Does Android exploit multicore CPU's effectively?

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desura

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Mar 22, 2013
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I have a moto e with a snapdragon 410. Theoretically, it is a quad core CPU with 1.2 ghz each core. That is pretty fast.

It feels pretty slow in practice. Lots of times it will hang when pressing the home button.

For most tasks, is the CPU being used 100%? Or is it because of software architecture, only one core @1.2ghz will be doing most of the lifting and the rest are idle?
 
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JeffMD

Platinum Member
Feb 15, 2002
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The biggest bottle neck in budget phones isn't the cpu, it is the 1gb ram.
 
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tvdang7

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Jun 4, 2005
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Could be becuase the gpu is weaker and is slow at rending whats on the screen. What are you really expecting from a $100 phone.
 
jhansman

jhansman

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Feb 5, 2004
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It's interesting to me that now we pretty much expect our phones (pocket computers, more like) to perform as do our desktops and laptops. No tolerance for lag. Not saying this is a bad thing, just that now that these little wonders can do so much, makers have to equip them with hardware that can keep up, or lose out on sales. Once a phone gets the reputation for being slow, it's the kiss of death. That said, my laptop, desktop (home built), tablet and phone all perform to my satisfaction. However, I'm not a gamer, so none of my devices or computers are stressed in that manner.
 
sm625

sm625

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May 6, 2011
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Snapdragon 410 is junk. Snapdragon 800 is also 4 cores and it is much faster. Not only is it clocked higher, but it has more memory bandwidth and a faster GPU. Not to mention Snapdragon 800 is also possibly even cheaper considering how cheap the LG G2 is today.

desura said:
For most tasks, is the CPU being used 100%?
Click to expand...

No. Most of the time it will be running 15-38%. You will have one core at full load and bottlenecking your entire experience, meanwhile you will have 3 cores which are mostly idle.
 
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Mopetar

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Jan 31, 2011
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desura said:
Meh, the iPhone runs okay on 1gb.
Click to expand...

That's because iOS doesn't offer the same form of multitasking that you can get on Android. If you're not going to tightly clamp down on what processes are allowed to run in the background, you can get away with less RAM.
 
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ChronoReverse

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Mar 4, 2004
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sm625 said:
No. Most of the time it will be running 15-38%. You will have one core at full load and bottlenecking your entire experience, meanwhile you will have 3 cores which are mostly idle.
Click to expand...
This is outdated information. Generally 3-4 cores is actually useful.

However, as already mentioned in this thread, 1GB of RAM is the real bottleneck here.
 
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JeffMD

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Feb 15, 2002
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sm625 said:
Snapdragon 410 is junk. Snapdragon 800 ::snip::
Click to expand...

The art of facebook and web browsing did not suddenly require significant cpu upgrades in the past 2 years. The 410 is even an updated version of the aging 400 which again, can do web browsing and facebook.

The biggest issue is android has gotten bigger, and thus needs more ram. Also the apps themselves have become a little more bloated. All this trickles down to a shortage of RAM.

And android has been multi core for quite a while now. The OS and its apps are not only multithreaded, but also talk with the OS and take any low powered core for background task.

And you really shouldn't compare iOS to android. With iOS, apple isnt exceeding the limits of its memory, which stays the same over ALL its devices. This is why they are more stable, and it still runs visually complex games, because the programmers know the exact limits of the OS. It is kind of like programing for a game console.
 
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Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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JeffMD said:
The art of facebook and web browsing did not suddenly require significant cpu upgrades in the past 2 years.
Click to expand...

It kind of did though. Page weight and javascript (ad trackers, etc.) bloat has gotten out of hand. I read an article a while back that said that when the iPhone was first unveiled, it could load the NY Times site in about 10 seconds whereas the same phone today takes well over 2 minutes to accomplish the same task.
 
Midwayman

Midwayman

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Jan 28, 2000
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desura said:
Meh, the iPhone runs okay on 1gb.
Click to expand...

Good thing it doesnt run android like I was talking about. Also it running okay on 1gb is a matter of debate. It reloads tabs in safari all the freaking time on 1gb. Apple was way behind the curve on moving to 2gb. FWIW I own multiple iOS devices, so not just hating.
 
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