Motorola Dishes New Details on X8 Architecture in the Moto X

[dgstorm]

For those out there who are still unsure of the power contained within the internals of the new Moto X, your fears may be put to rest after hearing the latest info straight from Google. Iqbal Arshad, Motorola's senior vice president of engineering had a great deal to say about the custom X8 architecture found in the new Moto X (and the Verizon Droid series). First, before we share the juicy gossip, we have a more extensive breakdown of the internals to share. This one came from a Taylor Wimberly update from about a week ago that we overlooked. It fits nicely with this discussion so we decided to include it here:

"A mobile computing system powers the new Motorola devices, as opposed to a standard application processor chip found in every smartphone. This involves eight tightly integrated processors, special algorithms, and sensors. No one except Motorola could create this system. The result is a consumer experience like no other. Below is what it entails and see the next section for what it enables:

• Four powerful graphics processors each running at 400 MHz delivering 3.2 million pixel fill rate,16 shader units, 512kb dedicated cached memory and running the Egypt performance benchmark at a blazing 155 frames per second (FPS). Fully compliant with Android Project Butter.
• Two ultra fast application processors each running at 1.7 GHz, 28nm low-*power technology, high‐speed dual-*channel DDR RAM running at 533 MHz.
• One local natural language processor (L‐NLP). Motorola proprietary low‐power specialized processor with audio sensors, noise estimators, noise cancellation, and speech recognition technology to enable always-on voice based user interaction without sacrificing battery life.
• One contextual computing processor (CCP). Motorola proprietary low-power specialized processor that computes contextual data from sensors enabling intelligent mobile computing and always-on display mode.
• Our main chipset has two CPUs and quad GPUs. We have added two additional low*‐power processors (Contextual Processor, Natural Language Processor) in our system design. So we are not saying we have an octa-*core chip, but we have an octa-*core Mobile Computing System. Silicon vendors only like to talk about dual versus quad core main CPUs because that is how they are priced. We have to brand and market our system as opposed to a chip.

Our approach is completely different. We have built a custom system around the application processor. For example, the new Motorola devices do not use the battery hungry application processor to do always on audio or display. We have custom designed our system to deliver great experiences without killing the battery. We have built the first true mobile computing system.”

Now that you have a more technical look at the internals, let's see what Mr. Arshad had to say about this new technology in a PC Mag article,

"If you look at the X8 mobile computing system, it has a cluster of processors and then some separate elements of the system," said Iqbal Arshad, Motorola's senior vice president of engineering. The goal was to move away from a primarily CPU-based architecture to save power and do "intelligent, probabilistic computing," he said.

But still, let's start with the CPU; it's the easiest part to understand. The X8's CPU is, basically, a 28nm Qualcomm S4 Pro running at 1.7GHz. Motorola has customized the chip's firmware, though.

"We've done additional optimizations on top of that such as optimizing the entire Linux user space to move it to an ARM instruction set, cache optimization, Dalvik just-in-time optimization, and we've changed the file system," Arshad said. "It's full hardware-software integration to deliver best-in-class performance."

Here's where things get a little more mysterious. Associated with the S4 Pro, but not on the same chip, are a "contextual computing processor" and a "natural language processor." Arshad said that neither of those were ARM cores and declined to say where Motorola got them from, or who manufactured them.

"It's done by Motorola, a lot of design in the entire system," he said. "The actual silicon is specified by us but we don't go ahead and design and fab it. It's not an ARM processor, it's a very low-power separate processor," he said.

The contextual computing processor handles the sensors, display and touch interaction, but it also appears to function as the primary processor when the phone is in standby mode, including showing status and notification information on the display. The natural language processor deals with audio, noise estimation and noise cancellation; Motorola isn't using noise-cancellation technology from Audience or any outside vendor, Arshad said.

"We invented mobile. We have [80] years of DSP expertise, That is all Motorola's unique technology," he said.

