Allwinner A80 Octa-Core Hardware Coming Next Month

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Allwinner A80 Octa-Core Hardware Coming Next Month

In June we should start seeing the Allwinner A80-based hardware designs hitting the market for a much needed performance boost for Allwinner SoCs...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTY4MjE

[fackamato]

As an owner of several Chinese tablets using the Allwinner and other chipets, they are slow. They might have the clock speed and the cores and the instruction set, but the IPC is low. THat combined with REALLY slow NAND storage makes the whole unit feel sluggish.

Don't get me wrong, it'll play 1080p and all that stuff fine (mostly, most codecs) but switching between apps, launching new apps etc is dog slow. But, that's why they are cheap. So, I don't hold much hope for this one other than, hey, it's nice to see improvements.

I know I won't be picking up any more Chinese tablets anyway. Nexus are too cheap.

[Cyborg16]

What's the difference? They're all made there, all using variations of Arm CPUs. I suspect RAM and the flash storage have more to do with application switching performance than CPU speed anyway.

But an octa-core with the performance of a quad-core. Doesn't deserve the name.

[jonnyh]

With a quad a15 (the fastest ARM designed core available) and a pretty beefy GPU, this may be Allwinner trying to move up from the budget end? All their previous chips were bargin-basement CPUs, so this is a big change.

[fackamato]

With a quad a15 (the fastest ARM designed core available) and a pretty beefy GPU, this may be Allwinner trying to move up from the budget end? All their previous chips were bargin-basement CPUs, so this is a big change.

It's one thing to honour the instruction set etc, anotherthing to be fast. The allwinner were never fast, at all. Like I said before, the whole tablet experience is going to suck unless you've got fast RAM and NAND as well.

[droidhacker]

"Making the Allwinner A80 more appealing too is that its graphics are upgraded to the PowerVR G6230."

Uh WUT.....

have you been smoking?



SERIOUSLY!!!

[Ferdinand]

"Making the Allwinner A80 more appealing too is that its graphics are upgraded to the PowerVR G6230."

Uh WUT.....

have you been smoking?



SERIOUSLY!!!

What a worthless comment. Wish I could make it so I never have to see your comments again.

[bmourit]

@Cyborg16

I can see why you might think that, but the main difference in this SoC configuration is that all 8 cores can run at the same time, whereas other bigLITTLE configurations haven't allowed for this. Hence the reason they are advertising this as 8 core, and the first of it's kind. Though I suspect we'll see others soon.

Having all 8 cores able to run at the same time, rather than just switching from a15/a7 should provide significant performance boosts.

What's the difference? They're all made there, all using variations of Arm CPUs. I suspect RAM and the flash storage have more to do with application switching performance than CPU speed anyway.

But an octa-core with the performance of a quad-core. Doesn't deserve the name.

[curaga]

Ignore list man, ignore list.

Though I agree with him on this one, Mali has better prospects with good open drivers than anything PowerVR.

[Falcon1]

Where there is smoke, therse fire

PowerVR. Burn it with fire. And don't inhale

While the PowerVR delivers power there is little hope for contiguous usage, even Intel couldn't cope with it. Driver development is left to the final vendor. Imagination is hopeless. Their Marketing proved it once again:
http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/02/...rvr-g6230-gpu/

I wished they'd licensed something like an ARM Mali, Vivante GC, Quallcomm Ardreno, NVIDIA SoC GPU. All with some binary contiguously and hopes for free (mainline) drivers.

There might be hope, as for the A23, which was released after the A31 (PowerVR), again a Mali GPU was used.

The A23 seems more of an iteration of the A31 than A20 looking at the messages on the linux-sunxi mailinglist

So let's hope for a next one with Mali.