Qualcomm Made a Modern Smartwatch Chip: Meet the Snapdragon Wear 4100 (arstechnica.com) 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After years of repackaging the same basic smartwatch chip over and over again, Qualcomm has graced Wear OS with a modern smartwatch SoC. Meet the Snapdragon Wear 4100, a Qualcomm smartwatch chip that, for the first time ever, is faster than the previous chip. The Wear 4100 uses four 1.7GHz Cortex A53 CPUs built on a 12nm manufacturing process, a major upgrade from the 28nm Cortex A7s that every other Qualcomm smartwatch chip has been up until now. It's not the state-of-the-art 7nm process that Qualcomm's high-end chip uses, and the Cortex A53 is an old CPU design, but for Qualcomm, it's a major upgrade. Between the new CPU, the Adreno 504 GPU, and faster memory, Qualcomm is promising "85% faster performance" compared to the Wear 3100.
There are actually two versions of the 4100, the vanilla "4100" and the "4100+." The plus version is specifically for smartwatches with an always-on watch face, and like previous Wear SoCs, comes with an extra low-power SoC (based around a Cortex-M0) to keep the time updated and log sensor data (like step counts). Qualcomm is promising a better display image quality in this low-power mode, with more colors and a smoother display. There are also dual DSPs now, which Qualcomm says are for "optimal workload partitioning, support for dynamic clock and voltage scaling, Qualcomm Sensor Assisted Positioning PDR Wearables 2.0, low power location tracking support, and an enhanced Bluetooth 5.0 architecture." There are also dual ISPs with support for 16MP sensors (on a smartwatch?). As usual, connectivity options are plentiful, with onboard LTE, GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi 802.11n, and Bluetooth 5.
There are actually two versions of the 4100, the vanilla "4100" and the "4100+." The plus version is specifically for smartwatches with an always-on watch face, and like previous Wear SoCs, comes with an extra low-power SoC (based around a Cortex-M0) to keep the time updated and log sensor data (like step counts). Qualcomm is promising a better display image quality in this low-power mode, with more colors and a smoother display. There are also dual DSPs now, which Qualcomm says are for "optimal workload partitioning, support for dynamic clock and voltage scaling, Qualcomm Sensor Assisted Positioning PDR Wearables 2.0, low power location tracking support, and an enhanced Bluetooth 5.0 architecture." There are also dual ISPs with support for 16MP sensors (on a smartwatch?). As usual, connectivity options are plentiful, with onboard LTE, GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi 802.11n, and Bluetooth 5.
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Could you PLEASE stop giving those idiots ideas?
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Useless (Score:2)
Why not do this in 7nm, if anything needs the low power benefit it's smartwatches. Seems like they half-assed it because they are blind to the potential of wearables.
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My guess is even the trash tier chips Fitbit uses are starting to pull ahead of Qualcomm. This isn't even mentioning Samsung and Apple's silicon. This is the bare minimum needed to put out something that can compete.
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I would assume that getting manufacturing time from TSMC for 7mm would be quite expensive. You're up against AMD and Nvidia and other qualcomm divisions for what's essentially a limited run by comparison to the other ASICs which are rolling off their production line.
These other chips would be a lot more profitable and in a lot higher demand.
It wouldn't surprise me if Qualcomm were contracted to TSMC for a certain amount of production time from another division and they're using that to make their 11nm chips
Come on, think about it (Score:3)
Because it'd make the final product a lot more expensive, and Qualcomm's customers (digital watch makers) only have a certain budget for these SoCs within their overall BOM cost. It's supply and demand, not rocket science.
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Probably the cost of 7nm is still too high for the size of the market that Qualcomm feels it can get.
Apple have most of the smartwatch market above $100, and cheap-ass fitness devices with some watch functions in the low end.
Also this 12nm might be good enough, given four small cores, a weak GPU and some other functions - it's hardly a large chip. It might be a low power 12nm process as well.
Regardless, it puts the poor SD Wear 2100 to sleep finally.
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Re:smart watches are cringe. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, do I want to go to dinner parties where they judge you based on the watch you wear?
Re: smart watches are cringe. (Score:1)
Why would you want to be around those types of people? They are a waste of your time.
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Then again, do I want to go to dinner parties where they judge you based on the watch you wear?
Everyone, yourself included judges people based on their appearance.
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99% of the people I know I don't even have a face to, let alone a body. How would I judge them based on their appearance?
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99% of the people I know I don't even have a face to, let alone a body. How would I judge them based on their appearance?
I realise you may be unfamiliar with dinner parties what with never being invited, but generally at dinner parties, seeing other guests is the norm.
For example, if I see you in cargo pants, wearing an anime t-shirt with a scantily dresses young looking woman stretched across your ample gut, a scraggy neckbeard and a trilby (which you mistake for a fedora), then I'm going to make some as
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Everyone, yourself included judges people based on their appearance.
Not blind people.
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You know I realised slightly after I posted that I was leaving myself open for that one.
