Surface phone with Intel Core M Cpu coming in september

[Krystianpants]

Cannonlake is for server/desktop machines, not mobile (and they won't be out till 2017 at the earliest). Broxton/Willow trail will be for phones and tablets. The power requirements for any of the desktop/server chips pretty much excludes them from being used in portable electronics... the Skylake chips are great, but they still require 100% more power that their atom chips

The Cherry trail line of processors is actually pretty good currently (the Surface 3 runs an Atom-x7) and is actually getting close to being comparable with the QC Snapdragon 810 in terms of performance/wattage. The goldmont chips should actually surpass currently available ARM chips in terms of power consumption.

And which architecture is the new atom going to use?

I'm hoping the work MS is doing with Intel is a 10nm chip that may not necessarily be something they announced or it's availability to keep quiet, but could be something in between skylake and cannonlake. Both want into mobile badly and so who knows what will come of it.

 

[elindalyne]

The new Atoms coming out in 2016 should be using 14nm with the Goldmont microarchitecture. These are different than the current Atoms running Airmont.

 

[rafal soboczynski]

No it won't be atom. Atom is already out and sucks. It's the lowest of the low end. My guess is that it will be something in the range as surfacebook and it will cost a pretty arm and leg. Then they may have lower mid-range models or business models. This is happening in September so they have quite a lot of time. In the meantime they will likely release more ARM units to keep up with the flagship cycle.

Yes atom is the lowest in performance in Intel's lineup because it is design for low power device. What are you expecting to get full m7 in a phone ??? iI think you need to educate yourself a little. Design power consumption for m series is around 4.5w atom is around 2w; this would have pretty big impact on battery life (and don't get me started on graphically intensive task)
Also you mention 'surface phone' will cost arm and leg, I can tell you it is not going to be more expensive than 128gb iphone 6s plus, otherwise microsoft is shooting themselves in a leg, I imagine it will be expensive but around $800-$850.

 

[Krystianpants]

Yes atom is the lowest in performance in Intel's lineup because it is design for low power device. What are you expecting to get full m7 in a phone ??? iI think you need to educate yourself a little. Design power consumption for m series is around 4.5w atom is around 2w; this would have pretty big impact on battery life (and don't get me started on graphically intensive task)
Also you mention 'surface phone' will cost arm and leg, I can tell you it is not going to be more expensive than 128gb iphone 6s plus, otherwise microsoft is shooting themselves in a leg, I imagine it will be expensive but around $800-$850.

Again you're comparing to what intel has for their consumer/business roadmap but nothing about what they are working on with MS. And again if they get it down to 10nm it will consume way less power, be more efficient with heat dissipation and allow for more gpu execution units. And of course their power management capabilities are enhancing as well. Together with windows 10 they could pull it off. The goal is to use what is needed at the time. I think one of the issues with 950xl is that it doesn't manage the cpu properly and the battery must get eaten up. Of course the firmware update shows that it can help in these areas. My 950xl never really gets warm, but when I was below 25% and in battery saver mode all of a sudden it was getting warm. That seemed odd to me as I would expect the opposite.

So a phone that is coming in what is speculated to be september of 2016 could indeed have some new chip that is announced along with it. Both MS and Intel have been pumping R&D into this area.

And it's not that they will shoot themselves in the foot. I think they will continue offering cheaper arm based phones. There's speculation of one with an SD820 coming out. This will be a new line that will do for phones what surface did for laptops. Surface pro wasn't exactly cheap when it came out. Neither is the surface book. If they pull it off they could be selling another 2-in-1 but this time it's a phone.

And the GPU is going to be a big factor as well as you want to be able to run cross device anything you buy in the windows store. Pumping out arm code for an app via visual studio is simple. you check that you want it to be compiled for arm devices, but when you're creating optimized code for GPU's, it becomes more of a hassle. So if you could remove that hassle you are going to see quite a spectacular ecosystem.

Not only that, MS could also be working on some new battery tech. This is an area that should get plenty of R&D.

In the lab researchers were able to convert heat dissipated from a cpu back into energy. Imagine being able to charge your battery or direct that energy somewhere. That would enhance the longitivity quite a bit.

I can assure you that MS will not release anything ATOM based on their next phone. This is a phone that needs to create a wow factor and the atom chip just will not do that. They could have already used the best Atom chip out there but didn't. And it's not because of app compatibility as it's a layer that software could easily take care of.

