President of ARM says your smartphone will have 16 and 32 cores in a few years

[Bateluer]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...6_Core_32_Core_Chips_for_Smartphones.html?1=1

“Having eight cores on the same die seems like […] crazy. It is a lot of processing capability in a phone. [..] But the great thing about phones is the fact that it is a very open platform. Developing software is very easy, very low cost; and as you put all this performance in, somebody will think of something to do with it. So eight cores seems like far more in the land of compute power today. Will we see 16, 32 in a few years’ time? I think two things are going to govern that. Basically the drive of Moore's Law driving cost down meaning that you can put all of those transistors in at very low cost,” said Simon Segars, the president of ARM, in an interview with Engadget web-site.

Lol, the war between Intel and Qualcomm is going to be pretty epic. If you get your jollies that way.

 

[Imp]

Gotta make sure that porn loads as quickly as possible?

 

[fierydemise]

I don't see why mobile workloads make them inherently more amenable to many-core design vs. typical consumer desktop/laptop workloads. Adding cores is hard, much past 8 and you start running into major communication issues. Certainly there are ways around it that are commonly used by many workstations and super computers but I don't see why its worth the design effort in the mobile space.

Also anyone who invokes Moore's Law without mentioning the impact of dark silicon is not telling the whole story.

 

[lothar]

So the only way ARM can compete with Intel is moar cores?
Seems to me like ARM is now taking the AMD approach.

 

[dagamer34]

What's the point, is every phone process going to have it's own CPU? There's a reason why consumer desktop CPUs haven't gotten past 4 cores in 2007, and that's because it's really, really hard to split up tasks that are dependent on each other efficiently.

 

[badb0y]

This strategy seems oddly familiar.

 

[dguy6789]

What's the point, is every phone process going to have it's own CPU? There's a reason why consumer desktop CPUs haven't gotten past 4 cores in 2007, and that's because of a lack of competition in the desktop market space

fixed that for you

 

[Red Storm]

fixed that for you

Yeah Intel pretty much has a monopoly on the x86 market, the only reason AMD is still around is so they have an on paper "competitor."

 

[Bateluer]

So the only way ARM can compete with Intel is moar cores?
Seems to me like ARM is now taking the AMD approach.

Thats an odd statement to make, given ARM's undisputed leadership in the mobile device market. Their market share is 99.999%, to Intels 0.0001% right now.

 

[Stone Rain]

ARM is king of the mobile processing realm right now, and at least for the near future. If the future of ARM is many cores, the future of mobile processing is many cores, barring Intel somehow ousting ARM from their market.

 

[badb0y]

Moar Cores =/= Moar better

 

[SunnyD]

To be fair, in the mobile arena I don't see more cores as a bad thing. Think of mobiles in a similar vein as to what Sony and Microsoft will be doing with the PS4 and whatever the next Xbox will be called... the 8 cores those boxes will have aren't intended to be tasked for what consoles used to be used for - which was gaming. That typically took up 1 to 3 cores at most. The rest of these cores are going to be filled doing other background, media, and entertainment tasks.

That's the same thing mobile devices are going to be doing down the road as well - voice and data services, as well as the instance of fruit ninja you're playing, facebook background updates, you streaming video chat with a couple friends, a couple IM windows up, background updates, this that and everything else.

Sounds like a dreamy workload for a ton of low-power efficient cores to me.

 

[QueBert]

With 16 cores I believe Android could finally be smooth and lag free.

 

[dguy6789]

Yep. I want my keyboard to pull up and work the same no matter what I was doing on my phone prior. More cores for better multitasking is always welcome.

 

[Red Storm]

With 32 cores maybe iOS will finally advance beyond an always open app drawer.

 

[dguy6789]

Is always hilarious seeing people compare iOS to Android speed wise when the functional difference between them is not unlike Paint and Photoshop

 

[dagamer34]

fixed that for you

Do you really think that more competition in the desktop space would mean you would get more cores?

