2020 vision — Android tech on the way
New chips, hardware encryption, dual-lens phones, 5G modems and 7-nanometre transistors... Darren Yates reports on the technology coming to Android through to 2020.
Everyone clamours for the latest news on new smartphones these days, but if you really want to know what’s coming up, look for news on the upcoming and recently introduced tech that goes inside these devices. News of new chip developments today, even down to transistor-level, will give you a pretty fair idea of what you’ll see tomorrow and over the next few years. And there’s been plenty going on of late, with news from major players Samsung, Qualcomm, TSMC and Intel that will affect what you buy through to 2020 — and beyond.
QUALCOMM’S NEW SOCS
Nearly every smartphone has a CPU or System on a Chip (SoC) conceived by chip designer ARM. But ARM doesn’t make its chips; it licenses its tech to others to make. Qualcomm is one of the flagship ARM chipmakers and one of a select group with a licence to not only build standard ARM Cortex chips designs, but the go-ahead to create its own ARM-based silicon. In the last few weeks, it’s been busy rolling out the welcome mat to a range of new SoCs likely to launch a raft of new mid-level mobile devices in 2017. All released under the Snapdragon family business, these new chips are the Snapdragon 653, 626 and 427.
According to Qualcomm specs, the Snapdragon 653 packs in eight cores — four Cortex A72s for the performance stuff and four Cortex A53s for lower power/lighter duty work in ARM’s ‘ big. LITTLE’ configuration. It’ll top 1.95GHz in clock speed and features a Qualcomm in-house Adreno 510 GPU. Interestingly, though, it’s designed around 28-nanometre (28nm) scale production, which really makes it more ‘tried and true’ than ‘latest and greatest’. Still, with that many cores, it’ll be fast enough to handle 4K (3,840 x 2,160-pixel) video capture at 30fps. The 653’s display driver will also handle screen resolutions up to 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. Overall, these are decent
specs, even for flagship phones, but as we’ll see, the 28nm production scale is well off the pace.
The Snapdragon 626 is also an eight-core SoC, but features all Cortex A53 cores. In contrast to the 653, the 626 will be stamped using a much smaller 14nm production scale, which should aid power efficiency. In line with the drop from the 653, the 626 will also use the slightly slower Adreno 506 GPU core. The SoC can only handle 1,920 x 1,200-pixel resolution displays, which becomes 1080p (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) by the time you reach actual mobile device panels.
Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 427 is a straight quad-core Cortex A53 design built for 28nm production with an entry-level Adreno 308 GPU core. It’s good for 1080p video capture and playback; however, its on-board display support only goes as far as 720p (1,280 x 720/800-pixel) resolution, so we’d suggest not to expect seeing this one get beyond budget phones around the $200 mark.
MORE DUAL-LENS PHONES
Apple made a bit of a splash with the iPhone 7 sporting dual lenses, but dual-lens phones have been floating around this last year or so, thanks to the HTC One M8, LG’s G5 and Huawei’s Leica-powered P9. But while these have been limited to flagship devices, that shouldn’t be the case in 2017. All three of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon SoCs feature dual image signal processors (ISPs), the core technology needed behind dual lenses. What’s more, even the entry-level Snapdragon 427 can support up to 16-megapixel (MP) image sensors, so there’s considerable potential for dual-lens cameras filtering down into the mid-range market sometime during the year. Still, while the necessary functionality will exist in these chips, it’ll be up to phone vendors to implement the second image sensor and lens for it to actually happen.
HARDWIRED ENCRYPTION
The fastest-growing area of mobile tech right now — probably the fastestgrowing area in tech full-stop — is security. Google announced Nougat/ Android 7.0 would support a new file-based encryption (FBE) to secure files, but the company states FBE requires devices to have encryption speed of at least 50MB/second to ensure “a good user experience” ( tinyurl.com/znvwhvj) and probably with good reason. Android’s previous software-based Full Disk Encryption (FDE) was shown to take out a sizeable chunk of the Nexus 6’s performance ( tinyurl.com/lynhh92). Google then claimed to have largely sorted this out on its Android 6.0-powered Nexus 5X and 6P devices, thanks to new 64-bit ARM chips with their ARMv8 instruction sets. Despite still using software-based encryption, encryption performance was said to be faster than what was available in hardware at the time ( tinyurl.com/p2cj7og).