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I just couldn't resist. ;)
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Because women are attracted to powerful wealthy alpha men, and Darwinian displays of fitness in the modern age mean expensive looking nice clothes and fast cars. An unpleasant DNA-level human condition that no doubt the left-leaning woke crowd would rather sweep under the carpet, but isn't going away if you are a man wanting sex... although maybe that's slowly going away now too.
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Let me fix that for you:
"Because shallow people judge others based on shallow criteria."
I picked up my wife on our first date in a 15 year old compact car with silver crackle-finish Rust-Oleum spayed over all the rust spots I'd ground out. I wasn't wearing a watch at all!
Why would I go after the "friendship" or a relationship with this, in my experience, small slice of the population? Things are things, and easily replaceable.
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A woman who gets together with you because of your wealth is a woman less interested in a marriage than in the divorce afterwards.
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My watch doesn't look very good, but it does call for an ambulance if I trip over someone after they were mugged.
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I really don't give a single shit about mechanical watches, OR the people that would judge me by it. My WearOS watch is a tool that I use. If it didn't do what it does I wouldn't wear a fucking watch at all.
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You seem to be quite vain. Smartwatches can be very useful, unlike mechanical watches that are just bling bling. I love my motoactv.
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Smartwatches are a little tacky, but so are big 'watch nerd' watches that are used exclusively to show off to other watch nerds for pi**ing contests. WGAF? Use a tool for which it's designed. Smartwatches are good for people that exercise a lot (gym, tri, and running nerds as opposed to jocks). Otherwise, if you need to tell time, do what most normal people do: look at your phone.
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No. I think it is really cool to be able to emulate a Cray-XMP at full speed using a wrist mounted device.
If only it had a couple of dozen 1/2" tape drives on it, I would actually buy one myself.
However, following the news that staring at red LEDs restores your eyesight to where it was before you discovered Pornhub, I am going through the attic to find my old LED watch instead.
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Ha, watches have ALWAYS been jewellery. Functionality was a side-effect. The first watches were terrible at keeping time, and they were always meant for the nobility. I also remember hearing that because they were 'functional', the clergy could own them. It was an ostentatious display of wealth.
The luxury watch market is the natural state of the watch market.
The Apple Watch and all other smart watches are the *most* functional watches have ever been, and at a comparatively low price. Even the most expensive
4 cores (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it me, or is software programming models so useless these days that a watch that basically tracks your heartbeat every second, pings an email notification and displays a clock requires 4 cores?
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Those are the user-visible things it does. Tracking your location and pinging it back to google takes a lot of procs.
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My wife uses hers to do a bunch of voice command texting so she can bug when she's at work and can't pull her phone out.
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I was wondering the same...and why does it need a GPU? Unless of course it's used to do non-graphic related workload like speech recognition...
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...and why does it need a GPU?
Here is a demo video [youtu.be] of a Wear OS app seriously using the GPU for graphics.
Disclaimer: It is my app.
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Well you can take phone calls and video calls on them these days as well.
Indeed the PLUS version of this chip comes with the always-on single-core low power chip for always-on functions that you mention. The bigger chip with a A53s is only ramped up for interactive sessions and scheduled tasks. My recommendation - never buy the non-plus version of the 4100.
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It's cost reduction. Rather than have a dedicated processor for the radios you can just run the stack on an ARM core in the main CPU. ARM cores are ridiculously cheap now.
Also helps with performance because people want everything to be smooth, so a core can be dedicated to animation while another does the real work. On devices with fewer cores the animation slows everything down (old iPhones were particularly prone to that, even the current ones because they are only dual core).
Modern? (Score:3)
Please consider using exposition to explain what 'modern' means instead of using the word 'modern'.
I think it's fair (Score:2)
Qualcomm's existing line of chips are antiquated they run on kerosene.
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In 5 years, this post is going to sound pretty silly calling it a modern cpu.
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In 5 years it won't be a modern CPU, it will be a 5 year old one. The issue is that Qualcomm's previous "attempts" were so half hearted that they were 3-5 years outdated before they were even released. This is the first time they appear to have put any effort at all into it (and by any effort, I mean the bare minimum, but that's more than the last couple!)
So yes, the "news" is that this time they made one that wasn't severely outdated before it even hit the market.
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My original point was that 'modern' is an ineffective word to use to describe the new SoC.
"Qualcomm has released a 12nm die-shrunk SoC with new GPU, twice the memory, and higher clock speed" would be a lot more informative.
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5 years from now nobody will remember if that's good or bad. "they released something equivalent to other current stuff" is more relevant.
Re: I think it's fair (Score:2)
Owning a 2100 smartwatch, I suspect this will hit the sweet spot. My battery was just a touch too short and the watch a touch too thick for my tastes.
I miss the card based wear OS though, the new app based one is kinda clunky to use on a watch, so I'm not sure I'll get one. It's a shame. Wear OS was so we'll designed for a watch, but people were all "I can't type on it,
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Yeah, but your version doesn't have the passive aggressive snark of the submitter's. It would be far less likely to quench the fury of a Qualcomm smartwatch nerd.
Great. (Score:2)
Great. (Score:2)
Yes...at a 25% battery saving. Seems pretty good.
Battery life, Mi Bamd (Score:2)
16MP sensor (Score:2)