Read more.Will this be the power behind the Samsung Galaxy S IV?
Read more.Will this be the power behind the Samsung Galaxy S IV?
More likely for a tablet than a smartphone, as even at 28nm that'll be one big power hungry chip.
Either a note 2 10.1 would be quite an upgrade to a nexus 10 as well!
On 28nm even dual core A15s are a stretch for normal smartphone chassis unless clocked a lot lower than say the Chromebook or Nexus 10. Quad core A15s are going to have to down-clock a long way and use companion cores and aggressive power save settings or they'll run a phone battery down in hours and/or melt.
That's why Qualcomm and Apple's current best are not A15 based... they've done their own work, enhancing A9s etc
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/a...al-showdown/14
There's an awful lot wrong with that Anandtech article, but yeah, generally, quad A15 isn't really feasible for phones at 28nm.
When I first saw Octa Exynos 5, I was thinking 8 A15 cores! I wonder if all 8 cores can be active at the same time? If not, wouldn't it make more sense to name it a quad like Nvidia's Tegra 3, although it technically has 5 application cores?
I'll wait patiently to upgrade my Nexus 10 to a Note 10.1 2. No rush mind.
There is but it does highlight the power consumption issues in smaller chassis with A15 clocked at Chromebook or Nexus 10 speeds. I'll be interested to see what clocks we do get for A15 in phones and when it arrives.
The Octa core thingy would be great for Windows RT tablets, convertibles etc I would think... but describing it as 8 core is a bit misleading.
Is there really a need for all cores to be paired in a big.LITTLE manner?
Surely you don't really need four low power cores for conserving power - the Nvidia solution of a single low power core and 4 high powered cores that can shut down as soon as their performance is not required seems to make much more sense.
Reading up on it, it seems by having the system symmetrical, it allows the switching to be transparent to the kernel, it just sees four cores and uses frequency scaling like it would with any other CPU, but in the case of big.LITTLE, the CPU can move to the bigger core when it's told to run at a higher 'notch'.
Using asymmetrical cores would require the software scheduler to handle everything, and be aware of the different types of cores.
The smaller cores aren't likely to add much in the way of die size on a SoC, and it could prove useful in multitasking workloads; you could be gaming using say two A15 cores, while the other two could remain on the smaller cores for background tasks, meaning lower power consumption and less thermal budget taken away from the cores used for the foreground app.
But... I thought most phones/tablets barely made use of 2 cores, let alone 4, let alone 8?
I don't normally complain about progress but I don't know many uses of phones/tablets that would really let 8 cores stretch their legs so to speak. Seems like these sorts of chips would be complete overkill for 99% of the angry birds playing population (and I include myself in that). Or have I missed something?
I think these are aimed at the more power users. I have seen it mentioned that Windows 8 RT can be a bit sluggish on current hardware...
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
That's excuse #2 in the Microsoft Windows playbook ... if it's not running nicely then throw more hardware at it. (#1 being "upgrade to the version after the one you've got").
Kidding of course, since I assume like iOS and Android, RT will get faster/less-clunky as it matures.
Like Noli though I've got to wonder about the usage case for this - unless it's solely a case of "we can do this, so we will". Or is this really destined for use in blade-type servers rather than personal devices?
As I said above, the OS does not see 8 cores, it sees 4 and the CPU itself handles the switching.
Windows 8 RT is sluggish full stop vs competing OSes, which is why Intel commonly use it to compare ARM to Atom, instead of using a well-optimised platform which would show the competition in a far better light...
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