I predicted the whole concept of phones turning to PC's years ago before the 2-in-1 hybrids even came out. It was easy to see because everyone always has their phone with them. It's attached to them, the one device they bring everywhere. So you need to make that one device be as versatile as you can. And well continuum seems like the first step. My friend laughed me off back then saying it wouldn't happen. Well it's happening.

Even google is seeing the benefit of such an ecosystem that is deviceless or lets you do everything in one area. They are even creating a new OS. Hope MS can maintain a commanding lead and get stuff done quick enough. Google is pretty quick when it comes to releasing things.

Tech is doing some crazy stuff now. Heck look at Project Tango from Google. It uses Radar to map out your environment in full 3d. This allows gestures and everything you can think of. Interesting but somewhat scary. If every android phone had one you could map out a big portion of the world even the inside of your home. My guess is that they will also use this data for their mapping services etc.. All part of their plan to command the future of mapping. Right now bing has become much better as a mapping service, especially things like bird eye view, traffic cameras, although streetview suffers. But Google is looking more into the future.

Anyways, I guarantee you it won't be an Atom chip.
Roadmaps are for investors and consumers for plans on existing solutions. Anything secret is usually shelved and revealed for a wow factor. So whatever MS has baking, it should command a wow factor like the surfacebook did.

That's why I love directX 12. It shows its power with the surfacebook. It will use gpu cycles from any chips available without any need for sli configurations. And it will do it without developer intervention.

 

[elindalyne]

Regardless of how crazy tech is now, the fact of the matter is that even the lowest end core M chip still uses 100% more power than the highest end Atom chip, let alone any of the ARM chips. Barring some new fancy battery tech that doesn't exist yet or Intel jumping ahead and somehow doing the die shrink a year ahead of schedule, a core M chip isn't feasible.

More power means more heat, which means more thermal throttling as well. Battery drain also isn't linear. Throwing a core M chip into the 950 XL which has a 3300 mAH battery, would probably halve the effective use time. A sub 10'' device has many more design constraints than a 13'' device.

 

[theefman]

Another reason why Core M isnt feasible: current price for the M3 is $281 http://ark.intel.com/m/products/881...Cache-up-to-2_20-GHz#@product/orderingandspec, atom X7 $37 http://ark.intel.com/m/products/854...ache-up-to-2_40-GHz#@product/orderingandspec; prices are unlikely to differ by much for the next gen of their respective chips making CorevM cost prohibitive. Additionally the storage is like to still be slow eMMC unless anyone thinks they'll also include a full SSD so using a Core chip makes even less sense.





So if this mythical device ever actually materializes it will definitely be running an atom chip, more powerful and efficient obviously but still an atom.

 

[rafal soboczynski]

Again you're comparing to what intel has for their consumer/business roadmap but nothing about what they are working on with MS. And again if they get it down to 10nm it will consume way less power, be more efficient with heat dissipation and allow for more gpu execution units. And of course their power management capabilities are enhancing as well. Together with windows 10 they could pull it off. The goal is to use what is needed at the time. I think one of the issues with 950xl is that it doesn't manage the cpu properly and the battery must get eaten up. Of course the firmware update shows that it can help in these areas. My 950xl never really gets warm, but when I was below 25% and in battery saver mode all of a sudden it was getting warm. That seemed odd to me as I would expect the opposite.

So a phone that is coming in what is speculated to be september of 2016 could indeed have some new chip that is announced along with it. Both MS and Intel have been pumping R&D into this area.

And it's not that they will shoot themselves in the foot. I think they will continue offering cheaper arm based phones. There's speculation of one with an SD820 coming out. This will be a new line that will do for phones what surface did for laptops. Surface pro wasn't exactly cheap when it came out. Neither is the surface book. If they pull it off they could be selling another 2-in-1 but this time it's a phone.

And the GPU is going to be a big factor as well as you want to be able to run cross device anything you buy in the windows store. Pumping out arm code for an app via visual studio is simple. you check that you want it to be compiled for arm devices, but when you're creating optimized code for GPU's, it becomes more of a hassle. So if you could remove that hassle you are going to see quite a spectacular ecosystem.

Not only that, MS could also be working on some new battery tech. This is an area that should get plenty of R&D.

In the lab researchers were able to convert heat dissipated from a cpu back into energy. Imagine being able to charge your battery or direct that energy somewhere. That would enhance the longitivity quite a bit.

I can assure you that MS will not release anything ATOM based on their next phone. This is a phone that needs to create a wow factor and the atom chip just will not do that. They could have already used the best Atom chip out there but didn't. And it's not because of app compatibility as it's a layer that software could easily take care of.

