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Do mobile phones really need quad-cores?

gevorg

gevorg

Diamond Member
That is, can the mobile phones really benefit from quad-core processors? With the upcoming Cortex-A15 and Apple's A6, it seems the mobile smartphone arena is entering the quad-core scene. But the advantages of dual-core seems to overcome the advantages of quad-cores by:
-faster core clocks, see how single core Medfield did so well
-less power usage which leads to smaller battery and phone thickness requirement

So why quad-cores on mobile phones? Can the additional cores completely shut themselves off until/if they are needed? Quad-cores seems to make sense only when, for example, OS X will be merged with iOS.
 
With tegra 3 the additional cores can shut down completely when not being used. It also has a low power companion core which runs when the phone is on standby for example, at which point the main cores completely shut down. Because of this it should be more power efficient than tegra 2. But I guess when playing a 3d game that uses all cores the battery will run out pretty darn fast. I use my phone quite a lot while plugged in so it wouldn't be a complete lose for me.
 
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Transformer Prime gets some excellent battery life, better than most Tegra 2 devices. Similarly, Tegra 2 has proved itself to be more efficient than many of the single-core SOCs. (Especially impressive since Tegra 3 is built on the same process as Tegra 2, so this is not just the effect of process improvements).

So, I'm not convinced that quad-core SOCs are any more power hungry than dual cores.

My understanding is that the philosophy behind low-power SOCs is to hurry up and get the work done so it can return to its low-power idle state. With more cores it can do that faster, and spend more time idling.
 
Adding cores is cheap, they only occupy a small portion of the SOC, but also don't do much for performance. Increasing single threaded performance is expensive, particularly since it requires big caches and big memory buses. Increasing multithreaded performance also requires high speed caches or memory buses, which is expensive. But just doing a dumb quad core design is cheap. The tegra 3 is big compared to most smart phone chips, but still smaller than the A5, and well within the costs that are acceptable for what smart phones sell for. (essentially, netbook/laptop level prices, with the tegra 3 and A5 pushing up into the range of what netbook cpus cost)
 
smartpatrol said:
Transformer Prime gets some excellent battery life, better than most Tegra 2 devices. Similarly, Tegra 2 has proved itself to be more efficient than many of the single-core SOCs. (Especially impressive since Tegra 3 is built on the same process as Tegra 2, so this is not just the effect of process improvements).

So, I'm not convinced that quad-core SOCs are any more power hungry than dual cores.

My understanding is that the philosophy behind low-power SOCs is to hurry up and get the work done so it can return to its low-power idle state. With more cores it can do that faster, and spend more time idling.
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that way I can install 40 twitter clones and have them all background syncing at once. Then the 4 cores can "hurry up and get all that done" as in never complete it so then I will have terrible battery life.
 
No, it's not really necessary to have four cores, but as long as they can be power-gated, it shouldn't hurt battery life.
 
zerocool84 said:
Yes, the same was said when dual core was coming out. Also I don't know why you brought up Android vs iOS. Even iOS benefits from more cores.
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but iOS run smoothly without dual core.

No one doubts that dual core/quad core is beneficial. Getting more cores is something everyone loves. However, is it something we absolutely need? In the iOS world, people aren't crying for more horsepower everyday. Android makes it seem like we always need something faster because there's always lag.
 
DLeRium said:
but iOS run smoothly without dual core.

No one doubts that dual core/quad core is beneficial. Getting more cores is something everyone loves. However, is it something we absolutely need? In the iOS world, people aren't crying for more horsepower everyday. Android makes it seem like we always need something faster because there's always lag.
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I'll have to disagree sir. I'm on a 3GS and it is slow. I'm too cheap to upgrade but it really is getting annoying. I'm not expecting a desktop pc but I even get slow downs just typing.
 
DLeRium said:
but iOS run smoothly without dual core.

No one doubts that dual core/quad core is beneficial. Getting more cores is something everyone loves. However, is it something we absolutely need? In the iOS world, people aren't crying for more horsepower everyday. Android makes it seem like we always need something faster because there's always lag.
Click to expand...

I went to the Verizon store the other day to check out phones. If the Android models had not been labelled I would not have been able to tell the single-core models from the dual-core models. Some were faster/slower than others, but from my anecdotal experience it had nothing to do with the amount of cores and everything to do with the software.
 
DLeRium said:
but iOS run smoothly without dual core.

No one doubts that dual core/quad core is beneficial. Getting more cores is something everyone loves. However, is it something we absolutely need? In the iOS world, people aren't crying for more horsepower everyday. Android makes it seem like we always need something faster because there's always lag.
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Use an iPad 1 and 2 side by side and you will easily notice the difference.
 
DLeRium said:
but iOS run smoothly without dual core.
Click to expand...

There's more involved than just the GUI. There's games, video, etc. A 3GS isn't going to be capable to run the games as the 4S or even a Snapdragon S3.

The envelop must always be pushed. If you don't feel the need to upgrade, don't until your current device dies.
 
Need, no, want, yes. If you could have a V8 engine that gets better mileage than I4 engines, you'd want it even if you could live without it.
 
Going from 1->2 cores is an easy argument, as there's always some background task that can chew up CPU. Plus, most tasks can be split up into two with not much effort.

However, going from 2->4 is much more difficult in effectively using the power given to you. Few things scale that well to see a real boost in performance. It's a nifty approach, but the law of diminishing returns quickly rears its head as few apps will ever take advantage of that added power.

On a phone, I think faster dual-core chips will outdo a quad-core CPU on almost all tasks out there. The one exception is photo and video manipulation, but that doesn't happen often enough to drive a CPU design, I think.

It'll probably happen, but don't be surprised when a dual core A15 beats a quad core A9.
 
