Why no quad core

power5

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Yes... and performance, data speeds and battery life SUCKED as a result.

And those users who wanted the max performance of their data turned the LTE on when needed, and off when not needed. They still had the most powerful CPU for all tasks.

If that is what power5 and alzaeem meant to say, than yes, absolutely agree.

I assumed that if software is coded for a certain number of cores, its obviously not capable of adapting to more cores. I had assumed that all software in the modern age was coded to utilize as much hardware that is available. At least in the consumer market. Specialized thousand core systems may have software written to utilize a certain number of cores for each task that needs to be done to better balance the load on the entire system.

Again, I am just using common sense to try and understand, but according to a5cent, it may just not work that way in real life. While I can accept that, I still don't like it. :happy:
 

a5cent

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Again, I am just using common sense to try and understand, but according to a5cent, it may just not work that way in real life. While I can accept that, I still don't like it. :happy:

Hey Power5, there is no shame in that false assumption. What you assumed really is the way it should be, but alas it isn't, and believe me, most software developers aren't happy about it either. It's just the way computing technology works. Like I said in this thread, researchers have been hacking away at this problem for 20 years, and although progress has been made, we are still nowhere near software automatically exploiting an arbitrary hardware configuration to its fullest (that statement applies to far more than just the general purpose computing cores). Exploiting hardware to its fullest is only possible, if software engineers have the luxury of targeting exactly one precisely defined hardware configuration. It's one of the reasons why current generation console games still look relatively modern, despite the hardware being almost a decade old (the performance characteristics of each and every component in every XBOX are well known and identical). It's also one of the reasons Android devices never seem to get as much out of high-end hardware as they should (because Google can make only few assumptions about the wide range of hardware their OS will end up running on).

You don't have to take my word for it. Any software developer in the world (intermediate to advanced level) will tell you the exact same thing. PG2G is also a very knowledgeable guy and he would tell you no differently.

One last thing you've got mixed up:

Specialized thousand core systems may have software written to utilize a certain number of cores for each task that needs to be done to better balance the load on the entire system.

It's often the exact other way around. If a "specialized" software application has 10'000 simultaneous users (e.g. a website), one can sometimes get away with ignoring the issue almost entirely, and still end up with a system that scales very well across an arbitrary number of CPU cores. You simply delegate each user request (such as composing and delivering a single web-page) to the CPU core which at that moment is least busy. It's consumer software where this almost never works that easily, and which rarely (actually never) takes full advantage of the hardware platform it's running on.
 

Squachy

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Quad cores from Qualcomm are only JUST coming out, and theres really only a few devices right now that have it: The Optimus G and the Nexus 4. Theres that HTC Butterfly thats only announced for China right now (basically an 5" HTC Note...). I think the Galaxy Note 2 might be using it but im not really sure.

All other quads are either Exynos (Samsung) or Tegra3 based. And in many cases the Snapdragon S4's Krait cores in dual configuration.

The HTC One X+ is going Quad, but i think its using the Tegra3 processor at 1.7ghz.

The Next Galaxy S4 is rumored to have the next gen Exynos processor (quad core) and probably wont make any kind of appearance until later in Q1 2013. Tegra4 is also a next year part so you wont see that either.

there is absolutey no need for quad cores, especialy on a phone. Just like how 1080p resolution is not going to make any kind of difference for the screen because of how small a smartphone screen is. Quad cores on a big destkop/laptop computer is already still being underutilized by everything except the absolute newest games (and thats even stretching it.....) and/or some really hardcore worksation computers (but those costs retarded amounts of money and raw power is key for those)

The whole core situation for Windows was based on the fact that the windows CE core in WP7 did not support multicore. They needed excuses to say why only single core was good enough even though the rest of the world was on dual cores already.

Quads are probably on their way, but to get something out NOW they needed the more abundant Snapdragon S4 pro duals. There IS a rumor that HTC is going to bring out a windows phone based on the hardware on that HTC J Butterfly (who the **** named that thing?? lol) monster.
 

brmiller1976

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And those users who wanted the max performance of their data turned the LTE on when needed, and off when not needed. They still had the most powerful CPU for all tasks.

And that is an awful requirement. Reminds me of the original Sprint EVO, which would run out of juice in two hours if you kept the wiMax radio on.