I predicted the whole concept of phones turning to PC's years ago before the 2-in-1 hybrids even came out. It was easy to see because everyone always has their phone with them. It's attached to them, the one device they bring everywhere. So you need to make that one device be as versatile as you can. And well continuum seems like the first step. My friend laughed me off back then saying it wouldn't happen. Well it's happening.

Even google is seeing the benefit of such an ecosystem that is deviceless or lets you do everything in one area. They are even creating a new OS. Hope MS can maintain a commanding lead and get stuff done quick enough. Google is pretty quick when it comes to releasing things.

Tech is doing some crazy stuff now. Heck look at Project Tango from Google. It uses Radar to map out your environment in full 3d. This allows gestures and everything you can think of. Interesting but somewhat scary. If every android phone had one you could map out a big portion of the world even the inside of your home. My guess is that they will also use this data for their mapping services etc.. All part of their plan to command the future of mapping. Right now bing has become much better as a mapping service, especially things like bird eye view, traffic cameras, although streetview suffers. But Google is looking more into the future.

Anyways, I guarantee you it won't be an Atom chip.
Roadmaps are for investors and consumers for plans on existing solutions. Anything secret is usually shelved and revealed for a wow factor. So whatever MS has baking, it should command a wow factor like the surfacebook did.

That's why I love directX 12. It shows its power with the surfacebook. It will use gpu cycles from any chips available without any need for sli configurations. And it will do it without developer intervention.

I think you are really overshooting your expectations right there, yes the concept you are presenting is fine, but the technology is not feasible just yet for consumer product, I don't think microsoft would spent millions on research then just to sell 100 000 devices because they are priced at $1500. When it comes to tech like the heat to electrical power conversion it is most likelly another technology that will never see the sun, like haptic display microsoft was working on; all the 1 min charge battery/capacitor that will run your phone etc; very cool technologies but for most part they are not feasible for consumer devices at least for now.
10 nanometer production of chips will definitely help with power (computetional) to electrical power consumption, but that does not mean new m series will run at 2w, it will most likelly run at 3.5-4w but it will be more powerfull than current series. I can imagine in near future intel could scrap atom processors and introduce something like mu; so their line-up would be I > Iu >M >Mu where Mu would be lower voltage m series. Also you are acting like you are the only person ever to though of mobile phones being used as computers in a future, i'm going to tell you little secret you were not alone. In general I think what you want from 'surface phone' is to much at the minute, and you are going to be disappointed when the product comes.

 

[rafal soboczynski]

Another reason why Core M isnt feasible: current price for the M3 is $281 Intel? Core? m3-6Y30 Processor (4M Cache, up to 2.20 GHz) Specifications, atom X7 $37 Intel? Atom? x7-Z8700 Processor (2M Cache, up to 2.40 GHz) Specifications prices are unlikely to differ by much for the next gen of their respective chips making CorevM cost prohibitive. Additionally the storage is like to still be slow eMMC unless anyone thinks they'll also include a full SSD so using a Core chip makes even less sense.





So if this mythical device ever actually materializes it will definitely be running an atom chip, more powerful and efficient obviously but still an atom.

thank god we still have sane people on the forum
plus I don't think people realise how good atoms actually are, and how well they will perform when q3 2016 version comes. I predict cpu wise x7 will be more powerful than this gen m3 (which is doing great on surface pro 4) gpu most likelly will be slower though.

 

[Krystianpants]

thank god we still have sane people on the forum
plus I don't think people realise how good atoms actually are, and how well they will perform when q3 2016 version comes. I predict cpu wise x7 will be more powerful than this gen m3 (which is doing great on surface pro 4) gpu most likelly will be slower though.

It's not that. The Atom thing has been done. That's the whole point. They need something new, something that will shock people.

Look at AMD's new polaris chip, runs extremely low wattage and as per their claims can run as fast as nvidia cards but half the wattage. Again this hasn't been tested in the real world nor is it available yet. But it showcases what can be done if it's true. A year from now when these phones come out I hope they have done something interesting. If it's an atom processor then again people will think "oh that's been done". Unless of course the phone itself does something extremely different. But I think GPU will be important.

Microsoft will likely slowly climb in market share thanks to windows 10. But for their phone market share to skyrocket, they need to do something that hasn't been done because of whatever limitations were imposed by current tech.

And i'm not saying 100% this will happen. I just don't see them using atom. Unless of course it's some new version they made with intel.

I'm happy with the 950XL and a lot of people would continue to be happy with using qualcomm socs. Heck, they are in partnership with samsung now too. Maybe they will get a crazy Samsung chip in the next phone. Or some combo of samsung chip and intel chip. We shall see.