But it appears now that Nougat’s FBE can take advantage of the hardware encryption inside the Snapdragon 820 and 821 SoCs, with phones said to be able to offload encryption to the chip’s hardware crypto engine, improving performance. The 820 also recently received hardware security certification to Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
As for differences between the Snapdragon 820 and 821, the answer
seems to be ‘not that much’. According to XDA-Developers ( tinyurl.com/zygojol), it turns out that the 821 is a mid-life revision of the 820 with some silicon tweaks, resulting in two versions of the 821 — the headline version, now clocking at up to 2.4GHz, plus a second, revving at the 820’s original 2.15GHz. It’s this second version that Google’s new Pixel and Pixel XL phones are said to be using. A quick check of the Pixel/ Pixel XL specs show the Snapdragon 821 SoC is indeed clocking in at 2.15GHz.
INTEL MAKING ARM CHIPS
Not long ago, you’d be forgiven for thinking hell would freeze before chip giant Intel would start making chips using technology from rival ARM. However, reality is often more pragmatic than dramatic, with Intel’s Custom Foundry business and ARM recently announcing Intel will begin manufacturing chips with its upcoming 10nm fabrication process using ARM’s Artisan Physical IP core technology. According to ARM’s official blog, the deal includes intellectual property (IP) agreements for two future Cortex A-series processor core designs in either straight ‘stand-alone’ or big.LITTLE dual-family configurations (tinyurl.com/jar9trz).
This will see Intel in direct competition with Samsung and Taiwanese leader TSMC — and word is Intel already has licensing deals in place with LG to start punching out ARM chips. The news comes on the back of Intel taking the axe to its own mobile-focussed Atom chip family earlier in the year ( tinyurl.com/j28m9yw).
It’s also no secret the PC business is sagging for Intel as global PC sales continue to slide, coming off another 5.7% in the September quarter, compared with the same period in 2015 ( tinyurl.com/gtdh4jp). In response to the flagging demand, the company announced in April plans to slash some 12,000 jobs worldwide ( tinyurl.com/hfjp6x9). With mobile devices still showing growth, a deal with ARM would seem a pragmatic approach to keeping its fab labs busy.
One prize for Intel in the move would be a slice of the Apple A-series SoC market. Apple designs its own chips for iPhones and iPads, but relies on the likes of Samsung and TSMC to make them. Having Intel as another possible manufacturing partner, when it already supplies Apple with CPUs for its computers and laptops, could help Apple cut a better deal from its existing manufacturing partners to lower production costs.
SAMSUNG MAKES 10NM FINFETS
Meanwhile, the Galaxy Note 7 debacle has Samsung on the back foot, but still, the all-round Korean giant is pressing on with new technology. In the chip-production stakes, everyone is racing to produce transistors at a miniscule 10-nanometre scale and Samsung claims to have reached the ‘mass production’ finish line first, ahead of rivals Intel and TSMC ( tinyurl.com/h7qdrp8). Despite its recent hiccups, the company announced that it is building new chips using 10nm FinFETs or ‘fin field effect transistors’. To give you an idea of the long lead times technologies often go through, these 3D transistors were first hatched by researchers at the University of California in 1999 ( tinyurl.com/hwm8zpy, PDF), but have only been in production, starting with Intel, since 2011.
Samsung stated recently the new production scale will give it a 27% performance increase and a 40% reduction in power consumption over previous-generation 14nm tech ( tinyurl.com/zhruwvx). What does that mean for us? The same as every other new reduced-scale production process — faster devices with better battery life. Rumours are the first 10nm Samsung chip off the production blocks could be the ‘Kanchen’ — codenamed Exynos 8895. If the rumours are correct, the 10nm scale could allow clock speeds up to 3GHz, pushing well into desktop PC territory. The 8895 is expected to also feature the new ARM Mali-G71 graphics core, which could well be the fastest mobile GPU going around and claimed to be 1.8 times faster than the 12-core Mali-T880 powering current Galaxy S7 devices.
