Near future of computing?

[Woover]

Do you think we will be able to use our smartphone for all our processing needs in the nearby future?

 

With products like Superbook and Samsung Dex in the market and Geekbench benchmarks of the iPhone 8/8+ getting about the same score as a 13" Macbook Pro it seems highly likely to me that it would be possible somewhere in the near future to use our smartphones for all our processing needs. Along with a external GPU and proper cooling, operating system and I/O solutions do you think it might be possible to play current gen games with good enough performance for more than casual gamers?

 

Here's another interesting take on the topic by Austin Evans (But seriously.. can it run Crysis?)

[ProjectBox153]

No, I don't think so. Even though in some cases you can use a phone as a computer, it wouldn't perform as well as something that has a proper cooling solution, it wouldn't be (easily) upgradable, etc. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

For most of the populace, cellphones provide enough computing power they need to do their daily activities. So we're pretty much already at the point of what you're asking.

[Guest]

Probably will never catch up. For casual users maybe (sort of has already), but not gaming/editors/etc. 

 

Also, geekbench isn't the end all benchmark. Yes the iPhone is fast, but there are alot of factors that go into that. I can tell you right now it probably isn't as fast as the laptop.

[manikyath]

20 minutes ago, Woover said:

Do you think we will be able to use our smartphone for all our processing needs in the nearby future?

no.

 

the benchmarking side of things always remains questionable because of the fundamental differences between ARM and x86, but as products like HP's elite x3 prove time in time again is that there's not enough power in your phone, the solution always ends up being sloppy because a smartphone and a PC interface with the user in a fundamentally different way.

 

and also, we're a LONG way away from the kind of work a workstation would to being even close to realistic on a phone. then, when saying "all our processing" we also have to include servers into that argument as well, because most of the "processing" that would be on our phone, is on servers

[Froody129]

I think the future isn’t just throwing more power into the mobile devices, but rather moving to cloud computing so you’d just need a basic phone to handle the data streaming

[manikyath]

19 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

I think the future isn’t just throwing more power into the mobile devices, but rather moving to cloud computing so you’d just need a basic phone to handle the data streaming

but then the "computing" wouldnt be handled by phones

[Mira Yurizaki]

I think this is the only time I can say with certainty that we will never reach a one-size-fits-all solution.

[Devin92]

interesting topic. I find this online

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188396-the-final-isa-showdown-is-arm-x86-or-mips-intrinsically-more-power-efficient

even though its a pretty old post, it illustrate the difference between arm and x86, and also gives performance comparison between the two.

TLDR, arm vs x86 does not matter that much anymore, its the architecture that decide the cpu performance now, especially when we are hitting the highest frequency a sillicon based FET can handle.

[Froody129]

36 minutes ago, manikyath said:

but then the "computing" wouldnt be handled by phones

Well that's the point...

 

I think cloud computing is the best way to move forward as long as we can build the data streaming infrastructure to support it. Current phones/tablets actually already handle a lot of "desktop" usage like word processing, browsing etc. and it doesn't make sense for manufacturers to try fit in serious performance for such a small consumer base who would use it. 

 

You know all those phones that are just a piece of glass in futuristic movies? I think if you just streamed info to the display that would be perfectly feasible without sacrificing processing power and you could have different subscription tiers for different levels of computing performance. 

 

/ramble

[manikyath]

6 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

Well that's the point...

 

I think cloud computing is the best way to move forward as long as we can build the data streaming infrastructure to support it. Current phones/tablets actually already handle a lot of "desktop" usage like word processing, browsing etc. and it doesn't make sense for manufacturers to try fit in serious performance for such a small consumer base who would use it. 

 

You know all those phones that are just a piece of glass in futuristic movies? I think if you just streamed info to the display that would be perfectly feasible without sacrificing processing power and you could have different subscription tiers for different levels of computing performance. 

 

/ramble

then the question isnt when "phones" would do all of it, but when all of it would be in the cloud".

[ErrystioT]

15 hours ago, Woover said:

Do you think we will be able to use our smartphone for all our processing needs in the nearby future?

 

With products like Superbook and Samsung Dex in the market and Geekbench benchmarks of the iPhone 8/8+ getting about the same score as a 13" Macbook Pro it seems highly likely to me that it would be possible somewhere in the near future to use our smartphones for all our processing needs. Along with a external GPU and proper cooling, operating system and I/O solutions do you think it might be possible to play current gen games with good enough performance for more than casual gamers?

 

Here's another interesting take on the topic by Austin Evans (But seriously.. can it run Crysis?)

In my honest opinion, no. Why? It's all due to the nature of the device's OS and architecture. The thing with most smartphone OS (be it Android or iOS) is they tend to be limited in terms of what you can do with it. Yes there might be some apps similar to "desktop" or "computer" counterparts but if you look at it with respective of "feature power", you will notice it lacks a lot of stuffs that is optimized for heavy workloads. Even with Geekbench benchmarks scores of iPhone8/8+ are comparable to that of a MacBook Pro, looking at OS side of things, you would still find iOS limited in terms of what you can do when you compared it to the likes of MacOS or any other desktop operating system and as @M.Yurizaki pointed out, it's pretty impossible to have one-size-fits-all solution or even, one-device-for-all-tasks solution,

[Arika]

geekbench means nothing. It's designed to benchmark phones, not laptops/computers. It's like putting a super car against a 4wd in an offroad setting. sure the super car will still do it, but not at good as the 4wd which is made to go offroad.