Slashdot Mirror
Quad-Core Mobile Chips Wasted On Mobiles?
An anonymous reader writes "Dual-core smartphones have only just hit the market, but mobile chipmakers Nvidia and Qualcomm are already turning their attention to quad-core chips. While it looks certain that tablets will be the first quad-core mobile devices in the market, chipmakers reckon they'll land in smartphones too. But do smartphones need quad-core chips? There's surely only so much multitasking a smartphone user can do. I'm interested to hear what smartphone apps/features/functions — if any — Slashdot readers reckon quad-core chips would enable"
There's surely only so much multitasking a smartphone user can do.
Yep true, if everything's locked up.
But provide that amount of power in an open system and there'll be people who'll find beautiful ways of suing it.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Is this so when you have your main task going, there are 3 more cores to eat up battery power in the background?
...anything more than 512KB of RAM is wasted on smartphones, too?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Folding@Phone. What could be more obvious??? It would also offer an incentive to manufacturers to provide longer lasting batteries!
I am Spartacus
Okay, so it doesn't apply to anybody on /., but for plenty of people, the idea of carrying their primary computing platform in their pocket is awesome. All they need is the ability for it to play nicely with a wireless keyboard/mouse and their big-ass TV, and they've suddenly got a home computer, with all their data stored up in the cloud.
An important thing to realize is that multi-tasking is NOT the same thing as as an app/OS being multi-threaded. While most apps need to be specifically coded to be multi-threaded, operating systems for a long time have had the ability to take advantage of multiple CPUs to complete tasks. Now, while a big jump in a single application may come from taking a huge CPU task and chopping it up into little pieces, there are definitely some tasks that lend themselves very easily to being multi-threaded. For example, probably the most important one is independently-executed Javascript threads. Browser performance can really be improved from multiple CPUs chewing on Javascript threads and then powering down to a low power state. Now, will it really matter when most of the wait for a page loading is downloading images? Probably not, but better performance is still better performance. The key goal with dual/quad core chips is making sure the system itself still feels responsive when doing tasks. A good example of this is if you have an iPhone and you are listening to a video podcast while running Safari, the system will definitely see some slowdown. Or running any app while the OS is installing something from the App Store, uploading a photo to Flickr in the background, or streaming Pandora. As refined as smartphones seem, they are still just pocket computers with limited resources.
I will use it in ways that even I cannot now foresee. The reason general-purpose computers are so useful is because they can be used in ways that were not foreseen by the manufacturer. Please stop trying to determine how I will use my equipment. Just make it powerful and stop trying to lock me down to a particular usage scenario.
I can't wait to have to charge my phone every 4 hours !
Neither can I. My Droid 2 us usually toast after about three.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Currently, the Nvidia Tegra 2 chip has 8 cores. A high powered dual core A9-cortex ARM chip, a low powered A7 (for idle state and handling other low power interrupts), a core for HD video encode, a core for HD video decode, a core for audio, and a GPU. Though it lacks the Neon instruction set for full performance SIMD.
OpenCL is currently on its way into the mobile world. Soon the mobile world will also make the transition into streaming multiprocessors. The thought of holding back these innovations is just ludicrous dribble. MIMD is soon going to replace rasterization with backwards rendering, which will require a high amount of complexity, which a quad core would be more ideal. Especially, if you want to exploit the heterogeneity of OpenCL with both the on board GPU and CPU. Maybe cloud rendering will eventually replace this, though I have my doubts. I want to be able to render my screen locally without connecting to the internets.
I hope to one day be able to run test simulations on my tablet while I am waiting in line for lunch, see the results, and then execute heavier distributed processes.
One core running governmnent spyware. One core running phone maker's bloatware One core running MAFIAA trusted computing DRM/spyware One core running the user's apps.
why would 4 cores be 6x as fast as a single core?
Assuming clock speed remains the same, 4 cores isn't even 4x as fast as a single core, even under the best of circumstances, due to overhead and and inefficiency derived by of breaking up one task into multiple threads. That isn't even counting the "turbo" feature that modern cpus have to increase clock speed when only a single core is in use.
We'll need PCs because we'll have programs that have requirements 100x higher than what we have now.
You need one core for each finger, so if you want four-finger gesturing you need four cores. If you only have one core, you get the finger.
That is why my 8-core imac is soo cool, I have two magic mice - one per hand, and a magic trackpad for each foot; I can type with my nose, and still have 3 cores to spare in case one breaks down.
somebody slap the OP.
Actually it *could* help overall power consumption. On my EVO Shift 75-80% of power draw during a typical day is used by the display with most of the rest being for the cellular radio, only a few percent are used by the CPU. If you could get your task done faster and the screen back to sleep you could significantly increase useful life.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Sooner or later, someone is going to finally achieve the long-held dream of portable computing: A high-resolution display that can be worn like glasses, overlaying the image onto the user's vision.
With more cores, this will also add a benefit because apps that don't multithread will use one core's CPU time, while other cores are not affected. Say a MP3 player is using one core to play music. The user fires up another task, and instead of taking CPU time away from the MP3 player (possibly causing skipping), it will use another core that is not as utilized.
Not really an issue anymore. One just has to adjust the scheduler to ensure your mp3s do not skip, there is no real advantage to having two cores in this respect. And even if skipping were to occur, it would likely be a result of contention for other resources and not the CPU.
The real advantage of multiple cores is that it allows CPU designers to produce more MIPS while using less power. This is because doubling the clock rate of a CPU more then doubles the power requirements of that same CPU. So CPU designers are going the multi-core route to increase power. This happens at the cost of requiring the software to me multithreaded - something which used to be difficult but is becoming less of an issue.
Is Bill O' as good?
Take him off his meds. If that doesn't do the job a weekend immersion training with Charlie Sheen* should have him ranting** along nicely...
*abusable substances available on a cost plus basis
**resulting rants not guaranteed entertaining
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Right, but I'm sure above poster is implying that said docked device will actually work properly.
Epic game developer calls iPad 2 graphics leap "astonishing"
"Last year's A4 CPU used in the iPhone 4 and iPad is roughly "comparable to a single Xbox 360 core" Sweeney estimated. The new A5 used in iPad 2 holds the potential for "far, far more potential in that platform than we're exploiting today," he added."
"Sweeney said iPad 2 delivers enough shader performance that "you can use the high-detail shaders we did during Gears of War." The interview noted that "more complex shaders and post-processing effects are going to remain the visual differentiators between high-end mobile devices and consoles for the time being, though we could 'see more of that with more time with the iPad 2.'""
http://bit.ly/evAQPu
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.