News - Dual core smartphones waste your battery says Intel

[HEXUS]

Talking about Android multi-processing support.

Read more.

[HalloweenJack]

i`ll just go and get an intel powered smart phone then.... oh wait .....

edit:

theres 1 phone from 1 company *orange* - and reading a few reviews , it does the same as every other phone (and has to beat apple lol)

[3930k]

i`ll just go and get an intel powered smart phone then.... oh wait .....

edit:

theres 1 phone from 1 company *orange* - and reading a few reviews , it does the same as every other phone (and has to beat apple lol)

Crapple?

Also, this phone beats dual/quad cores with a single core. Impressive stuff, don't ya think?

[abaxas]

i`ll just go and get an intel powered smart phone then.... oh wait .....

edit:

theres 1 phone from 1 company *orange* - and reading a few reviews , it does the same as every other phone (and has to beat apple lol)

Crapple?

Also, this phone beats dual/quad cores with a single core. Impressive stuff, don't ya think?

With it's lovely 70% binary compatibility.

[dave87]

Intel Engineer - We don't have a dual core chip ready
Intel Marketing - Multicore chips simply waste your battery - there's no need for them.

- 6 months passes -

Intel Engineer - We have a dual core chip now
Intel Marketing - This multicore chip is 70% faster than previous offerings....


Go figure...

[McPhee]

Intel Engineer - We don't have a dual core chip ready
Intel Marketing - Multicore chips simply waste your battery - there's no need for them.

- 6 months passes -

Intel Engineer - We have a dual core chip now
Intel Marketing - This multicore chip is 70% faster than previous offerings....


Go figure...

Nah, not the point that they are making.

The point here is simple; quad-core should wipe the floor with dual-core, which in turn should leave single-core in the dust. We saw this on the desktop, so why hasn't it happened on the phone? Software support is the issue; Android doesn't do multi-core well. Intel are blaming their competitors for this, stating that when the dual-core Medfield launches, they will provide support to OEMs to ensure that every scrap of performance is eked out of then new chips. The dual-core Medfield will provide significantly better performance than it's single-core variant.

There is something else interesting here though; the blame is pinned squarely in the direction of Android. While they might target some of that blame towards their competitors, they are basically saying that multi-core support in Android is junk. Could we see Windows Phone 8 handsets smoking their Android counterparts come Q4 (or next week)? Windows already has good multi-core support, and reportedly WP8 will be running atop Windows 8...

[3dcandy]

more marketing rubbish, but I believe that ICS has much better multi-core support. Gingerbread for example wasn't really built with multi-core as a major consideration

[3dcandy]

Oh and on that note I'll get ready to welcome my Galaxy S III to the world...

[crossy]

Intel Engineer - We don't have a dual core chip ready
Intel Marketing - Multicore chips simply waste your battery - there's no need for them.

- 6 months passes -

Intel Engineer - We have a dual core chip now
Intel Marketing - This multicore chip is 70% faster than previous offerings....

Go figure...

How did you become that cynical?! LOL

more marketing rubbish, but I believe that ICS has much better multi-core support. Gingerbread for example wasn't really built with multi-core as a major consideration. Oh and on that note I'll get ready to welcome my Galaxy S III to the world...

I'm going to agree with you - I'm expecting better multicore support to be one of the "headline" items when the next Android release (JB) launches shortly. Although I can kind of see Intel's point - having used a lesser webOS-powered device the latter just seemed smoother in task switching etc than the equivalent vintage Android device. So if Intel's helping to focus Google's development team on better multicore/multitasking support then they'll get an "attaboy" from me.

SIII - got mine on launch day - nice phone. Interestingly enough (and relevant to the article) when you switch the SIII to "power saving" mode - which supposedly switches off some cores and downclocks the remaining ones (although there's conflicting stories about this) - the task switching performance takes a very noticeable hit. Apart from that (and not being able to replace the "plop" dial tones with something more conventional) it's proving to be a great device for me - like a mini-Galaxy Note.

[mark22]

Guess I'd better bin my s3 when it turns up sometime this week (hopefully).

[BerZerk]

You lots better do as you are told by Intel

[Brewster0101]

This is clearly Intel peeved at the fact there is no room for them and can't penetrate the market. A small Chip maker from the UK has upset them quite a bit.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is clearly Intel peeved at the fact there is no room for them and can't penetrate the market. A small Chip maker from the UK has upset them quite a bit.

Also,they will find it much harder to bribe themselves out of this situation too.

[abaxas]

Who is intel?

Remembering that more arm based CPUs are sold each year than intel has ever produced x86 cpus. Only difference is intel's markup.

[aidanjt]

Only difference is intel's markup.

Which is the most significant factor in modern economics.

The most annoying thing about this little butthurt pronouncement is they haven't in any way qualified how multi-core ARM support is deficient on Android. Is it just a matter of hardware core power management, or are they trying to say the kernel can't handle it, or is it Dalvik, or what?

[crossy]

The most annoying thing about this little butthurt pronouncement is they haven't in any way qualified how multi-core ARM support is deficient on Android. Is it just a matter of hardware core power management, or are they trying to say the kernel can't handle it, or is it Dalvik, or what?

The article says:

“A lot of stuff we are dealing with, thread scheduling and thread affinity isn't there yet and on top of that, largely when the operating system goes to do a single task, a lot of other stuff stops. So as we move to multiple cores, we're actually putting a lot of investment into software to fix the scheduler and fix the threading so if we do multi-core products it actually takes advantage of it” he explained. The software hasn’t been optimised yet so extra cores are mostly idle and a waste of energy, not good in a power constrained mobile platform.

which I'm taking to mean that Mr Bell is claiming that it's mainly the core OS that's deficient (I'm assuming that thread scheduling is an OS task - not something that Dalvik handles a lot of). Although there seems to be some scope for Dalvik improvements too I guess.

A thought that just occurred - if they're "fixing" the scheduler and threading then presumably they're doing this by rewriting/optimising parts of the Android OS. In which case, given that Android is open source, what's the chances that these improvements will be offered back to the main code base?