 

[elindalyne]

If you can have a phone running real win32 applications, you've done something unique and new. I don't really see what you're arguing. There hasn't been a phone on the market that can run win32 apps.

I'm kind of confused as to why you're bringing in GPUs... the absolute lowest mobile nvidia chip runs at 22W. Even halving that, you're still looking at more power draw from the GPU than the rest of the device.

 

[rafal soboczynski]

yea the polaris think is very cool however the demos they show it on is extremely optimised for amd harwdare, polaris will denitelly kick *** but i'm not sure abot 50% less power consumption when it comes out maybe 25-30.
The think is atom is not the problem, is the bad name associated with it, also last phone using atom zenfone uses 2013 model which was garbage. With their new naming strategy Microsoft could market it as new intel x5 or x7 processor, and I cann assure you most smartphone consumers will not know it is atom.
The one concern with creating new device like 'surface phone' is when you creating something so new so different it is better to hold of for a year, just look at the surface pro 1 vs pro 2. maybe a lot of people will disagree with me but i though pro execution was awful, absolutely not a consumer ready device, However when pro 2 came out, holly **** this was the device to get. The reason why surface pro 1 in my opinion was't ready is because it was ahead of its time, and yea sometimes it can be good think but it wasn't case here. I know Microsoft and intel are working together on this but still technology isn't there yet properly for mobile device, or if it is, it will not be feasible and that is the keyword here.

 

[rafal soboczynski]

If you can have a phone running real win32 applications, you've done something unique and new. I don't really see what you're arguing. There hasn't been a phone on the market that can run win32 apps.

I'm kind of confused as to why you're bringing in GPUs... the absolute lowest mobile nvidia chip runs at 22W. Even halving that, you're still looking at more power draw from the GPU than the rest of the device.

intel gpus are much lower power consumption than any discrete graphics card on the market (in x86 worrld at least); however they still do consume more power than Mali for example or PowerVR

 

[Migi2015]

Google Trends shows 'iPhone 7' getting 50x more searches than 'Surface Phone'. So if iPhone 7 sells 50 million units in it's first full quarter, Surface Phone might sell 1 million units. Not bad for a Gen 1 flagship if ya ask me. I'd be thrilled with that.

Of course that assumes that in the next 8 months that gap will remain 50:1 and not close to something like 25:1.

Also CoreM is for tablets/laptops/hybrids. Most likely Surface Phone will be running with some newer variant of the Atom x7.

 

[Krystianpants]

yea the polaris think is very cool however the demos they show it on is extremely optimised for amd harwdare, polaris will denitelly kick *** but i'm not sure abot 50% less power consumption when it comes out maybe 25-30.
The think is atom is not the problem, is the bad name associated with it, also last phone using atom zenfone uses 2013 model which was garbage. With their new naming strategy Microsoft could market it as new intel x5 or x7 processor, and I cann assure you most smartphone consumers will not know it is atom.
The one concern with creating new device like 'surface phone' is when you creating something so new so different it is better to hold of for a year, just look at the surface pro 1 vs pro 2. maybe a lot of people will disagree with me but i though pro execution was awful, absolutely not a consumer ready device, However when pro 2 came out, holly **** this was the device to get. The reason why surface pro 1 in my opinion was't ready is because it was ahead of its time, and yea sometimes it can be good think but it wasn't case here. I know Microsoft and intel are working together on this but still technology isn't there yet properly for mobile device, or if it is, it will not be feasible and that is the keyword here.

Exactly. The Atom chip has the bad name and that's exactly why they need something newer and a newer name. I actually had the zenfone 2 and it was horrible.

And that's part of why I bought the 950xL. I mean MS could barely handle the surface book and surface 4. Constant issues and firmware updates. I think the new "surface phone" will probably suffer a lot of issues at first unless they really really get their act together. But even then things will pop up that are not expected due to people using things in unique ways. I'll likely go for generation 2. And the 820 soc is already coming out in february on the Mi phones. So my guess is MS is trying to get one out as well. Which sort of sucks if they do within the next few months as that means they are focusing on this new phone and may not focus as much on these 810 socs.

Hope they have some trade-in plan if they do release a newer one. Though i'm quite happy with 950xl on latest firmware/os. I think the OS is still the most limiting factor. But the 820 GPU sounds pretty nice.

 

[Migi2015]

Exactly. The Atom chip has the bad name and that's exactly why they need something newer and a newer name. I actually had the zenfone 2 and it was horrible.