That’s a good thing, because take the rumours further and the Exynos 8895 could well find a home in the 2017 Galaxy S8 smartphone, which itself is likely to feature a 4K-resolution AMOLED display panel in addition to a whopping 6GB of RAM.
However, 10nm is just one battle in an ongoing chip production war — TSMC has announced it’ll begin manufacturing trials for an even smaller 7-nanometre scale during 2017 and Samsung, in conjunction with IBM and Globalfoundries, is expected to launch into 7nm production before the end of 2018 ( tinyurl.com/jef8tdp).
5G HARDWARE
There’s plenty of talk surrounding 5G networks and it’s no secret Telstra has been trialling Ericsson-powered 5G mobile network technologies in a
Melbourne testbed, with the telco reporting in September download speeds in excess of 20Gbps.
However, my personal rule of thumb is to only get excited by a technology when it actually makes it to massproduction silicon. We recently moved a step closer to that milestone with Qualcomm announcing the world’s first 5G-modem. The Snapdragon X50 is claiming to reach download speeds of up to 5Gbps — just not any time soon. In fact, OEMs won’t see samples of the X50 until the second half of next year, which means we won’t likely see it in phones until 2018.
For 5G to get off the ground, it needs phones and it needs a network, but network testing and chipset announcements at least get 5G off the drawing board, even if it’s still a couple of years before we’re downloading the latest Marvel movie in 4K resolution.
MMWAVE PHONES
But to get that speed, the X50 has to operate in the 28GHz part of the frequency spectrum, which makes the 5GHz slot used by 802.11n/ac Wi-Fi look like puddling around on the AM commercial-radio band. At 28GHz, wavelengths are measured in millimetres (hence the term ‘mmWave’ or ‘millimetre-wave’) and the problem with radiowave propagation as you go up in frequency is that those waves don’t travel as well — to say they can be spooked by their own shadow isn’t far from the truth, given rain drops are known to cause signal loss at that frequency. In other words, unless you’re in line of sight of the cell tower, getting 5Gbps is near-on impossible. As a result, everyone’s working on ‘non-line-of-sight’ (NLOS) technologies to get around these inherent problems, including adaptive narrow beamforming and beam tracking through multi-element antennas ( tinyurl.com/h4v9kqg).
However, what isn’t strictly certain yet is where on the radio-frequency dial 5G will operate. The UK’s OFCOM (Office of Communications) has reportedly suggested bands between 6GHz and 100GHz. A white paper from National Instruments quotes the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) proposing a range of six bands between 24GHz and 86GHz, while the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US has plans for four bands operating on 28GHz, 37GHz, 39GHz and 64–71GHz ( tinyurl.com/hxxx8x2). The paper further adds that 5G development will take place in two phases — the first will run up until September 2018 and research commercial needs in the spectrum below 40GHz. The second phase kicks off in 2018 until December 2019 and will look at frequencies up to 100GHz.
Right now, very little operates commercially in this region of the spectrum and no doubt governments around the world will be lining up to auction it off to the highest bidders. (According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, AAPT and NBNCo had 28/31GHz Australian spectrum licences that expired in early 2014, tinyurl.com/z32cnv2, PDF, ‘Executive Summary’.)
In the meantime, Qualcomm’s other modem release — the new X16 LTE modem — has been at work in Melbourne, giving Telstra a taste of 1Gbps download speeds on the current 4G LTE network. Telstra is expected to unleash the Gigabit 4GX network in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane CBD areas ( tinyurl.com/hq86aae), with suggestions elsewhere that the X16 LTE modem could appear in Qualcomm’s next flagship Snapdragon SoC (probably the 830) sometime in early 2017.
AUSTRALIA LEADS THE WAY
In a world where most of the tech news originates from Europe, Asia or the US, it’s nice to see that Australia continues to punch well above its weight. Having the world’s first Gigabit LTE network implementation bodes well for 5G and gives local engineers world-class experience. Hopefully, that goes a long way to keeping more tech jobs in Australia. Now that is something to get excited about!