Mediatek Helio X30 Deca-core SoC Features ARM Cortex-A73, Cortex A53, and Cortex A35 Processor Cores

Mediatek introduced Helio X20 last year with a tri-cluster architecture comprised of 2 powerful ARM Cortex A72 cores, 4 Cortex A53 cores, and 4 extra Cortex A53 cores operating at a lower frequency, and optimized for power consumption. But now that ARM has introduced ultra-low power Cortex A35 cores, and more powerful Cortex A73 cores,  the Taiwanese company has been able to improve its tri-cluster implementation for the upcoming Helio X30 deca-core processor with 2 Cortex A73 cores @ up to 2.8 GHz, 4 Cortex A53 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz, and 4 Cortex A35 cores @ up to 2.0 GHz.

Helio_X30According to various sources on Weibo, the mobile processor also includes an Imagination PowerVR 7XT GPU, supports up to 8GB LPDDR4 RAM @ 1600 MHz (PoP – Package in Package), UFS 2.1 flash storage, up to 40MP camera sensors,  and its cellular modem will support LTE Cat.10 to Cat.12.

Medaitek Helio X30 processor will be mass-produced using a 10nm manufacturing process in Q1 2017 and beyond, with Helio X30 smartphones likely launched at about the same time or in Q2 2017.

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15 Replies to “Mediatek Helio X30 Deca-core SoC Features ARM Cortex-A73, Cortex A53, and Cortex A35 Processor Cores”

  1. Can you use all cores at the same time?
    Or du you have to jump between sets of cores depending on power mode?

  2. At a total guess most phone socs use the cores at different times with slowest cores to save powers. These socks are aimed at phones, devices on batteries. So SBC or TV box was not a aim of the design.

  3. theguyuk :
    At a total guess most phone socs use the cores at different times with slowest cores to save power. These soc are aimed at phones, devices on batteries. So SBC or TV box was not a aim of the design.

    I hate my auto spell messing with my words ?

  4. Hopefully this lands in the next wave of chromebooks. There will “Elm” Chromebook based on Mediatek SOC soonish with A72, but this one looks to be upgrade in all directions (cores, process, memory, storage).

  5. IIRC, there should be 96Board with X20, maybe by accident they could also do X30 with at least 4GB of RAM, UFS storage instead of eMMC. Then we could run u-boot with EFI interface, load grub and load kernel 🙂

  6. @uibo
    Remember this is a processor for phones, so most of the time it’s running on low power, and only needs a short boost in performance from time to time, for example while loading a web page. So very often there are less high performance cores than low power cores. That’s the case for a Samsung hexa-core SoC, and Mediatek Helio X20 and X25 processors.

  7. @cnxsoft
    IMHO there are 2 cases:
    1) UX benefits from having fast cores (the screen is on and the user is waiting for the CPU processing to complete)
    2) UX does not benefit from faster cores (background tasks?)

    In case 1 I would always want them to use the faster cores (A73 or A53). The UX might improve with a higher A73 core count.
    In case 2 I would like them to use the most efficient cores. If the UX does not benefit faster cores, then who cares how long it will take to complete (why so many cores for this case)?

    Maybe the reason is that 4 A73 were too power hungry to be usable and from a marketing standpoint they needed 10 cores since X20 had 10. There were rumors that the X20 overheats and the A72 in it were rarely used under high load situations.

  8. @uibo
    Most of the time, the faster cores will only be used in burst in mobile phone, such as loading an app or a web page.
    I think the user interface relies a lot of the GPU, so in most cases a fast CPU won’t be needed. Games, music & video should also be using the low/mid power cores since it’s mostly handled by other hardware blocks.

    What you want is to find the right balance between performance and battery power consumption.

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