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."
...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
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.
No. You have 3 more cores shut down and not doing anything at all, unless your task is nicely multithreaded, in which case they are all working on the task to get it done faster so all the cores can go to sleep and save you battery life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For argument sake, when it comes to battery, a single core may be better, if something is perfectly multi-threaded, there is still overhead of managing the threads, this overhead will translate directly to more power being sucked from the battery. So a single core may take longer, but the overall energy will be lower as there won't be any overhead to manage the threads.
For arguments sake, when it comes to battery, quad core is a lot better, because power grows with the square of speed, so quad core can run at a quarter of the speed for a total power reduction of a factor 4. Overhead for managing multiple threads is negligible.
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.