"The demo showed four 1080p videos being decoded on CPU for demonstrational purposes to load the cores - an actual shipping mobile platform would use hardware accelerated decode"
So even Qualcomm and its entire marketing department can't actually find realistic useful quad-core tablet scenarios? Perhaps they should have spent a little more time on their own little.BIG or 2+1 chip (ie delivering something that meets people's actual needs) rather than going for pure bragging rights?
I think the point was to demonstrate the variable clocking of all 4 cores. Since very little else will actually push multiple up to 1.5GHz.
But I wholeheartedly agree with you. The whole quad-beast-core trend smacks of design-for-marketing. I'd much rather have 2x Krait and 2x Cortex A7 at 500MHz.
So, you're saying that since current mobile phone software doesn't scale to four threads very well, chip designers shouldn't attempt to progress their technology?
And you're saying that this chip won't meet your needs? What needs are those?
No I am NOT saying that --- read the damn comment. I am saying that the tradeoff made here was foolish and premature and that there exists obviously better tradeoffs.
Phones and tablets are different from PCs, not least because of power constraints. This, together with the smaller screens, means there is much less running in parallel.
Don't just tell me how wonderful quad core phones will be --- show me a concrete realistic user scenario for how they will be used. Do you have any suggestion beyond that good old catch-all "games will be faster"?
i completely agree with everything you said... but implementing better power-saving technology (big.little for example) costs more and takes more time than than throwing 4 cores into the mix. on the other hand, qualcomm are arguing that their cpus scale well according to demand, both in miliamps and processing power, than nvidia's 4.1 implementation. so the current dual-core/quad-core krait implementations might not be as bad as we think it is. they've already said in this site that we've yet to see how the T3 and krait perform in power management and how much power they draw... time will tell.
AI, AI, And AI. There is a reason why a certian phone OS is called Android.
At the present day Mobile chips are way underpowered for the things us software devs would like to deliver.
Mobile devices unlike their desktop counterparts have lots more sensors that could benefit from more processing power unlike their thethered desktop counterparts .
AI Assistants for Health, Driving, Speech, Teaching are some applications Realtime capture & processing of Images. Editing of Video (most phones have video cameras) VR Applications I bet Googles glasses could be changed to help the emergency services with realtime information overlays.
And don't for get when these chips get more powerful they can make everday machines smarter think cars, houses, hoovers & the big dream of most futurists robots.
You should be welcoming this race, Also manfacturers could always under clock the cores to save on battery.
This isn't unlike what we saw on the desktop side of things, with the advent of multi-core devices. As tablet and smartphone usage models mature (and become more PC-like), it's easy to see how having multiple cores could make the end user experience better. That, and except under (rare) use cases which peg all 4 cores at a 100%, quad-core, if implemented correctly, will actually help battery life.
As an aside, it was a bit funny/strange seeing quite a few Qualcomm engineers stop by the NVIDIA booth at CES, asking about how we were making use of 4 cores in our demos :)
Google Chrome for Android should be multi-threaded, since the desktop version is. Other developers will follow suit, or be left behind. Multicore is the direction everything is going.
Pls give details on how Chrome is multi-threaded in a way that is relevant to this discussion.
As far as I can tell, Chrome is multi-threaded in a way that is useful for two threads and little beyond that: it splits into a UI thread and a "rendering" thread. It can spawn off a few other threads, eg a thread to preprocess javascript. It can spawn off threads to match javascript threads --- which might matter if any important threaded javascript web apps existed.
I have never seen a realistic Chrome scenario that taxes more than two desktop CPU threads.
[For the amateurs in this thread. The point is NOT just how many threads your app is split into, it is how many of those threads usefully need to run simultaneously. Most of these threads have only a small amount of work to do and can easily run sequentially --- they don't need multiple cores. There are really only two "big" threads, and even they don't run full time on two cores.]
I think danjw is talking about Chrome loading pages from different websites in different processes. But that I think was designed for security purposes and for preventing big memory leaks. On a tablet you typically wouldn't open too many webpages that need background processing anyway.
It's good enough, yes, but NOT for a throughout smooth experience... I've seen those full-HD displays running on tegra3 with hickups and lags present when opening the app drawer and in the browser. while these hickups are acceptable in mainstream tablets, i really doubt they are in the high-end realm, especially when competition is the likes of the galaxy tab 11.6 and the iPad3...
Tegra3 and MSM8960 with the 225 adreno are going to be amazing on phones and sub-hd resolution tablets, but i believe an adreno 320 is needed for driving the resolution to full-hd and beyond. the guys at asus are pushing the tegra3 and the MSM8960 to the limits, which isn't a good idea.
I was expecting the quad core 2.5 Ghz chip to arrive by the end of the year, since that's what they said. But if they're making this chip at 1.5 Ghz, it's a pretty clear indication that they won't release the 2.5 Ghz one as soon as we expected.
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18 Comments
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alyarb - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
splooshpSupaNova - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
Can you not load some Benchmarks on them when the reps are not looking....Brian Klug - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
Maybe :)-Brian
name99 - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
"The demo showed four 1080p videos being decoded on CPU for demonstrational purposes to load the cores - an actual shipping mobile platform would use hardware accelerated decode"So even Qualcomm and its entire marketing department can't actually find realistic useful quad-core tablet scenarios?
