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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."
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
I have an htc desire. It fast enough. What I need is a 3G connection on the train to and from work. That is the slow part.
"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
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
Considering my phone screen is 65%-85% of the battery, I am not too worried about a dual core.
Also, I imagine with the ability to kill off cores when not needed a slower dual-core could use less than a single core, and run better.
The iPad has massive battery because of the screen, which I bet is over 90% of the power used. Especially in one that is being used as a browser tablet without 3G (less going on when not being used).
My current (4 hours since unplugged, not too much usage today vs a normal morning) has 65% display, 10% cell standby, 8% phone idle as the top 3. Not having the phone function would save 10% of my battery, but still the screen is the real killer. And on a typical day I use the screen a lot more in the morning.
This is Tmobile G2 for reference.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
two cores on lower clock rate may consume less energy than one core with fast clocking. energy use is proportional to the square of the clock rate, so it's a matter of tuning to achieve lower power. the only question is whether the slow cores will be fast enough for the important sequential tasks (if there are such at all).
Umm... the Android G1 had a 524Mhz Qualcomm processor and that was 2008. The first Android phone to come out with a 1Ghz Snapdragon was the Nexus One, and that wasn't until January 2010. And as far as current-gen Android phones having a 1.2Ghz processor, none of those have been released yet. 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).
As for battery life, I'd like to direct you to this white paper: http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/tegra_white_papers/Benefits-of-Multi-core-CPUs-in-Mobile-Devices_Ver1.2.pdf
Sure it's written by nVidia, but I doubt they are allowed to flat out lie, as that's some pretty bad PR. And it's the whole theory behind having dual cores in laptops anyway. 2 cores running at a lower clock speed is more power efficient than running one core at a higher clock speed.
Oh god... you can't be suggesting that they're going to FRAGMENT the number of cores? IPhone users will hate that.
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
That's exactly the way I see things headed. We will all be carrying around our "computer" and storage with us, and public places will simply augment it with larger screens and keyboard (as Motorola suggests) or in many other ways. In this way we buy the applications we use for our personal computing devices (PCD) and then have access to them everywhere we go. No more of this crap of buying software four times over for four machines at home.
Imagine walking into the living room and your PCD magically becomes the remote for your TV, VCR, DVR, or whatever. Then you walk into the kitchen and you can control the microwave, stove, and other devices with it. Walk out of the house and your phone allows you to remotely set the alarm and lock the doors. It becomes the key to your car once you are in it or allows you to remote start it. You walk near a printer at work with it and print the document you grabbed from home. The possibilities are endless.
Remember to maintain your supply of