Separating the custom logic from the CPU will allow Motorola to build X8s based on other CPUs, Arshad said.

"We can work with any Qualcomm processor. We can work with anybody's CPU. That's the beauty of it; all of our technology and experiences are decoupled from the legacy CPU processor," he said.

The combination of processors and custom firmware extends battery life and improves performance, Arshad said.

"If we did not have the contextual computing processor and our natural language processor in place, we would need two additional batteries," he said. The X8 also performs 50 percent better than "our competition" on gaming battery rundown benchmarks and can push higher graphics frame rates, he said.

Motorola also manages to do all of this without altering stock Android, he said. Here, I have to be precise: the version of Android on the Droids isn't exactly stock Android, but the Moto X is anticipated to be so.

"The Active Display system uses the exact same notification logic that's in stock Android, so we're not modifying that," he said.

That's a great deal to take in, but it seems quite worth digesting. Over the past year it's been easy to become jaded with how things are evolving with smartphone technology and start to assume there is no room left for innovation. It seems that Motorola and Google are intent on proving that wrong. This just makes us all the more excited to "dive in" to the final launch tonight!

Stay tuned for that news, as we will be staying up late to cover it right here!

Source: MotoXForums.com

 

[combatmedic870]

So this is now confirmed?

 

[dgstorm]

Yes... none of this is rumor. The only thing that is not 100% is that the Moto X will come with pure Android. That is only about 90% confirmed at this time. If it does have any skinning, it will likely be very minimal.

 

[tgyberg]

If reading that doesn't give you a good nerd fix I don't know what would!

 

[dezymond]

Hmmm, early rumors had this phone quite underpowered for what we all thought it was going to be. All those have been put to rest with the stats given and I think this is going to be a great phone. I wonder if other manufacturers will adopt a similar approach to better our Android experience.

 

[combatmedic870]

199 on contract. DOA for me personally

 

[camaro1173]

Here is a link to the Moto site for what they have on the X at this time Motorola Mobility LLC. USA

 

[trestevenson]

I'll have to see one in person first, but I'm considering replacing my G-Nex with one of these. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but I've got to admit I'm anxious to see what this device has to offer.

 

[cereal killer]

Yes... none of this is rumor. The only thing that is not 100% is that the Moto X will come with pure Android. That is only about 90% confirmed at this time. If it does have any skinning, it will likely be very minimal.

Pretty much pure Android is what it looks like....

accessories galore as well

 

[combatmedic870]

Very anticlimactic for me. It's not going to ship with 4.3. Plus gotta have a contract for the 199 price. Plus the 32gb version is only going to be available on AT&T

http://m.androidcentral.com/moto-x-hands-on-video-pics

 

[Dusty]

Soul crippling disappointment.

S4 it is.

 

[morcguy]

Seems like the Droids are a better deal. Latest info says internals are basically identical to new Droids.

 

[RideZeLitenin]

hellyeaaaah

hmm, since the firmware is customized uniquely for the moto x, i wander if this will impact custom rom development..

 

[cobravnm13]

hellyeaaaah

hmm, since the firmware is customized uniquely for the moto x, i wander if this will impact custom rom development..

Possibly, but doubtful. If you can build on top of what is already there, then there shouldn't be a problem. Now, if you go building from the ground up, there is more of a chance of things not working right. I feel that it would be a little tricky getting AOSP/AOKP/CM on there and not break several things that make the Moto X what it is. At least at first. I'm disappointed with the price structure, though. Not sure if it would be worth it.

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk 2

 

[solution]

Man I wonder. Do people that always find some aspect of a phone to be a "dealbreaker" ever end up buying a phone at all? I applaud Moto for disclosing what they're doing under the hood of this new device. Seems to me that their tired of the same ol' quarter mile that the other manufacturers have locked themselves into and actually building something that can rip around the track; not only in a straight line. I'm picking one up on Day 1.