Perhaps they should have spent a little more time on their own little.BIG or 2+1 chip (ie delivering something that meets people's actual needs) rather than going for pure bragging rights?
metafor - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
I think the point was to demonstrate the variable clocking of all 4 cores. Since very little else will actually push multiple up to 1.5GHz.But I wholeheartedly agree with you. The whole quad-beast-core trend smacks of design-for-marketing. I'd much rather have 2x Krait and 2x Cortex A7 at 500MHz.
douglaswilliams - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
So, you're saying that since current mobile phone software doesn't scale to four threads very well, chip designers shouldn't attempt to progress their technology?And you're saying that this chip won't meet your needs? What needs are those?
name99 - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
No I am NOT saying that --- read the damn comment.I am saying that the tradeoff made here was foolish and premature and that there exists obviously better tradeoffs.
Phones and tablets are different from PCs, not least because of power constraints. This, together with the smaller screens, means there is much less running in parallel.
Don't just tell me how wonderful quad core phones will be --- show me a concrete realistic user scenario for how they will be used. Do you have any suggestion beyond that good old catch-all "games will be faster"?
lilmoe - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
i completely agree with everything you said... but implementing better power-saving technology (big.little for example) costs more and takes more time than than throwing 4 cores into the mix.on the other hand, qualcomm are arguing that their cpus scale well according to demand, both in miliamps and processing power, than nvidia's 4.1 implementation. so the current dual-core/quad-core krait implementations might not be as bad as we think it is. they've already said in this site that we've yet to see how the T3 and krait perform in power management and how much power they draw... time will tell.
pSupaNova - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
AI, AI, And AI.There is a reason why a certian phone OS is called Android.
At the present day Mobile chips are way underpowered for the things us software devs would like to deliver.
Mobile devices unlike their desktop counterparts have lots more sensors that could benefit from more processing power unlike their thethered desktop counterparts .
AI Assistants for Health, Driving, Speech, Teaching are some applications
Realtime capture & processing of Images.
Editing of Video (most phones have video cameras)
VR Applications I bet Googles glasses could be changed to help the emergency services with realtime information overlays.
And don't for get when these chips get more powerful they can make everday machines smarter think cars, houses, hoovers & the big dream of most futurists robots.
You should be welcoming this race, Also manfacturers could always under clock the cores to save on battery.
mythun.chandra - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
This isn't unlike what we saw on the desktop side of things, with the advent of multi-core devices. As tablet and smartphone usage models mature (and become more PC-like), it's easy to see how having multiple cores could make the end user experience better. That, and except under (rare) use cases which peg all 4 cores at a 100%, quad-core, if implemented correctly, will actually help battery life.As an aside, it was a bit funny/strange seeing quite a few Qualcomm engineers stop by the NVIDIA booth at CES, asking about how we were making use of 4 cores in our demos :)
danjw - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
Google Chrome for Android should be multi-threaded, since the desktop version is. Other developers will follow suit, or be left behind. Multicore is the direction everything is going.name99 - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
Pls give details on how Chrome is multi-threaded in a way that is relevant to this discussion.As far as I can tell, Chrome is multi-threaded in a way that is useful for two threads and little beyond that: it splits into a UI thread and a "rendering" thread. It can spawn off a few other threads, eg a thread to preprocess javascript. It can spawn off threads to match javascript threads --- which might matter if any important threaded javascript web apps existed.
I have never seen a realistic Chrome scenario that taxes more than two desktop CPU threads.
[For the amateurs in this thread. The point is NOT just how many threads your app is split into, it is how many of those threads usefully need to run simultaneously. Most of these threads have only a small amount of work to do and can easily run sequentially --- they don't need multiple cores. There are really only two "big" threads, and even they don't run full time on two cores.]
ssj4Gogeta - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
I think danjw is talking about Chrome loading pages from different websites in different processes. But that I think was designed for security purposes and for preventing big memory leaks. On a tablet you typically wouldn't open too many webpages that need background processing anyway.bplewis24 - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
I'm more interested in this Adreno 320. Why couldn't Asus include this in their Transformer Prime Infinity t700 Eee Pad whateverthefunk?Brandon
sprockkets - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
Prob not ready in time. That and the LTE variant is more than good enough :)lilmoe - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
It's good enough, yes, but NOT for a throughout smooth experience... I've seen those full-HD displays running on tegra3 with hickups and lags present when opening the app drawer and in the browser. while these hickups are acceptable in mainstream tablets, i really doubt they are in the high-end realm, especially when competition is the likes of the galaxy tab 11.6 and the iPad3...Tegra3 and MSM8960 with the 225 adreno are going to be amazing on phones and sub-hd resolution tablets, but i believe an adreno 320 is needed for driving the resolution to full-hd and beyond. the guys at asus are pushing the tegra3 and the MSM8960 to the limits, which isn't a good idea.
lilmoe - Monday, February 27, 2012 - link
i agree. the 320 is needed to run everything in that resolution smoothly without lags and hickups...Lucian Armasu - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
I was expecting the quad core 2.5 Ghz chip to arrive by the end of the year, since that's what they said. But if they're making this chip at 1.5 Ghz, it's a pretty clear indication that they won't release the 2.5 Ghz one as soon as we expected.