And that's part of why I bought the 950xL. I mean MS could barely handle the surface book and surface 4. Constant issues and firmware updates. I think the new "surface phone" will probably suffer a lot of issues at first unless they really really get their act together. But even then things will pop up that are not expected due to people using things in unique ways. I'll likely go for generation 2. And the 820 soc is already coming out in february on the Mi phones. So my guess is MS is trying to get one out as well. Which sort of sucks if they do within the next few months as that means they are focusing on this new phone and may not focus as much on these 810 socs.

Hope they have some trade-in plan if they do release a newer one. Though i'm quite happy with 950xl on latest firmware/os. I think the OS is still the most limiting factor. But the 820 GPU sounds pretty nice.

Actually I think Atom could be better than Snapdragon or Exynos given Intel is pursuing more of an Apple-like design to really get peak single-core performance which is what matters on smartphone. The Atom chip that goes into Surface Phone might just leapfrog the Snapdragon 820 and be right behind the Apple A10 later this year.

 

[travisel]

Lumia is Snapdragon

Surface Phone is Atom

Loving my Lumia 950 XL

 

[Blacklac]

Some of you have lost your marbles. Microsoft is basically working with every single manufacturer of its parts to engineer brand new tech just for their 1% market share devices, huh?

Did someone really say an i5/i7...

Posted via the Note 4/Nexus 7 (2013)/Lumia 1020/Lumia 2520

 

[Justin Pearson]

Some of you have lost your marbles. Microsoft is basically working with every single manufacturer of its parts to engineer brand new tech just for their 1% market share devices, huh?

Did someone really say an i5/i7...

Posted via the Note 4/Nexus 7 (2013)/Lumia 1020/Lumia 2520

Ugh....if I ever see that guy who decided to word that artical in that fashion I'm going to have to punch him....
Windows phones is far down the % in its market share. But it is a good bit more then 1%. They had sold just over 1% of the smart phones sold last quarter. And seeing as they had no new phones out at the time(or for a good while this year even)....sorta makes sense. Please...dont use the 1% thing ever again. Thanks.

 

[Cruncher04]

Actually I think Atom could be better than Snapdragon or Exynos given Intel is pursuing more of an Apple-like design to really get peak single-core performance which is what matters on smartphone. The Atom chip that goes into Surface Phone might just leapfrog the Snapdragon 820 and be right behind the Apple A10 later this year

Currently Cherrytrail is so far behind the latest ARM architectures (Cortex A-72, Kryo, Apple A9x) performance wise, that it is very unlikely that Intel will close the gap in one iteration. More importantly Intel will not allow Atoms to leapfrog likes of Snapdragon 820 let alone Apple A9x, because that would put Atom too close to Core M performance. I can see Goldmont to reach Cortex A-57 performance (essentially Snapdragon 810), but that would already be an accomplishment given the track record of the Atom line of SoCs.

Which sort of sucks if they do within the next few months as that means they are focusing on this new phone and may not focus as much on these 810 socs.
Which sort of sucks if they do within the next few months as that means they are focusing on this new phone and may not focus as much on these 810 socs.

If Microsoft would focus at all on the new Snapdragon SoCs, they would have released a compiler (let alone an OS) with a 64 bit code path. Currently Windows 10 mobile is all Thumb2 code, essentially 32bit and no developer can build and release 64bit apps.

 

[ShinraCorp]

Regardless of how crazy tech is now, the fact of the matter is that even the lowest end core M chip still uses 100% more power than the highest end Atom chip, let alone any of the ARM chips. Barring some new fancy battery tech that doesn't exist yet or Intel jumping ahead and somehow doing the die shrink a year ahead of schedule, a core M chip isn't feasible.

More power means more heat, which means more thermal throttling as well. Battery drain also isn't linear. Throwing a core M chip into the 950 XL which has a 3300 mAH battery, would probably halve the effective use time. A sub 10'' device has many more design constraints than a 13'' device.

Intel Core M-5Y71
# of Cores 2
# of Threads 4
Processor Base Frequency 1.2 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 2.9 GHz
TDP 4.5 W
Scenario Design Power (SDP) 3.5 W
Configurable TDP-up Frequency 1.4 GHz
Configurable TDP-up 6 W
Configurable TDP-down Frequency 600 MHz
Configurable TDP-down 3.5 W

Intel Atom x7-Z8700

# of Cores 4
# of Threads 4
Processor Base Frequency 1.6 GHz
Burst Frequency 2.4 GHz
Scenario Design Power (SDP) 2 W

Not 100% but close enough, 3.5W versus 2W

Source: http://ark.intel.com/