While clearly the need for an 8-core smartphone is still a debate, the enablement of hardware partners like Huawei, Mediatek and ARM are creating an ecosystem that enables the software developer to stretch their legs and innovate. While wandering around CES we ran into the Huawei G750 smartphone, the first to be powered by a true 8-core (octa-core) processor.
This phone likely isn't going to find its way to the US market but the design was solid and the user interface, as you would expect, was snappy and smooth. This processor from Mediatek, the MT6592, has the ability to run all 8 Cortex-A7 cores at the same time when the needs arise. Rather than go with the big.LITTLE design route Mediatek instead include 8 of the "little" cores in this design.
Each core is capable of clocking in at 2.0 GHz (though this Huawei model seems to cap at 1.7 GHz) and MediaTek claims that this allows support for 4K high bit-rate H.264 video playback as well as H.265 and VP9 playback.
The concern of a "core race" in the mobile market is definitely real though you have to be impressed by the drive for hardware vendors to improve capabilities. Now we just need to be sure that the software ecosystem and the power management designs are keeping up.
PC Perspective's CES 2014 coverage is sponsored by AMD.
Follow all of our coverage of the show at https://pcper.com/ces!
8 ARM cores, not too bad, and
8 ARM cores, not too bad, and if each Arm core(made of either all BIG or all Little) can be each individually be power gated off, when not needed, good! Better yet add to this, the ability to power gate each ARM core’s functional internal units, to give an even finer grained control of the entire chips power usage, and switched on as needed processing power. Having 8 or more cores, could come in very handy, as long as any core, or core internal function unit can be turned off, when not needed! fine grained power management will make this happen. The problem with Big.Little was in the lack of fine grain power usage control, it was either all 4 little or all 4 big, with no finer points in between.
Εγώ έχω την εντύπωση ότι πάμε
Εγώ έχω την εντύπωση ότι πάμε σε καλύτερα νερά, γιατί όσο πιο πολλή τεχνολογικά αναπτυσσόμαστε θα είμαστε και πιο άνετοι στον χρόνο που μας μένει στην ζωή.
Ένα ελαττωμα θα ελεγα είναι ο τομέας τις ενεργείας, ας πούμε κβαντική τεχνολογία με άπιαστη ενεργεια.. θα κάνανε το σούπερ τηλέφωνο.. 😀 😀 😀
Πέστα δικέ μου!!
Πέστα δικέ μου!!
🙂
🙂