And then there were 10... cores... in a phone CPU?!?!?!
This one doesn't surprise me at all. We all knew that the core-race in processors wasn't over. But the media around it is simply silly. One site basically said that demand for 8-core processors showed that there was a demand for 10-core processors. Wish I could find that one again. It made me laugh. It is same as pointing to the "increasing demand" for smart TV's. But I also want to rehash my argument on why these multi-core processors are quite simply idiotic.
First point is demand. I liken this to Smart TV's because, as with Smart TV's the demand is artificial. People don't really want 8-core phones. "People" (as in "in general") don't really know what that means. But, many want top of the line phones, or phones with the best specs on paper. And both of those people buy 8-core phones not because of any inherent benefits they offer but for largely superficial reasons or reasons unrelated to the number of cores in the processor.
Is there a valid reason for more cores? Especially as many as 8 or 10? I don't think so. The article linked above tries to compare smartphone processors to desktop processors and argues that more cores are needed to provide more variety so that loads can be better managed. There are two problems with this. Firstly, desktops and laptops are able to do this as well. But instead of having dedicated processors for different loads, each processor can adjust which power state it is in to be able to provide more or less potential performance. And some processor cores have a dizzying number of power states making them vastly more flexible than mobile variants.
Implying that mobile processors have a wider range of configurations thanks to the increased number of processors is pure nonsense. Mobile processors need more cores just to provide a gimped version of what x86/64 processors have been capable of for years. And, even with that, it is likely still a wasted effort.
The article affirms something I suspected in a prior post, which is that the average smart phone isn't really actively using more than 3 cores at a time. Smartphones and tablets don't really multi-task well and most developers don't know how to write thread-safe parallel code that would run more than a split second.
Based on that you might be tempted to argue that 3 threads * 3 states (low, medium and high performance) means that the sweet spot should be 9 cores. But that is wrong.
While you may average 3 active threads, as stated, these OS's aren't particularly adapted (or even capable of handling) multiple apps running simultaneously. Quite likely, the only app that needs a high performance core is the currently focused app. Apps running in the background and most OS threads could be on low performance threads or medium at most. And most apps can probably run on a medium or low performance core even when they are the active application. Games and video are notable exceptions, and neither of those is something you'd typically try to run multiple apps at once while using even if you could.
Thus, having support for more than 3 High + Medium performance cores combined + 3 more low power cores is likely WAY more than enough to ensure that you can always use the right speed core for the right task without any real trade offs.
The article linked tries to point to metrics supplied by the vendor to justify the additional cores. But even this is tragically flawed. Firstly, it is a new architecture and it is probably also a new production process to shrink the CPU size on the die. Then there are other differences noted as well such as technology to help with thread assignment. All of these things may very well explain the gains without the extra cores meaning a damn thing. In fact... looking at their list of tests... none of those things even seem to intrinsically rely on multiple cores at all. So, I have to believe that the architecture is more battery efficient, also, more CPU's on what is likely the same or similarly sized chip implies shrinking the components which yields energy performance gains and the logic for helping with thread assignment as well undoubtedly helps.
I see nothing in the article or the data from MediaTek which implies that more cores are the direct reason for the battery improvements. If they re-designed their 8 core chips with the same tech I'd wager those metrics would be much the same. And probably very similar again if it were applied to 6 core chips.
But, like the Smart TV, this new tech will only be released with the newer chips. So, if you want the energy savings, you'll buy a 10 core SoC even if you only care to have 6 or 8 cores. And next year we'll all hear about how 10-core processor demand is spiking and maybe we need a 12-core SoC's now.
First point is demand. I liken this to Smart TV's because, as with Smart TV's the demand is artificial. People don't really want 8-core phones. "People" (as in "in general") don't really know what that means. But, many want top of the line phones, or phones with the best specs on paper. And both of those people buy 8-core phones not because of any inherent benefits they offer but for largely superficial reasons or reasons unrelated to the number of cores in the processor.
Is there a valid reason for more cores? Especially as many as 8 or 10? I don't think so. The article linked above tries to compare smartphone processors to desktop processors and argues that more cores are needed to provide more variety so that loads can be better managed. There are two problems with this. Firstly, desktops and laptops are able to do this as well. But instead of having dedicated processors for different loads, each processor can adjust which power state it is in to be able to provide more or less potential performance. And some processor cores have a dizzying number of power states making them vastly more flexible than mobile variants.
Implying that mobile processors have a wider range of configurations thanks to the increased number of processors is pure nonsense. Mobile processors need more cores just to provide a gimped version of what x86/64 processors have been capable of for years. And, even with that, it is likely still a wasted effort.
The article affirms something I suspected in a prior post, which is that the average smart phone isn't really actively using more than 3 cores at a time. Smartphones and tablets don't really multi-task well and most developers don't know how to write thread-safe parallel code that would run more than a split second.
Based on that you might be tempted to argue that 3 threads * 3 states (low, medium and high performance) means that the sweet spot should be 9 cores. But that is wrong.
While you may average 3 active threads, as stated, these OS's aren't particularly adapted (or even capable of handling) multiple apps running simultaneously. Quite likely, the only app that needs a high performance core is the currently focused app. Apps running in the background and most OS threads could be on low performance threads or medium at most. And most apps can probably run on a medium or low performance core even when they are the active application. Games and video are notable exceptions, and neither of those is something you'd typically try to run multiple apps at once while using even if you could.
Thus, having support for more than 3 High + Medium performance cores combined + 3 more low power cores is likely WAY more than enough to ensure that you can always use the right speed core for the right task without any real trade offs.
The article linked tries to point to metrics supplied by the vendor to justify the additional cores. But even this is tragically flawed. Firstly, it is a new architecture and it is probably also a new production process to shrink the CPU size on the die. Then there are other differences noted as well such as technology to help with thread assignment. All of these things may very well explain the gains without the extra cores meaning a damn thing. In fact... looking at their list of tests... none of those things even seem to intrinsically rely on multiple cores at all. So, I have to believe that the architecture is more battery efficient, also, more CPU's on what is likely the same or similarly sized chip implies shrinking the components which yields energy performance gains and the logic for helping with thread assignment as well undoubtedly helps.
I see nothing in the article or the data from MediaTek which implies that more cores are the direct reason for the battery improvements. If they re-designed their 8 core chips with the same tech I'd wager those metrics would be much the same. And probably very similar again if it were applied to 6 core chips.
But, like the Smart TV, this new tech will only be released with the newer chips. So, if you want the energy savings, you'll buy a 10 core SoC even if you only care to have 6 or 8 cores. And next year we'll all hear about how 10-core processor demand is spiking and maybe we need a 12-core SoC's now.
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