 

[pm]

I don't see why mobile workloads make them inherently more amenable to many-core design vs. typical consumer desktop/laptop workloads. Adding cores is hard, much past 8 and you start running into major communication issues. Certainly there are ways around it that are commonly used by many workstations and super computers but I don't see why its worth the design effort in the mobile space.

Also anyone who invokes Moore's Law without mentioning the impact of dark silicon is not telling the whole story.

This is a great comment which I totally agree with.

For those not familiar with the concept of "dark silicon", it's basically the concept of underutilization of transistors.
http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~mbtaylor/papers/DAC_DaSi_Horsemen_2012_Slides_Final.pdf

 

[Phokus]

Wish someone would focus more on more efficient battery life/better cameras.

 

[QueBert]

Is always hilarious seeing people compare iOS to Android speed wise when the functional difference between them is not unlike Paint and Photoshop

Good comparison, seeing how Paint is ugly as hell and Photoshop has a dreamy UI.

 

[destrekor]

Good comparison, seeing how Paint is ugly as hell and Photoshop has a dreamy UI.

LOL

Can't say I have ever heard anyone, ever, refer to Photoshop as having a dreamy UI.



And if you never experience stutter in iOS, you either barely use your device or, most likely, you are either not sensitive to the stutter or blatantly ignore it.

Apple does a lot of fancy tricks to make it APPEAR smooth. Google has been attempting to incorporate more tricks that are in that style so as to make it appear smooth. They never had any pretenses about falsely smoothing it, and it kind of hurt them due to ignorant perceptions from people like you.

In short, if you never see stutter on iDevices - you're either blatantly ignorant, blind, or lying.
Which is it?

 

[dagamer34]

LOL

Can't say I have ever heard anyone, ever, refer to Photoshop as having a dreamy UI.



And if you never experience stutter in iOS, you either barely use your device or, most likely, you are either not sensitive to the stutter or blatantly ignore it.

Apple does a lot of fancy tricks to make it APPEAR smooth. Google has been attempting to incorporate more tricks that are in that style so as to make it appear smooth. They never had any pretenses about falsely smoothing it, and it kind of hurt them due to ignorant perceptions from people like you.

In short, if you never see stutter on iDevices - you're either blatantly ignorant, blind, or lying.
Which is it?

Third option: always use the newest iOS device and don't expect the phone to behave like a computer with an SSD.

 

[lopri]

What's the point, is every phone process going to have it's own CPU? There's a reason why consumer desktop CPUs haven't gotten past 4 cores in 2007, and that's because it's really, really hard to split up tasks that are dependent on each other efficiently.

I think it was AMD/Intel's own doing. They sure could have made 6 or 8 cores norm on desktop by now, but they did not want people to save money. (See how Intel hyped up Larrabee to squash NV's Cuda initiative)

Threading isn't the only way to utilize multiple cores. Tasking is another, and can be achieved on OS level or by the users.

On phones, though, I don't have an opinion yet one way or another.

 

[dagamer34]

I think it was AMD/Intel's own doing. They sure could have made 6 or 8 cores norm on desktop by now, but they did not want people to save money. (See how Intel hyped up Larrabee to squash NV's Cuda initiative)

Threading isn't the only way to utilize multiple cores. Tasking is another, and can be achieved on OS level or by the users.

On phones, though, I don't have an opinion yet one way or another.

What is the average person going to do on an 8-core, lower clocked CPU that isn't better done on a 4-core, higher clocked system? Is web browsing going to be any faster? (No.) What about checking e-mail? (Again, no). The benefit for the average person isn't there.

Now maybe for someone who wants to render video or use filters in Photoshop, sure, more cores are better, but we're talking about the few tasks that almost perfectly scale with core count.

There are clear benefits to having more than one CPU. There are clear cost/benefit considerations for having four or less. Getting outside that zone with a typical usage scenario doesn't make sense.

 

[GregMal]

The battery life will be 5 minutes......................