When It Comes To Mobile Computing Hardware, The Company Name Logo Is The First Word We Think Of Subconsciously.
Indeed, Intel has historically been known as one of the pioneers in chip manufacturing. Still, the logo has penetrated the mobile processors market for years with a slow and calculated move.
Interestingly, mobile device manufacturers have embraced the logo strategy. Everyone knows that mobile devices no longer need to be fast or powerful but that the device is easy to move and more efficient.
It is why the logo dominates the mobile processor market, and the infrastructure of almost every primary product produced in this field is based on the logo.
Mobile processors are the billions of chips used in phones, smart TVs, embedded systems, biosystems, laptops, and tablets. Why did the logo reach such a position, and other architectures like x86 could not establish themselves in the market?
This article will take a brief look at the strategies that show how the logo overcame competitors and got to this point. The critical point is that the company logo is not the manufacturer of the processor.
The company designs the CPU architecture and makes the designs available to companies such as Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, and others to use in the architecture of their following processors. Because business partners use processors based on a typical architecture, they also support the same code.
What is the architecture of the instruction set?
(Instruction Set Architecture)
Every computer chip needs a set of specific instructions for processing operation, on which the logo works seriously. Unlike cache or processing kernel, ISA is not a physical component. ISA refers to how all aspects of the CPU work. To be more precise, this architecture specifies the types of instructions that the chip can process.
In addition, the input and output data format determines how the processor communicates with the main memory and other technical issues. Simply put, the ISA should be described as a set of technical features, while the operational implementation processor determines these specifications. This architecture can be considered as a preliminary map that shows how different parts of the processor work.
For example, ISA specifies the dimensions of each piece of processed data in the processor. All processors perform three fixed tasks on data and instructions. They read the instructions, execute the instructions, and update the status depending on the results.
However, ISA follows a different pattern to break each of these steps into smaller sections to optimize output. In addition, it anticipates new branches in conditional instructions and data pre-receipts.
In addition to determining the CPU microarchitecture, the underlying architecture specifies a set of instructions that the CPU can process.
The instructions refer to the code that a processor runs in each performance cycle and is generated by the compiler.
There are various instructions for the processor, the most important of which are memory read/write, computational operations, instruction classification, and the like.
However, ISA follows a different pattern to break each of these steps into smaller sections to optimize output. In addition, it anticipates new branches in conditional instructions and data pre-receipts. In addition to determining the CPU microarchitecture, the underlying architecture specifies a set of instructions that the CPU can process.
The instructions refer to the code that a processor runs in each performance cycle, and the compiler generates. There are various instructions for the processor, the most important of which are memory read/write, computational operations, instruction classification, and the like. However, ISA follows a different pattern to break each of these steps into smaller sections to optimize output.
In addition, it anticipates new branches in conditional instructions and data pre-receipts. In addition to determining the CPU microarchitecture, the underlying architecture specifies a set of instructions that the CPU can process.
The instructions refer to the code that a processor runs in each performance cycle and is generated by the compiler.
There are various instructions for the processor, the most important of which are memory read/write, computational operations, instruction classification, and the like. In addition, it anticipates new branches in conditional instructions and data pre-receipts. In addition to determining the CPU microarchitecture, the underlying architecture specifies a set of instructions that the CPU can process.
The instructions refer to the code that a processor runs in each performance cycle, and the compiler generates. There are various instructions for the processor, the most important of which are memory read/write, computational operations, instruction classification, and the like. In addition, it anticipates new branches in conditional instructions and data pre-receipts.
In addition to determining the CPU microarchitecture, the underlying architecture specifies a set of instructions that the CPU can process. The instructions refer to the code that a processor runs in each performance cycle and is generated by the compiler.
There are various instructions for the processor, the most important of which are memory read/write, computational operations, instruction classification, and the like.
RISC vs. CISC
The explanations we provided showed to some extent, the performance of the ISA. Now we have to see how the logo architecture distinguishes it from competitors.
The most important feature of the logo is the structure of the Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) title, which is opposite to the construction of the CISC Complex Instruction Set Computing title used by x86. The above structures define the process of building processors, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.
In the RISC architecture, each command directly specifies an activity for the processor and defines the activities complex and straightforwardly. In CISC architecture, on the other hand, the structure is more complex because the processor must manage more extensive operations.
Thus, the CISC architecture divides each instruction into a smaller set of more complex operations to manage. The CISC architecture can turn large and complex details into single instructions, increasing CPU performance and power.
For example, the RISC architecture can only store one or two Add instructions. In comparison, the CISC architecture can store up to 20 instructions depending on the data type and other computational parameters.
If we want to compare the performance of these two technologies with building a house, we must say that using the RISC architecture, you only have one saw and hammer, while in the CISC architecture, you have access to hammers, saws, drills, and other tools.
A design that uses a system similar to CISC can do more work because it has more and more sophisticated tools at its disposal. A RISC architecture method can complete the house, but it takes more time due to access to a limited set of tools.
