Why do (Android) phones need so many cores?

[Haalcyon]

Why do you surmise the majority of the millions of smartphone users would be 'better off' with a dumb phone. You know the majority of the millions of smartphone users?


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[Geodude074]

Why do you surmise the majority of the millions of smartphone users would be 'better off' with a dumb phone. You know the majority of the millions of smartphone users?

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I only made the same assumptions the other poster was making, except my opinion was different. My old dumb phone could play music, go on Facebook, check email, and browse the web. It also got 8-10 hours of on screen usage, which would blow away modern smartphones. I'm pretty sure the majority of smart phone users would be happy with that.

 

[Haalcyon]

I only made the same assumptions the other poster was making, except my opinion was different. My old dumb phone could play music, go on Facebook, check email, and browse the web. It also got 8-10 hours of on screen usage, which would blow away modern smartphones. I'm pretty sure the majority of smart phone users would be happy with that.

Hmmm.... I would think web browsing and playing games would be a popular activity for many too.


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[abazigal]

The future of software is multithreaded. Current software that was optimized for single threaded work will become obsolete, and providing hardware that has single cores will hold back progress. More cores and more threads = faster, better.

The majority of smart phone users in general would be better off with a dumb phone, so that makes your argument irrelevant.

You actually have it backwards. Faster cores = more heat, more cores = less heat. Although heat in general has many determining factors and cannot be simplified as such. But anytime you increase the clockspeed of a chip, you have to raise the voltage, and more voltage equals more heat. Anybody who?s ever overclocked anything can attest to this.

Oh, and give me ONE scenario where a dual-core is faster than a quad-core FROM THE SAME ARCHITECTURE.

Try this article from anandtech. TL; DR - the scenario you mentioned may be possible, but the problem is that no one is doing it now, and the writing is up in the air as to whether anyone will do it in the near future.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/2

Specifically, this part.

I always thought the transition from 2 to 4 cores happened quicker in mobile than I had expected. Thankfully there are some well threaded apps that have been able to take advantage of more than two cores and power gating keeps the negative impact of the additional cores down to a minimum. As we saw in our Moto X review however, two faster cores are still better for most uses than four cores running at lower frequencies. NVIDIA forced everyone?s hand in moving to 4 cores earlier than they would?ve liked, and now you pretty much can?t get away with shipping anything less than that in an Android handset. Even Motorola felt necessary to obfuscate core count with its X8 mobile computing system. Markets like China seem to also demand more cores over better ones, which is why we see such a proliferation of quad-core Cortex A5/A7 designs. Apple has traditionally been sensible in this regard, even dating back to core count decisions in its Macs. I remembering reviewing an old iMac and pitting it against a Dell XPS One at the time. This was in the pre-power gating/turbo days. Dell went the route of more cores, while Apple chose for fewer, faster ones. It also put the CPU savings into a better GPU. You can guess which system ended out ahead.

In such a thermally constrained environment, going quad-core only makes sense if you can properly power gate/turbo up when some cores are idle. I have yet to see any mobile SoC vendor (with the exception of Intel with Bay Trail) do this properly, so until we hit that point the optimal target is likely two cores. You only need to look back at the evolution of the PC to come to the same conclusion. Before the arrival of Nehalem and Lynnfield, you always had to make a tradeoff between fewer faster cores and more of them. Gaming systems (and most users) tended to opt for the former, while those doing heavy multitasking went with the latter. Once we got architectures with good turbo, the 2 vs 4 discussion became one of cost and nothing more. I expect we?ll follow the same path in mobile.

Then there?s the frequency discussion. Brian and I have long been hinting at the sort of ridiculous frequency/voltage combinations mobile SoC vendors have been shipping at for nothing more than marketing purposes. I remember ARM telling me the ideal target for a Cortex A15 core in a smartphone was 1.2GHz. Samsung?s Exynos 5410 stuck four Cortex A15s in a phone with a max clock of 1.6GHz. The 5420 increases that to 1.7GHz. The problem with frequency scaling alone is that it typically comes at the price of higher voltage. There?s a quadratic relationship between voltage and power consumption, so it?s quite possibly one of the worst ways to get more performance. Brian even tweeted an image showing the frequency/voltage curve for a high-end mobile SoC. Note the huge increase in voltage required to deliver what amounts to another 100MHz in frequency.

The combination of both of these things gives us a basis for why Apple settled on two Swift cores running at 1.3GHz in the A6, and it?s also why the A7 comes with two cores running at the same max frequency. Interestingly enough, this is the same max non-turbo frequency Intel settled at for Bay Trail. Given a faster process (and turbo), I would expect to see Apple push higher frequencies but without those things, remaining conservative makes sense. I verified frequency through a combination of reporting tools and benchmarks. While it?s possible that I?m wrong, everything I?ve run on the device (both public and not) points to a 1.3GHz max frequency.





