cores to operate with lower power consumption whenever appropriate. The Apple A17 performs the most intense software operations with the lowest core count—just a dual-core design.
Apple holds the position at one end of the design spectrum. MediaTek is at the other. Their Dimensity 9300 uses “the most powerful CPU.”
This APU contains four of the supersize cores that other designs tend to use only as a single main core supported by smaller high-performance cores. The Dimensity 9300 has a complete high-performance quad-core section of Arm Cortex-X4 cores. For power-saving functions, MediaTek prefers the Cortex-A720 core (typically used for high-performance operations) rather than one of the efficient Arm variants.
Scansen provides considerable discussion on the impact on HiSilicon Kirin, a Chinese design company, and SMIC a Chinese domestic fab (which works with HiSilicon) of sanctions that have been imposed on the use of Chinese foundry tools and advanced lithography.
SMIC built the Kirin 9000 on a lagging node (7 nm) compared to 3 nm (TSMC for Apple) and 4 nm (Samsung for its own and Google processors, and TSMC for Qualcomm and MediaTek). That might suggest the HiSilicon design would be among the largest chips. However, MediaTek’s processor has the biggest die despite being built on the much more advanced TSMC 4-nm platform. Although the TSMC 4-nm process increased transistor density, MediaTek’s design with four of the largest Arm X4 cores necessitates expansive use of silicon.
He then explores die size among the different products. (Most are roughly comparable.) Scansen’s focus here is largely to contrast Apple (which builds using ultra-advanced foundry technology), with HiSilicon (which sits on “the most trailing edge of the group”). He continues the contrast between these two by pointing out that the Apple A17 “includes about twice as many transistors as the Kirin chip.”
Scansen devotes a lot of space to the HiSilicon Kirin 9000 (more on the issues they had when they had to retreat from use of made-in-China technology), and I wish that he’d provided more information on the other products on the list. But, as he says:
There are many twists and turns, as well as chip partitioning and placement tradeoffs when comparing these top-tier smartphone processor designs. A complete understanding requires more time and space.
I hope that Don Scansen finds that time and space. Because, although nearly €7,000 (or nearly $8,000 US) for the Yole Group report is too rich for my blood, I’d be very interested in hearing more about what’s in it.
Image source: Hatch.