Comment by faragon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by faragon | Hacker News Reader

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"That said a 50$ 64 core ARMv8 SoC is pretty much impossible to make even in China, by China, for China."

Allwinner A20 (4 core ARMv8 Cortex A53, 512KB L2 cache, 128KB L1 cache, 2 core Mali 400, video interface, etc.) costs 6$ in volume. So I guess just in plain die area, the 64 core Mars ARMv8 (32MB L2 cache) could take just 8 times the area of Allwinner A20, without including L3 cache. That would mean 48$ just in silicon, with naive extrapolation. Also, there are two versions of the chip: the high-end ("Mars") and a low-end ("Earth"), may be without L3 cache ([1]).

With progressive die reduction, it could be even cheaper, if demand reaches enough critical mass (e.g. billions of chips for routing devices, servers, etc.).

In addition to Cavium, there is another potential competitor: Mediatek (after Atheros aquisition), selling crazy cheap SoCs for SOHO routers. What if they start in the high-end and server market? (they would need just IP available from ARM for the inter-core memory routing, for making cheap SoCs).

[1] https://tweakimg.net/files/upload/HC27.24.320-Mars-64core-Ga...

SoC production isn't simply a question of die size it's a question of yield.

Larger dies would have smaller yields simply because say you have 25% defected dies with an 4 core SOC, when you scale it up to something 8 times it's size your defects are going to have a very severe effect on your yields to the point where you can't actually produce SoCs above a certain die size simply because it's more likely than not that all or almost all of them will have defects.

Also the older A53 copy paste SoCs are cheap, the licensing is cheap, and little to no R&D went into them, Allwinner, MediaTek etc. all have sub 10$ bargain bin SOCs (The A20 is after all a 3-4 year old 55nm SOC that wasn't cutting edge when it came out ;)) but their high end SOCs aren't dirt cheap they are just sufficiently below the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung to be competitive.

Don't get me wrong eventually can get there, but the question is do you even need to get there, by the time you can get a Mars like SoC down to a 50$ price point would that SOC be even relevant? Technology constantly evolves x86 and even ARM CPUs are not cheaper, they even increase in costs in as the likes Samsung and Qualcomm charge more year after year and even MediaTek is now stepping into the higher costs higher margins game also.

I meant Allwinner A64, not A20 (the A20 is Cortex A7 based).

Also, in some places A64 chip is told to cost 5$ in volume: http://www.phonedroid.net/blog/allwinner-a64-incredible-5-ta...

I meant Allwinner A64 (4 core ARMv8 Cortex A53, 512KB L2 cache, 128KB L1 cache, 2 core Mali 400, video interface, etc.), and not A20 (4 core Cortex A7).

Atheros was acquired by Qualcomm, not Mediatek.

Yes, thank you. Mediatek acquired Ralink.

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