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[Geodude074]

Hmmm.... I would think web browsing and playing games would be a popular activity for many too.


via the phone

You can play games on a dumb phone. Sure the market isn't as huge, but it's a possibility.

 

[Geodude074]

Try this article from anandtech. TL; DR - the scenario you mentioned may be possible, but the problem is that no one is doing it now, and the writing is up in the air as to whether anyone will do it in the near future.

AnandTech | The iPhone 5s Review

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Did you even read the article? From the same article:

Thankfully there are some well threaded apps that have been able to take advantage of more than two cores and power gating keeps the negative impact of the additional cores down to a minimum. - This supports my previous argument that the future of software is multithreaded. You need multi-cores for multithreaded applications. This is not going to change, only become more prevalent.

In such a thermally constrained environment, going quad-core only makes sense if you can properly power gate/turbo up when some cores are idle. I have yet to see any mobile SoC vendor (with the exception of Intel with Bay Trail) do this properly - Intel has always been the leader in low TDP cores. Nvidia has traditionally been a GPU vendor, so why are you surprised that Tegra cores generate a lot of heat? Other ARM vendors are improving their designs, and you will clearly see in a short period of time that as cores increase in efficiency, they'll be able to use more cores at the same or lower TDP.

 

[abazigal]

Did you even read the article? From the same article:

Thankfully there are some well threaded apps that have been able to take advantage of more than two cores and power gating keeps the negative impact of the additional cores down to a minimum. - This supports my previous argument that the future of software is multithreaded. You need multi-cores for multithreaded applications. This is not going to change, only become more prevalent.

In such a thermally constrained environment, going quad-core only makes sense if you can properly power gate/turbo up when some cores are idle. I have yet to see any mobile SoC vendor (with the exception of Intel with Bay Trail) do this properly - Intel has always been the leader in low TDP cores. Nvidia has traditionally been a GPU vendor, so why are you surprised that Tegra cores generate a lot of heat? Other ARM vendors are improving their designs, and you will clearly see in a short period of time that as cores increase in efficiency, they'll be able to use more cores at the same or lower TDP.

Keyword here is "some", which means this phenomenon is the exception, not the norm. Most people don't need 4 cores on their smartphones, and until the day such applications become commonplace, it's just going to continue to result in unnecessary power drain and less-than-efficient performance in their phones.

Like you said, most people are not doing things on their phones requiring that many cores. Stuff like playing music in the background while surfing Facebook? Dual-core more than suffices.

 

[Geodude074]

Keyword here is "some", which means this phenomenon is the exception, not the norm. Most people don't need 4 cores on their smartphones, and until the day such applications become commonplace, it's just going to continue to result in unnecessary power drain and less-than-efficient performance in their phones.

Like you said, most people are not doing things on their phones requiring that many cores. Stuff like playing music in the background while surfing Facebook? Dual-core more than suffices.

According to your logic, a single core would more than suffice.

Edit: I have an old computer from 2000 with a Pentium 4 that can play music and surf Facebook just fine. Should we all downgrade to Pentium 4's because we don't need all that extra CPU power?

 

[Haalcyon]

You can play games on a dumb phone. Sure the market isn't as huge, but it's a possibility.

Are dumb phone games anything people want to play? I need my Monopoly. I also need to check on my kids via the internet cameras. ...and refill my prescriptions. ...and pay my wireless bill. ...and surf the net. ...and read CNN. I am likely not as advanced as you guys and my iPhone is as dumb phone as I'd want, but to me but it's all I want and need. My point being is that I'm just a average user and in 2014 I can't imagine what is considered as a 'dumb phone' by most you techies as being adequate most 20-50 year-olds with the option.


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[Geodude074]

Are dumb phone games anything people want to play? I need my Monopoly. I also need to check on my kids via the internet cameras. ...and refill my prescriptions. ...and pay my wireless bill. ...and surf the net. ...and read CNN. I am likelybnot as advanced as you guys and my iPhone is as dumb phone as I'd want, but to me but it's all I want and need. My point being is that I'm just a average user and in 2014 I can't imagine what is considered as a 'dumb phone' by most you techies as being adequate most 20-50 year-olds with the option.


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Exactly. So you would agree with me that having more CPU power to be able to utilize the software that enables you to live the life you NEED is a necessity, and not just excess.

