Would Quad core have made any difference?

[a5cent]

Hello sholokov

In short: the numbers of cores, by themselves, aren't a meaningful indicator of performance. You must, at the very least, also consider the capability of each individual core and also the kind of software you will be running. Consider this:

CPU A: quad-core, processing power per core = z, total processing power = 4 x z = 4z
CPU B: dual core, processing power per core = 2z, total processing power = 2 x 2z = 4z

Intuitively, you might conclude that the processing power (z) of these two processors are identical. However, this is only true if a given application has at least four threads running at all times (meaning the application can consistently distribute its workload across four cores at all times). As soon as the quad-core CPU can't bring all of it's cores to bear, that is when the dual-core CPU will pull ahead in terms of actual performance. This is exactly what you can expect to see today. Why? Because each of the two cores in on the MSM8960 SoC (used in the Lumia 920) are 50% - 100% faster than the cores in the competitions current quad-core CPU's, while almost none of the smartphone apps in existence consistently use more than two cores.

So, the answer to your question is "yes", it would have made a difference. Using any of the existing quad-core CPU's would have resulted in worse performance for virtually all apps and games (excluding some multi-threaded benchmarking applications)

I have covered this question in far more detail in this thread.

 

[doublebullout]

I've tried to think of an easily understood analogy to explain why "quad core" doesn't automatically mean "better", and the only thing I can come up with is a car analogy. Assume that I have a VW Beetle and you have a VW Beetle. (Work with me here.) Our Beetles are identical in every way, except that your Beetle has an engine with 500 HP, while mine has a stock engine with about 100 HP. Your Beetle's engine is much more powerful than mine, but you haven't upgraded the tires, suspension, transmission, brakes or fuel delivery system to handle an engine with that much HP. If we go drag racing, my less powerful Beetle is not going to have much trouble keeping up with or even beating yours. Even just driving around town running errands will be a comparable experience in my Beetle. All that extra HP is completely wasted unless the rest of the car is tuned to use it. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's close enough I think.

 

[Chinu77]

So qualcomms msm8960 chip whciht is in the new lumias, hast the power of the quad cores like exynos and tegra maybe 2-3 less power(its prooved in many test) so 30 less power and the lte modem is on soc chip which had not the tegra so they could only build this chip in and the new qualcomms quad core is available 2013 so i think the next top phone will include quad core!

 

[Reflexx]

I'd much rather see a future phone with a dual-core chip at a higher clock speed (2 Ghz!!) than a quad-core at 1.5 Ghz.

 

[sholokov]

I'd much rather see a future phone with a dual-core chip at a higher clock speed (2 Ghz!!) than a quad-core at 1.5 Ghz.

Is there any chip available today that can achieve that speed on a phone?

 

[Reflexx]

Is there any chip available today that can achieve that speed on a phone?

Nope! At least not that I know of. None of the known Snapdragons.

It's more my wish for a year or two down the road.

 

[PG2G]

The next generation processors from everyone (based on the ARM Cortex A15) should be hitting the 2GHz range, though maybe not at launch.

Anyway, to illustrate some of the points some of you guys are making. Samsung's NEXT GEN Exynos is a dual core. Yes... the chip that will be in the Galaxy S IV is probably going to be a dual core

AnandTech - Samsung Announces A15/Mali-T604 Based Exynos 5 Dual

 

[a5cent]

I'd much rather see a future phone with a dual-core chip at a higher clock speed (2 Ghz!!) than a quad-core at 1.5 Ghz.

Since we're writing to Semiconductor-Santa here:

I wish for a dual-core CPU that is designed with even more emphasis on significantly improving per-clock performance. Raising clock frequency is certainly better than adding cores that are left idle most of the time, but that is also likely to drain our batteries faster.

Qualcomm is the first SoC company to focus mainly on per-clock performance. That is what I like about them. They deserve much more credit then what they are currently getting, i.e. from those who are disappointed by the Lumia 920's specs (because it "only" incorporates a dual-core), even though it is by far the most powerful smartphone CPU currently available.

As far as I'm concerned the only thing we should be complaining about is the ridiculously underpowered GPU (Adreno 225) our WP devices are getting

The next generation processors from everyone (based on the ARM Cortex A15) should be hitting the 2GHz range, though maybe not at launch.

I agree. According to this article, we can even expect Cortex A15 based CPU's to reach 2.5 GHz per core around mid-2013 (don't know... seems unlikely to me). The article also repeats some of the things I've unsuccessfully been trying to explain in my "how many cores..." thread.

Anyway, to illustrate some of the points some of you guys are making. Samsung's NEXT GEN Exynos is a dual core. Yes... the chip that will be in the Galaxy S IV is probably going to be a dual core

Yep, the Exynos 5250! Man, I would love to get my hands on an an internal document formally explaining why Samsung is going with a dual-core design.