Having more cores will enable developers to make better, more complex apps. We may even start to see a full-fledged photoshop-type app down the road or maybe even a 3d modeling program. So yes, we need more cores, because it leads to more sophisticated apps.

Unless you're all perfectly content with just running angry birds and plants vs zombies on higher-def screens. 🙄
 
Bateluer said:
There's more involved than just the GUI. There's games, video, etc. A 3GS isn't going to be capable to run the games as the 4S or even a Snapdragon S3.

The envelop must always be pushed. If you don't feel the need to upgrade, don't until your current device dies.
Click to expand...

I completely understand this, but the 3GS can play plenty of games, and the 4 is slower. There are certainyl some games optimized for the 4S, or like when they made Real Racing for the 2/3G different than the 3GS. The point is, iPhone users are rarely going to be crying about missing out on this app or that app... maybe until they're left many generations behind.

But the fact is for Android users, we feel completely outdated in less than 6 months.... It's not just about a newer phone coming out every few months. It's the fact that an older phone is already considered crappy because it can't run X, Y, and Z. Just like last year's Nexus S is considered total crap already, but is anyone saying this about the iPhone 4 which is even older? Nah.
 
DLeRium said:
I completely understand this, but the 3GS can play plenty of games, and the 4 is slower. There are certainyl some games optimized for the 4S, or like when they made Real Racing for the 2/3G different than the 3GS. The point is, iPhone users are rarely going to be crying about missing out on this app or that app... maybe until they're left many generations behind.

But the fact is for Android users, we feel completely outdated in less than 6 months.... It's not just about a newer phone coming out every few months. It's the fact that an older phone is already considered crappy because it can't run X, Y, and Z. Just like last year's Nexus S is considered total crap already, but is anyone saying this about the iPhone 4 which is even older? Nah.
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I got tons of classmates using IP4 and none of them ever complained the phone was slow other than the 3G data service (carrier's fault anyway). Personally I think we already grabbed all the low-hanging fruits in smartphone hardware; even Apple has a hard time distancing the 4S from 4. Barring some breakthrough in battery tech, I doubt incremental CPU/GPU upgrades is going to win over the masses from their "fast enough" phones, just like what is happening to the PC market now.
 
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StrangerGuy said:
I got tons of classmates using IP4 and none of them ever complained the phone was slow other than the 3G data service (carrier's fault anyway). Personally I think we already grabbed all the low-hanging fruits in smartphone hardware; even Apple has a hard time distancing the 4S from 4. Barring some breakthrough in battery tech, I doubt incremental CPU/GPU upgrades is going to win over the masses from their "fast enough" phones, just like what is happening to the PC market now.
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exactly. if stuff like this really mattered, apple wouldn't sell the 3GS still since it wouldnt be "good enough" anymore.


the iphone 5, i can imagine will have a 32nm version of the A5, and LTE and maybe a slightly larger screen. and in the end that will sell tons of units to upgraders. my mom just went from 3GS to 4S. not becauase the 3GS sucked, but because it was upgrade time (that and she cracked the digitizer on the 3GS). that said, there are not going to be a lot more "omg its so much better" type things.

even with android phones, the current crop of super phones, is so absurdly fast and smooth that it would be hard to differentiate just by putting even faster stuff or higher res screens (i mean really with 720p on 4-4.5" screens these days, that is not going to help either).

it is just like computers. if you are not into games, or HPC stuff, a 4-5 year old desktop (With an ssd) which at this point is amazingly a Q6600 or E6600 is core 2 or something doesnt feel any different than a brand new one.
 
DLeRium said:
I completely understand this, but the 3GS can play plenty of games, and the 4 is slower. There are certainyl some games optimized for the 4S, or like when they made Real Racing for the 2/3G different than the 3GS. The point is, iPhone users are rarely going to be crying about missing out on this app or that app... maybe until they're left many generations behind.
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Think you got a typo in the first sentence, the 3GS is considerably slower than the iPhone 4. 😛

Apple user's only care about performance, apps, or features when Apple tells them they should care. Its a sad fact that the majority of them are not informed consumers at all.

But the fact is for Android users, we feel completely outdated in less than 6 months.... It's not just about a newer phone coming out every few months. It's the fact that an older phone is already considered crappy because it can't run X, Y, and Z. Just like last year's Nexus S is considered total crap already, but is anyone saying this about the iPhone 4 which is even older? Nah.
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Fortunately, most of the 'new' phones are simply rehashes of the previous model with little improvement. Motorola and HTC have been doing this for a while, and consumers have noticed, notice their poor financials. The Samsung Galaxy S series, for example, doesn't have a marginally better model released every 4 months. There is very little the slightly older phones can't handle or run, so I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say they can't run X, Y, and Z. Even the Droid X, more than 18 months old, is fully capable of running ICS. Had Moto not released a baker's dozen of phones since then and skinned it with Blur, they'd easily have the dev resources and phone resources to release/run an ICS build. Manufacturers not supporting the device isn't the same as the device being incapable though, direct your nerd rage where it belongs. 😛

How is the Nexus S considered crap though? Its Hummingbird is still damn solid, and its one of only two phones running official ICS builds. There's nothing crap about it. Its just not the latest and greatest, being a year old.
 
I think its sad that gadget envy by android geeks is a negative. your phone is the same phone you bought but new ones came out so you feel bad. like really first world problem here.

conversely having tons of phones always coming out means you never have the issue of getting a phone that is an entire year behind when you get it. it'll just be a few months behind. I mean with apple they always get this huge surge of people buying when the new model comes out but that just means you have to hold off your purchase that much longer


the nexus s is far from crap. i have friends who have them and they are great especially with the ics update. I did get a galaxy nexus but I suppose my excuse is that the tbolt really was just that bad.
 
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