no Quad core cpu?

[Rottie]

Apple still stick with new dual core A7/A7X for iPhone 5S and iPad 5.Dual core is very old now. Why not Quad core cpu??

 

[Eug]

I guess you missed all the benchmarks which had this "very old" dual-core CPU destroying all the quads.

 

[mavere]

I hate how within the past year or so, someone flipped a switch and mobile suddenly became some kind of magical multithreaded wonderland and it's quad-core or bust for everybody.

Thank god that the Moto X and iPhone 5s brought some sense back into the market...

 

[jiffylube1024]

There's several reasons Apple doesn't have quad cores in their iPhones. They don't do it because they don't need to, and it doesn't make sense for them to. Quad Core isn't inherently better, it's a tradeoff.

#1 is to preserve battery life - Apple, due to the smaller phones use considerably smaller batteries than their competitors. The iPhone 5's 1440 mAh battery is less than half the size of the battery in the new LG G2, and about 55% of the size of the battery (2600mAh) in the Galaxy S4. Still, Apple gets good battery life in their phones, with industry-leading battery life per mAh. It takes smart engineering to achieve that (although obviously a smaller screen size helps cutting down on battery usage too).

#2 is that Apple, in its yearly schedule and fall release time, has focused on improving per-core CPU performance very aggressively. So, while a quad core Krait CPU was dominant early in the year, Apple has improved its Swift CPU architecture to the point that a dual core A7 has very competitive CPU power, especially in non core-intensive applications.

Basically, just like on the PC, there's always an issue of going for a powerful single/dual core CPU vs. less powerful quad core. Yes, power gating/throttling means that on the desktop and even in mobile you can often have your cake and eat it too - the CPU cores shut off when they're not being used, but it still kills battery life when they're all working.

#3 is that Apple puts very powerful GPU's into their phones. The iPhone 4S/5 and now 5S have extremely powerful graphics processors and that takes die space. In order to keep costs down, there's essentially a die size "budget" so everything is a series of compromises to make your SoC competitive but not prohibitively expensive to make. Apple have made the engineering compromise to go for a powerful dual core CPU with a very powerful GPU, rather than a quad core with a less powerful GPU. It was a smart choice to make for the present time.


I fully expect Apple to transition to a quad core CPU at some point in the future - particularly in the ipad, but currently it's not holding Apple back at all.

 

[Rakehellion]

The iPad 3 and 4 are quad core.

 

[Eug]

The iPad 3 and 4 are quad core.

We're talking about the CPU cores. Both are dual-core for the CPU.

 

[deathBOB]

Tim Cook (like Steve Jobs) derives sexual pleasure from the moans and wails of Internet nerds.

 

[MrX8503]

Apple still stick with new dual core A7/A7X for iPhone 5S and iPad 5.Dual core is very old now. Why not Quad core cpu??

You should read Anand's review. Adding more cores and increasing clockspeed is the worse way to gain performance.

 

[Subyman]

Moar cores, guys!

 

[mmntech]

Quad-core just doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a phone. Mostly because phones aren't really used for multi-tasking. The vast majority of their apps are likely not even optimized for multi-threading anyway. Nor do they need to be. So it makes sense to make more efficient dual cores than stuff in a quad core that's never going to be fully utilized.

Tablets are a bit different though. Mainly due to their form factor. Photo and video editing apps would benefit from multi-threading. I wouldn't be surprised if quad-core winds up in iPads very soon.

The current mobile market reminds me a lot of the gigahertz war between Intel and AMD a decade ago. People automatically assume more cores = better. Much like people assumed the Pentium 4 was better because it had a higher clock speed. That is until benchmarks came out that showed the Athlon XP and 64 outperformed it at much lower clocks and required less cooling to boot.

 

[Enigmoid]

If you look at the CPU shots you will see that apple's A7 dual core cpu core + cache is about the same size as A15 quad + cache.

 

[Rakehellion]

The Galaxy S4 uses 4 cores and is slower than the iPhone 5s. It also has worse battery life.