Really not that 8 inch mobile processor

When you were thinking of Huawei Unicorn 970, Samsung Orion 8895, Qualcomm Xiaolong 835, Apple A11, MediaTek P25/X30, did you know that it was another landscape more than ten years ago?

What is ARM processor?

Accurately speaking, ARM processors all belong to the embedded RISC processor, which is the reduced instruction set CPU; and our common X86 processors, whether Intel or AMD, belong to the CISC complex instruction set. Two kinds can be understood as: The former is mainly mobile (industrial) device processor; the latter is mainly used for desktop computers, although this is not very accurate.

In addition, in addition to ARM and MIPS, they all belong to the RISC processor of mobile/industrial devices. SPARC, Power, and Alpha are actually RISC (servers, workstations), but these have almost disappeared.

Of course, the current limit is not so accurate. For example, Intel had hoped to use the X86 complex instruction processor to make mobile products; ARM's reduced instruction set processor not only entered the server field, but also to force and complex instruction set. Products compete on the desktop.

Heroes are just dead

The ARM architecture processors in smart phones now have a fierce competition. They were also the scenes of the Wuxiong hegemony years ago, but only three of the five brands have disappeared. Heroes do not die, but they are already aging...

Texas Instruments OMAP

Texas Instruments' OMAP ARM processor is strictly speaking a quality product, and its ultra-low power performance is a miracle of that era. At that time, Qualcomm is still difficult to compare with Texas Instruments. However, although OMAP processors have excellent power optimization and extraordinary performance, Texas Instruments cannot always go further with mobile's most important communication functions. 3G/4G modems (basebands) have not been integrated into processors. , And over time performance is no longer so outstanding, last resort, Texas Instruments in September 2012 officially withdrew from the mobile phone market, turning to smart car manufacturing.

Intel Xscale

Intel's achievements do not need much to say, the technology reserves are extremely rich, and the overlord of the X86 field. However, in the early years, Intel actually had an ARM license, and it had the best ARM architecture processor Xscale on the market at that time. Compared to the ARM "public architecture" processor, XScale power consumption is lower, the design is more reasonable, performance is very strong (and MMX instruction set optimization), almost the best choice for mobile phones, handheld computers on the market. However, due to poor profitability, Xscale was eventually sold to Marvell. The sale date was the year before the iPhone was released: in 2006. Later, Intel acquired Infineon’s mobile communications division, intending to integrate its own technology in the X86 domain and is still working hard.

Samsung processor

Prior to the name Orion processor series, Samsung's ARM processors were alphanumeric numbers, not a brand name. In the early years, Samsung's ARM processor was not high enough in power consumption. At that time, its role was similar to that of today's MediaTek. It was a market challenger. However, Samsung has made great efforts to improve and persevere in support of constant improvement, and has finally achieved the achievements of today's Orion ARM architecture processor. Moreover, Samsung was also the only one of the major competitors in the market that year.

Freescale i.MX

Freescale i.MX is relatively rare. In fact, Freescale is an independent company from Motorola. In the early years, Motorola used MIPS architecture to design the processor. The famous Dragon Ball series processors are all MIPS architecture (Palm PC pioneer, Palm. It is the Dragon Ball processor that used it. After Freescale became independent, it turned to the ARM architecture. Then there was no...

NVIDIA Tegra

Tegra should be said to be a latecomer, simply purely from the computing power is very powerful, but has always been to solve their own power consumption, there are software adaptation problems (software manufacturers are not enough initiative), leading to compatibility and market reputation . From mobile phones to tablets, from game consoles to cars, Nvidia gradually shifted its own ARM product line out of mobile phones/tablets. Of course, NVIDIA's strategy is astute, and it is still very profitable. It can only be said that it was not successful on mobile devices such as mobile phones.

In addition to these, Qualcomm has also been involved in early years, and it is logical that it belongs to latecomers (even earlier than Nvidia), but one of the fundamental reasons why Qualcomm differs from the previous ones is that it has its own communications baseband (except Motorola)! The above five companies have their own product design issues and market considerations. However, there is no baseband in the mobile communications market that is difficult to survive. Qualcomm has a lot of mobile communications patents (Samsung has no CDMA patents yet), so Xiaobian It did not list it.

This world has more than mobile phones

In fact, ARM-based processors can be more than just mobile processors. For example, Broadcom, MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Marvell all use the ARM architecture to design a routed processor. It can be said that ARM is not a single-function processor from the very beginning, and its role is in the field of mobile devices, industrial equipment, smart products, routing, game consoles (and handhelds), and even servers. This does not, and now ARM desktop PC products also have to show their prominence, Mate10 desktop PC mode, Apple iPad desktop multitasking mode, and even use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor Windows desktop computer. Who can think of just a few dozen years later, ARM has taken the city slightly to such a point.

The market competition is the survival of the fittest. It used to be the five major ARM architecture processor products. After more than ten years, it is still a pattern of five competitions. It is only a matter of right and wrong. These five tigers are not the five manufacturers that were a decade ago. Now.