WP would not be helped by such an approach. The lion's share of reviews would say "lousy battery life and poor performance out of the box."
 

Heron_Kusanagi

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Other than apps not being optimized for too many cores, I speculate that there's another reason: the wait for A15 designs to be out.

MS has been late playing the specs war game with Android. Instead of focusing on catching up on A9 designs or its derivatives, they could take advantage of A15's capability in big.LITTLE configurations and finally catching up.

Of course, I could be wildly mistaken and maybe MS will only show off quad core when the hype goes to big.LITTLE...but I think MS is getting smarter. After all, they did say they are making the 64 bit variant of the next desktop OS in ARM.
 

power5

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And that is an awful requirement. Reminds me of the original Sprint EVO, which would run out of juice in two hours if you kept the wiMax radio on.

WP would not be helped by such an approach. The lion's share of reviews would say "lousy battery life and poor performance out of the box."

Yeah and that has stopped all the different platforms from pushing out new features and devices. Lets take a quick journey. ip4, had to get a bumper given out for free by apple because holding it normal was the "wrong" way. Apple did not get wiped out of the market. ip4s, battery issues were very prevalent. Many users complained. Apple issued a new OS update to help with the issues. Apple again did not get wiped out of the market. ip5 and the maps debacle. Apple told users if they wanted usable maps, they could download working apps from the app store like google maps. Again, apple did not get wiped out of the market.

Android is easy. New OS update from 2-2.1 blah blah blah, caused lag. Solution was to update OS again and fix some of the lag. LTE pioneered in android handsets and those become the fastest at browsing the web. However, early LTE radios sucked power very fast. Solution was to turn off LTE radio unless using web. Very easy on android, simple place a quick switch settings icon, or whatever they are called, on start screen. Result is that Android has become the global leader in mobile OS with the biggest app store.

However, if MS pushed out QC before they had integrated low power LTE radios the outcome would be immediate collapse of the entire MS empire. :dry I guess its possible.
 

AngryNil

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Quad, particularly next-gen quad such as the S4 Pro, next Exynos and any A15-based designs will be helpful to drive the 1080p resolutions. People forget that you need processing power to push out those extra pixels.

Based on that, the 820 and 8S should theoretically perform much better than the HD devices.
 

power5

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They will. No way they wont. In games you will see significantly better performance with the low res screens than the 720P screens. Unless the game is changing the resolution on the device which I do not even know if that is possible in the API.
 

Mahesha999

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Benchmarks, yes Lumia 920 is ought to win in SunSpider as it has IE10. IE10 wins even over latest Chrome 22 run on Windows 8. But sure it looses in other benchmarks say V8.

But I am not strictly talking about apps optimized for quad cores.

Let me summarize
1. As I am developer working in MS tech, I believe very clearly that soon there will be really-smarter app. You should say next-gen apps that are considerably advanced over the traditional Android & iPhone apps. And yeah apps does not need to explicitly coded for extra cores.

2. But still its all mainly related to multitasking, because ...

3. It should shape as productivity device like Windows8 but in mobile form factor. I honestly feel switching between apps should be quicker. Long pressing back button takes time.

4. Lament because there are no such quad core Windows Phone 8 device & yes will see them in future for sure.
 

a5cent

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Quad, particularly next-gen quad such as the S4 Pro, next Exynos and any A15-based designs will be helpful to drive the 1080p resolutions. People forget that you need processing power to push out those extra pixels.
Pushing out those extra pixels on 1080p displays is something only the GPU is concerned with, so you are absolutely correct that the quad-core S4 Pro would be most welcome in that regard, but only due to its much more powerful GPU. In comparison to the GPU, those two extra CPU cores are practically worthless for this purpose. Whether or not a CPU design is A15 based is also irrelevant, as that only refers to the CPU architecture which is barely involved in pixel pushing.
Based on that, the 820 and 8S should theoretically perform much better than the HD devices.
They will. No way they wont. In games you will see significantly better performance with the low res screens than the 720P screens. Unless the game is changing the resolution on the device which I do not even know if that is possible in the API.
You were both quite smart in how you worded those statements, using the words "theoretically" and "unless" ;)

In fact, Power5 got it exactly right, as it just so happens that "changing the resolution" is exactly what most games do (more relevant for fast 3D games like hydro-thunder than a simple tic-tac-toe game).

