Do smartphones need more than 4 cores?

[MyName13]

I highly doubt that most applications are able to use more than 1 core, so what are all these 8 and 10 core CPUs used for?Aren't 4 cores more than enough?

[Sakkura]

Many of the 8-cores are 4+4 cores and only use 4 cores at a time; the setup is for power-saving reasons.

 

In addition, mobile devs have actually made applications surprisingly multithreaded. There's more of an incentive to do so on mobile than PC, because each CPU core is weaker.

 

Of course, 10 cores is still pretty silly. That's more of an effort to pad the spec sheet.

[it_dont_work]

more ram makes a bigger difference, apps (at least with android) use so much god dam ram its not funny

[MyName13]

2 hours ago, Sakkura said:

Many of the 8-cores are 4+4 cores and only use 4 cores at a time; the setup is for power-saving reasons.

 

In addition, mobile devs have actually made applications surprisingly multithreaded. There's more of an incentive to do so on mobile than PC, because each CPU core is weaker.

 

Of course, 10 cores is still pretty silly. That's more of an effort to pad the spec sheet.

What are the other 4 cores used for?Does this mean that quad core CPUs are 2+2 and hexa cores 3+3?

[Sakkura]

2 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

What are the other 4 cores used for?Does this mean that quad core CPUs are 2+2 and hexa cores 3+3?

If there's only moderate activity, the 4 high-power cores will be shut off to save power, while the 4 low-power cores take care of things. If there's fairly heavy activity, the 4 high-power cores will be taking care of it; the low-power cores may be shut off or may contribute a little.

 

4+4 is the most common example of this concept, but there are also 2+2, 2+4 and 2+6. But a lot of 4-core chips will just be plain 4 cores rather than 2+2.

[dizmo]

4 hours ago, Sakkura said:

Many of the 8-cores are 4+4 cores and only use 4 cores at a time; the setup is for power-saving reasons.

 

In addition, mobile devs have actually made applications surprisingly multithreaded. There's more of an incentive to do so on mobile than PC, because each CPU core is weaker.

 

Of course, 10 cores is still pretty silly. That's more of an effort to pad the spec sheet.

The decacore SoCs have the same set up as the hexacores; 4+4+2 or 2+4+4. It's supposed to provide even better battery life, they're just generally made by companies that aren't as advanced as Samsung or Qualcomm thus the performance doesn't show. 

[Nena Trinity]

You will be fine with 4 cores, just avoid a potato GPU. :3

[Zodiark1593]

Running more powerful individual cores tends to require more die space and power consumption than a larger number of smaller cores (those large Apple cores are actually very power hungry at full speed). Many Android applications, Chrome included, are very well multithreaded, so this arrangement works well, and 8-core Cortex A53 SoCs work well as a result (unless a misbehaving/poorly coded app eats a core).

[Mr.Meerkat]

On 2/17/2018 at 10:38 AM, it_dont_work said:

more ram makes a bigger difference, apps (at least with android) use so much god dam ram its not funny

I actually run out of RAM more frequently on my android phone (3GB) than my windows tablet (4GB) which probably says something about the god damn horrible RAM management in android...

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

I actually run out of RAM more frequently on my android phone (3GB) than my windows tablet (4GB) which probably says something about the god damn horrible RAM management in android...

Define "run out"? I've only just switched from a 2GB phone to a 4GB phone, and the thing I noticed is now I can switch from Pokemon Go to other apps and back, without it having to reload from scratch. Pretty much everything else feels the same.

 

Actually, the core question is one I wrestled with when choosing phone. The old one has 4xA53+2xA57, new one has 8xA53 (higher clock than A53 of old phone). At least in usage so far, again I can't say I feel a difference.

[Mr.Meerkat]

1 minute ago, porina said:

Define "run out"? I've only just switched from a 2GB phone to a 4GB phone, and the thing I noticed is now I can switch from Pokemon Go to other apps and back, without it having to reload from scratch. Pretty much everything else feels the same.

Well on android, I find my all my apps constantly reloading. To be fair, I find my average usage to be about 2.5GB (as I use my phone mostly for watching videos) so I shouldn't be surprised?  

On windows, doing the same thing, I find myself using less than 3GB. 

 

Granted, if my phone had 4GB of RAM as well, it would probably not have to reload any apps either but ya know...

[MyName13]

4 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Wrong.

If you took a phone and disabled cores till it has one or two left, performance gets rekt.

 

Go find me an Android phone with four cores that is proven to perform as well one that has eight of the same.

 

I meant that apps might not use more than 1 core, but all apps together should, besides, shouldn't most apps be idle while not used?Who would max out more than 4 cores and with what?

 

Perform in what?Benchmarks or real world usage?

 

[MyName13]

6 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Ever heard of performance on demand? When the app or apps you are actively using could benefit from extra processing power. Manufacturers do not gauge core and performance requirement at idle. That is dumb. Apps can use more than 4 cores if they are made to do so. If in your case you don't use any demanding apps, sure just 4 cores could suffice for you. But you alone do not represent all phone users.

 

I don't quite understand your rationale for asking this question in the first place. Seems you think phone processors should be made differently? Do you think this discussion is going to amount to any change in the phone /processor industry? We have no power over what the management and engineers at Qualcomm/Mediatek decide to make.

And which applications use more than 4 cores?In which scenario would your performance be (significantly) worse when using a quad core instead of a hexa or octa core?

[Zodiark1593]

33 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

And which applications use more than 4 cores?

Evidently, Chrome.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9518/the-mobile-cpu-corecount-debate/5