 

[Haalcyon]

Exactly. So you would agree with me that having more CPU power to be able to utilize the software that enables you to live the life you NEED is a necessity, and not just excess.

Well, I just have an iPhone 5s with its little dual cores. Not a quad core monster I've had in the past. So it seems like not so much CPU power is needed.


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[Geodude074]

Well, I just have an iPhone 5s with its little dual cores. Not a quad core monster I've had in the past. So it seems like not so much CPU power is needed.

via the tablet

Your iPhone 5s also doesn't run more than one application at a time.

Do something for me. Open up your Task Manager (or whatever the equivalent is on iOS) and take a look at the processes running and tell me how many of them only utilize one thread.

 

[abazigal]

Exactly. So you would agree with me that having more CPU power to be able to utilize the software that enables you to live the life you NEED is a necessity, and not just excess.

Again, I see it as a chicken-and-egg situation.

The example you quoted above can be fairly complex, but they are ultimately single-minded tasks, and you would not be performing them all simultaneously, be it on an iphone or android phone. I don't need 4 over-clocked cores for those. I can do all those on an iphone 4 with a4 professor.

Past a certain point, I am seeing rapidly diminishing marginal returns in performance. Likewise, app developers are not seeing it fit to design apps that require that much horsepower.

I am not seeing the value-add going quad-core brings here. I personally feel it's high time companies stop pumping specs and actually start sitting down to figure out how to better optimise their hardware to go with their software.

 

[Haalcyon]

Your iPhone 5s also doesn't run more than one application at a time.

Do something for me. Open up your Task Manager (or whatever the equivalent is on iOS) and take a look at the processes running and tell me how many of them only utilize one thread.

My phone is not jailbroken so I can't glean such info (it's an iPhone, for us simple types), but I have quite a few open 'frozen' apps that I'm regular switching to. None of what I have open is complex though.


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[Haalcyon]

I think quad cores may be useful if you keep a lot of apps open and that are doing something in the background and you have a bloated UI (think TouchWiz). Even on a S4/Note 3 with their monster quadcores the experience is not liquid smooth. I know, I had both phones. I don't know HOW MUCH power, HOW many cores it would take to have a liquidy-sliq experience on those phones but it seems 4 cores isn't enough to provide it.


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[abazigal]

Your iPhone 5s also doesn't run more than one application at a time.

Do something for me. Open up your Task Manager (or whatever the equivalent is on iOS) and take a look at the processes running and tell me how many of them only utilize one thread.

Can you provide an example of what you might be doing on your android phone which actually comes close to taxing all 4 cores?

While iOS freezes background processes, it does allow a limited form of multitasking to simulate true multitasking while conserving resources and battery life. For example, I can update apps and play music in the background, while apps still periodically refresh themselves etc.

What exactly am I missing out?

 

[rrballer11]

Jobs was right. Android was ready to be released on a Blackberry-esque style, and then the iPhone was introduced. Android was immediately taken back to the drawing board, and basically copied the iPhone before being released. I think that Eric Schmidt was responsible for that, but not sure.

Andriod is still made better overall, its open source.. I mean damn ios 7 is a copy

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Geodude074]

Again, I see it as a chicken-and-egg situation.

The example you quoted above can be fairly complex, but they are ultimately single-minded tasks, and you would not be performing them all simultaneously, be it on an iphone or android phone. I don't need 4 over-clocked cores for those. I can do all those on an iphone 4 with a4 professor.

Past a certain point, I am seeing rapidly diminishing marginal returns in performance. Likewise, app developers are not seeing it fit to design apps that require that much horsepower.

I am not seeing the value-add going quad-core brings here. I personally feel it's high time companies stop pumping specs and actually start sitting down to figure out how to better optimise their hardware to go with their software.

So you would agree with me that we should switch back to Pentium 4's on our desktops for consumers, because the majority of users don't even "need" or utilize multi-cores? Because that's essentially what you're saying. That we should only use hardware that's configured for the present software.

 

[Haalcyon]

Can you provide an example of what you might be doing on your android phone which actually comes close to taxing all 4 cores?

While iOS freezes background processes, it does allow a limited form of multitasking to simulate true multitasking while conserving resources and battery life. For example, I can update apps and play music in the background, while apps still periodically refresh themselves etc.

What exactly am I missing out?

All I know is for all its simpleness, my 5s is indeed liquidy-sliq smooth. No pauses, no delays, no questions. Some may not think it can do much but what it does do it does well...IMO (not trolling, just my opinion).


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[pappy53]

Andriod is still made better overall, its open source.. I mean damn ios 7 is a copy

Posted via Android Central App

LOL! Smh.


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