Of course, the resolution of a device's display never actually changes. Instead, games simply render their content at much lower resolutions. Virtually all fast-paced/highly animated/3D games render their frames at half WVGA resolutions (i.e. 400x240 pixels). On WP7 games often used even lower resolutions, but I don't expect games to go any lower on WP8. Up-scaling to the devices physical display resolution is done by a hardware scaler, and is therefore computationally "free of charge".

Thanks to this functionality, game developers can choose to lower rendering resolution in exchange for higher frame rates and vice verse, which gives them more flexibility to tune their graphics engines. This also allows developers to target a single resolution, independent of the varying physical display resolutions that may exist, and that is exactly what developers are doing.

Because every high-performance game will determine its own sub-WVGA rendering resolution, which is likely to be very similar (if not identical) across all handsets, it is safe to expect games to perform almost identically, independent of varying physical display resolution. That includes WVGA devices like the 820 and the 8S. This ensures all customers get identical frame rates and a consistently good gaming experience across all devices. I think that is a pretty awesome feature.

I couldn't find anything simple to back this up with, but Microsoft has documented the feature in the WP7 and WP8 SDK (see DXGI_SWAP_CHAIN_DESC1.Scaling)
 
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power5

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That "feature" is just because the hardware is not up to the task. This is why the iphone5 has so much GPU performance. Games have always taken more GPU than CPU. Since we are still behind the current top end hardware specs windows phone still needs to do these scaling tricks.
 

Squachy

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That "feature" is just because the hardware is not up to the task. This is why the iphone5 has so much GPU performance. Games have always taken more GPU than CPU. Since we are still behind the current top end hardware specs windows phone still needs to do these scaling tricks.

As long as MS continues to use the Qualcomm SoC's, they'll always be stuck with whatever Qualcomm has for their GPU's. They've ALWAYS been weak in the GPU part. Their CPU core is top notch though, until the A15 ARM cores are released next year (Qualcomm's KRAIT CPU core is a kind of hybrid A7 or A9 part).
Qualcomm uses its own Adreno225 GPU. Not a poor performer by any means, but its not the most powerful GPU out there. ANY phone using the S4 is going to have this GPU in it (like all the top end android handsets right now). And they have this SoC because of the integrated LTE capability. Their next gen GPU is the Adreno320, and thats coming out in some of the later dual core S4 parts and the quad core S4 parts.

-Apple uses a PowerVR SGX 545 or something GPU...its pretty much THE most powerful GPU for smartphone/tablets.
-Samsung's Exynos uses a MALI400 GPU i think. I BELIEVE this part is like ARM's A15 or whatever architecture where its kind of a licensed part that manufacturers can customize somehow.
-nVidia's Tegra3 uses its own mobile geforce part. They know a thing or two about GPU performance since theyve forever been making PC GPUs under the geforce brand.
 

a5cent

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That "feature" is just because the hardware is not up to the task. This is why the iphone5 has so much GPU performance. Games have always taken more GPU than CPU. Since we are still behind the current top end hardware specs windows phone still needs to do these scaling tricks.

Yes, but this feature exists NOT JUST because the Adreno 225 isn't "up to the task" (no matter what your definition of "the task" may be). Even Apple's A6 GPU isn't guaranteed to be "up to the task" of rendering every iOS6 game at the iP5's native resolution. Weather or not the GPU is up to that task depends solely on how far developers want to go with their rendering algorithms, and how much the sum of them tax the GPU.

Rendering at lower than native display resolutions has been a very common thing for quite some time. It is a technique used across all mobile operating systems. H3ll, even the cross-platform Unity graphics framework supports that feature, because the technique is just as popular on iOS where it allows developers to use the exact same rendering pipeline across a wide range of devices with varying native display resolutions and GPUs (iP3, iP4, iP4S and the new iPad). Keeping the same rendering pipeline means users can enjoy roughly the same visual experience on any of those devices (minus differences in rendering resolution). That is exactly the same thing this feature will do for WP8. Note however, that WP8 has a much smaller set of GPU's to support than iOS6, so for WP8 this feature really only abstracts away differences in native display resolution.

At the end of the day, this feature is much more about software than about GPU performance. It's about relieving developers from having to deal with differences in hardware, which benefits consumers in the form of a consistently good user experience (or at least as good as intended) on any WP8 device.
 
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