As 2021 draws to a close and we see 2022 on the horizon, you might think there’s no new tech news to share. But you would be wrong! There is much to say about Qualcomm, MediaTek, the Raspberry Pi and again Qualcomm!
System-on-a-chip
The heart of every smartphone, tablet and many laptops is a System-on-a-Chip (SoC). More than just a CPU, a SoC includes other important parts to make a complete system, including a GPU, a 4G/5G modem, an image processor, a video encoder/decoder, a machine learning accelerator and more.
We’ve had two major SoC announcements in the past few weeks, from Qualcomm and from Media:
Qualcomm also unveiled a new set of Arm-based SoCs destined for laptops and detachable computers:
There was some controversy over the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, as Qualcomm wasn’t too keen on the inside of the chips, especially the CPU configuration. Charlie Demerjian put it this way: So we asked about the cores in the 8cx Gen 3 via email and the answer made things clear: “We are not disclosing anything for computing or gaming platforms.”
We do know a few things. 1) The 8cx gen 3 uses 4x 3.0 GHz Prime cores + 4x 2.4 GHz Efficiency Cores. It also has a total cache of 14 MB (8 MB L3 + 6 MB system cache). 2.4GHz is quite high for a Cortex-A55 core, so it seems the 8cx gen 3 doesn’t use those cores. 2) Then Ryne Hager got the scoop from a talkative engineer, the 8cx gen 3 uses 4x Cortex-X1 cores and 4x Cortex-A78 cores.
Qualcomm’s announcement came just a few days after MediaTek’s announcement:
raspberry pi
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W offers 5 times the performance in the same form factor as the original Pi Zero. It includes 512MB of RAM, Wi-Fi 4, Bluetooth and access to the traditional Pi GPIO pins.
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W has the same processor as the Raspberry Pi 3, but is clocked at 1.0 GHz instead of 1.2 GHz. Can the Pi Zero 2 W be overlocked to match or even beat the Pi 3? Yes! Here’s how.
Qualcomm Weather
Qualcomm and Microsoft have launched a new Snapdragon PC aimed at developers who want to test, profile and debug their apps on Windows 10 and Windows 11 for Snapdragon.
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