If the limitations are so significant, why use the RISC architecture? Note that performance and power are not the only criteria considered in processor design. A building designer using CISC must have professional workers who can work with various tools and require a complex environment that is difficult to plan and organize. In addition, all devices are challenging to manage because each one is designed to work with a specific material.
Requires less energy
If we put the previous paragraphs together, we find that the logo is more attractive to mobile system designers because two criteria of structure and efficiency are essential for mobile device designers.
In the case of mobile and built-in equipment, energy efficiency is more important than power and performance. Every system designer has to reduce some functional capabilities to achieve more energy. This reduction in productivity will continue until battery technology improves, as more powerful processors generate more heat and require more power.
That is why today, large and powerful processors are used only in desktop devices. Although large processors provide more power, they generate a lot of heat and consume the phone’s battery in minutes if used in smartphones.
To overcome the problem of power consumption in mobile processors, x86 processors can produce with less power, but the CISC microarchitecture is used to build powerful and large chips. It is why logo processors are constructed not to the desktop size. How did the logo achieve high energy efficiency?
The answer lies in the RISC design and microarchitecture details. Since the logo does not need to process different instructions, the interior architecture may make it easier to design.
In addition, the processing overhead in managing a processor is less in the RISC structure. The overall result is that more energy is stored. The simpler the design, the more transistors are used that are directly related to processing activities.
A lovely little structure
Another key feature of the logo is the heterogeneous computational architecture (big. LITTLE). This design includes two complementary processors on one chip. One is a core with low power and power consumption, and the other is a more powerful core. The chip evaluates the system’s structure and selects one of the two available cores to operate. The compiler invokes a more powerful kernel in different scenarios if it learns that a complex processing instruction is imminent.
If the device is idle or performing simple calculations, the kernel is activated with less power and energy consumption (LITTLE), and the more powerful seed is switched off. “It saves 75% more energy,” says Arm. The processor of a standard desktop computer indeed consumes less power when light processing activity or system shutdown, but parts of them are always active. Because the logo can turn off some cores, it always works better than desktop examples (Figure 1).
figure 1
Processor design in all stages is based on light and heavy capabilities and strengths and weaknesses. The logo has ultimately chosen the RISC microarchitecture. It has achieved a good result from this selection so that in 2010 it succeeded in gaining almost 95% of the market for mobile processors. Over the years, several companies have entered the market, but the logo is still the market power.
Provide extensive licenses to manufacturers
The logo licensing method plays a crucial role in the success of this company and achieving the first position in this market. Chips are physically tricky and expensive to make. That’s why the logo does not do that. It, therefore, offers more flexibility and the ability to customize on a large scale.
Companies that receive a logo license specify their capabilities and requirements depending on their field of activity. In addition, they can implement only some of the logo instructions and launch their chips with a different design.
Large companies in this field include Apple, Anodia, Imedi, Broadcom, Fujitsu, Amazon, Huawei, and Qualcomm, each of which works with the logo.
Logo design is not limited to the world of smartphones; Microsoft also uses the company’s architecture to build Surface and other lightweight devices (Figure 2).
One of the most exciting markets on which the logo is focused is data centers.
The logo seeks a long-term strategy to bring more efficiency and lower energy consumption to the world of data centers. In a structure where thousands of servers are used, saving energy is very important.
It raised alarm bells for Intel and Imedi, and the two companies came up with new solutions to this problem about large structures to achieve the two criteria of efficiency and power simultaneously. Of course, it is not expected that these two companies will shortly be able to offer an effective solution.
Another logo program is related to collecting a large ecosystem of complementary processor (IP) intellectual property that can implement in the company’s architecture.
These include accelerators, decoders/decoders, and special-purpose processors that companies can purchase licenses to use in their products. In addition, the logo is a great choice when it comes to IoT equipment. Amazon Echo and Google Home Mini both use Cortex Arm processors.
Many capabilities on a single chip
In addition to its core ISA business, the logo has entered the field of on-chip systems (SoC). With increasing space and energy constraints, the mobile processing market has shifted to integrated design patterns.
A CPU and an on-chip system are similar in many ways, but in a nutshell, SoC is the future of the mobile processing world. The design on a chip has precisely the same function as its name. Different parts and components are assembled in this type of chip to increase efficiency.
Before SoC design became the standard structure of the mobile processing world, each system shown in Figure 3 required a dedicated chip. For this reason, the mobile market is increasingly moving towards SoC designs.
For all its conveniences, the SoC architecture is not suitable for all systems. And for example, we do not see the use of SoCs in public desktops and laptops because, in this design, there are limitations in terms of maximum equipment installed on a chip.
In addition, you can not put the performance and power of a standalone GPU or a large amount of memory with all the required communication structures on one chip. SoC, like RISC, is only suitable for low-energy designs and has little application to high-performance, high-power designs.
We now know that the logo became the dominant mobile processor market by focusing on simple, high-performance design.
The company’s RISC ISA model allows companies to produce proprietary processors and have a stable source of revenue. They have maximized efficiency and performance using the RISC model. In today’s world of mobile processing, efficiency and energy consumption play a leading role, and the logo has established its position in this field.