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Dual-Core Chips Coming To All Smartphones In 2011
An anonymous reader writes "All top of the range smartphones will be sporting dual-core chips this year. So is it time to ditch your current pocket rocket? Not necessarily — dual-core will give a bit of a boost to multitasking and media streaming but probably won't persuade iPhone owners to switch to Android, says the writer."
probably won't persuade iPhone owners to switch to Android
And who is to say that the iPhone 5 won't be dual core?
I made a comment about dual/quad core phones a while back and was laughed at. It will happen folks and sooner than you suspect. Phones are quickly becoming our primary computing device, or at least the centerpiece of our electronic lives.
It's not about playing Doom on a smart phone, it's about the phone being able to do everything we ask it to do without having to wait too long.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4
Uh...no? Maybe you're confusing its SOC nature by combining a GPU and CPU, but it is most definitely not a dual-core CPU.
Living With a Nerd
A4 is not dual core- it's an ARM Cortex A8 core with a PowerVR SGX 535 GPU. It's nearly identical to the Samsung Hummingbird CPUs used in the Galaxy S phones.
The 5th gen iPhone is rumored to have dual core, but it won't be out until at least this summer.
Sigs are for losers
"Runs smoothly" would be a selling point. "Amazing graphics" would be a selling point. "Long battery life" would be a selling point. But the number of bits of silicon inside the phone really isn't going to attract many consumers.
My Journal
For the same reason that 2GHz is better than 1.4GHz. The number is bigger, so the PHBs and yuppies will clamour for them. Meanwhile, those of us with an eye for detail will look at things like battery capacity, sound quality, compatibility with existing architectures and applications, and make informed decisions, instead of pawing at the latest shiny-shiny like a kitten with a toy.
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I'm sure old ones won't magically spawn a second core... :p
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Why not? Multi-core was marketed successfully for PCs, what makes smartphones any different? Tech specs are pretty important to the Android crowd. Besides, now that certain devices will have docks that allow them become netbook and HTPC replacements, people will find uses for that extra core.
Sigs are for losers
to Android. Have any of you ever talked to an iPhone user about the possibility that another phone might even exist, let alone be a better choice than the iPhone?
The number of cores or their speed doesn't matter at the moment. For example look at Nokia. Their phones tend to have much slower CPUs, but because of better software they run just as fast as the latest & greatest from Samsung etc. I think number of cores and speed will only become a selling point once smartphones become our only computers that we just dock to our keyboard/display terminals at home.
Most top smartphones right now are multitaskers, already perform more than 2 things at once even with single core processors. Having multiple cores means doing it somewhat better as you split the tasks over separate processors.
Would had been nice if the N900 had multiple cores, is just too easy to run a lot of things at once, at least, if that don't kill the battery.
Dual core with a dual battery would be nice
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Battery life, however, would seem to suffer with dual core.
My desktop system has a three-core processor that uses less power than many single core processors which do less work than one of its cores, all of which (AFAIK) are older than it is. These are new processors. Why do you imagine they will necessarily consume more power?
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1) The same argument was made before dual core made it to consumer PCs. If you build it, they will come.
:)
In any case, waiting on either PC or phone is usually due to some IO task, not heavy CPU usage. By far, the most waiting I'm going to be doing is when web pages are being loaded.
Media playback and games are primarily where users will see the most benefit from dual-core in the foreseeable future. Having a heavy webpage with Flash running smoothly doesn't hurt either.
2) Today, chips have very good power-gating. If only one core is being used, only one core is being powered. Also, the power usage increase is logarithmic. For this reason, having a second core doesn't double the TDP of the entire chip.
Also, most of these dual-core chips add a fraction of die space in return for an extra core. The SOCs already only dedicate a minority of space to the ARM core- the rest is taken up by the GPU, Memory, radio, and other misc controllers.
And due to die shrinkages with every generation, many dual-core chips will be drawing less power than their single-core counterparts. Case in point: the 3rd generation Snapdragon with dual-Scorpion cores is claimed (at least by Qualcomm) to use less power than the Snapdragons in current smartphones. Going from 65nm to 45nm (28nm expected by end of 2011!) provides that kind of headroom.
Besides, the biggest user of battery space is usually the screen, then radio (wifi, 3G/4G, bluetooth, etc), then the CPU at a distant third.
Double core- Double battery usage? Right, whatever.
Sigs are for losers
All Android phones released in 2010 were capped at 1Ghz with chips from either Qualcomm or Samsung. The Samsung Infuse 4G is the first phone I'm aware of that at stock is greater than 1Ghz (it is 1.2Ghz).
Almost all the Motorola Android phones, and all the high-end ones currently shipping, use TI OMAP processors.
First, Droid (Milestone) in 2009 used a TI OMAP 3430
Later, Droid X in 2010 used a TI OMAP 3630 at 1Ghz
Finally, Droid 2 Global Launched on Nov 9 2001 with a 1.2 GHz TI OMAP processor