My guess is that building an A15 core at 32nm requires too many transistors to be able to put 4 cores into a smartphone while staying within thermal and power limits when fully saturated. However, I don't know that for sure. Maybe they just reached the same conclusion as Qualcomm, that fewer but more powerful cores are simply better for smartphones, marketability be damned.

Any of you guys know more?

 

[smoledman]

Saving it for Lumia 1000. That's the only reason I can think why they named this phone 920, because they have a plan for later. Just a thought.

Lumia 1000 will be the first smartphone to have the Haswell SoC.

 

[Reflexx]

a5cent, I also have a slight concern about not having the top Adreno GPU. Especially since we're going to be dealing with HD resolutions.

But the 225 isn't bad. It should be able to handle most games that are currently considered "high-end" on Android, including some with very impressive visuals. I don't expect game developers to push games in WP past these current specs for at least 2 yrs, or until new super high-end devices have sold several million on their own.

 

[PG2G]

a5cent, I also have a slight concern about not having the top Adreno GPU. Especially since we're going to be dealing with HD resolutions.

But the 225 isn't bad. It should be able to handle most games that are currently considered "high-end" on Android, including some with very impressive visuals. I don't expect game developers to push games in WP past these current specs for at least 2 yrs, or until new super high-end devices have sold several million on their own.

I think we might be surprised with how things progress. With the easy porting between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, we might see a lot of more demanding content from that side.

 

[KarateDad]

Do you even know the technical benefits of a quad core processor on a mobile phone? Don't fall in love with blogger buzzwords. Windows phones have demonstrated that they have plenty of power to run what's there.

Android phones had their push for more cores because of the inherent sluggishness of the operating system.

TO be fair, none of us have used a WP8. It is a WHOLE new operating system, and may not be anywhere as quick as WP7 is. Personally, I am very hopeful it will be fast, but it is a big unknown.

 

[a5cent]

a5cent, I also have a slight concern about not having the top Adreno GPU. Especially since we're going to be dealing with HD resolutions. But the 225 isn't bad. It should be able to handle most games that are currently considered "high-end" on Android, including some with very impressive visuals.

Android developers don't have the luxury of targeting current high-end hardware. At least those required to earn a buck or two must go mass market (professional developers), so they actually target last year's mid-range devices instead. At best, current high-end devices might get an extra effect or two thrown in (rarely). I'm not well versed in what is available in the iOS space, but I've heard you won't find any iPhone 4S optimized games either (don't know how true this is). Anyway, these are the main reasons WP8 hardware will have absolutely no problem running current "high-end" games. Higher resolution screens wont be a problem for the Adreno 225 either.

What disappoints me is that this is yet another lost opportunity for WP to gain market share. So, Winning Guy, I absolutely agree that WP8 will easily run current "high-end" games, but that will not get WP anywhere. That is not enough! If all we do is attempt to match Android and iOS's app selection then WP will fail. WP needs to turn this around and demonstrate things you can't do or wont get anywhere else. I'm not a smartphone gamer myself, but gaming certainly has a huge mass-market appeal, making it an ideal vehicle with which to demonstrate superiority and desirability.

The problem with the Adreno 225 is that it is outdated at launch. That is better than Microsoft did with WP7, where the entire SoC was outdated at launch, but it still is a shame. Both the iPhone 4S (which is a year old) and Samsung's Exynos 4412 (which already has a huge user base) sport superior GPU's, particularly when rendering at high resolutions. Whatever GPU is in the iPhone 5 and in the Exynos 5250 will utterly outpace this comparatively pathetic piece of GPU technology. It baffles me that Microsoft would certify something like this.

Worst of all, is that we will need to live with the "damage" this has done through all of WP8's life cycle. I'm not sure we will get updated WP hardware with a better GPU in 2013, but even if we do it will be almost irrelevant, as the Adreno 225 is what WP8 developers will be targeting until sometime during 2014.

That is what I'm all "huffy and puffy" about ... I know... huge first world problems...

I think we might be surprised with how things progress. With the easy porting between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, we might see a lot of more demanding content from that side.

Yes, absolutely! That is another great reason Microsoft should have ensured they are going with the most powerful GPU they could possibly get. You can rest assured that is exactly what Apple will do.

 

[PG2G]

Yes, absolutely! That is another great reason Microsoft should have ensured they are going with the most powerful GPU they could possibly get. You can rest assured that is exactly what Apple will do.

It would have been nice, but they need to hit the $0, $50, and $99 price points with WP8 phones so we need to set a realistic lower end.

 

[a5cent]

It would have been nice, but they need to hit the $0, $50, and $99 price points with WP8 phones so we need to set a realistic lower end.

Integrating a much more powerful GPU wouldn't have noticeably raised prices (a few cents per SoC at most). The reason we aren't getting a better GPU isn't price. I'm assuming it's simply that Qualcomm wasn't ready with their newer GPU designs on time (and wasn't willing to license anything).

WP8 device manufacturers wanting to hit lower price points do what Nokia did with the Lumia 820... low screen resolutions, cheaper case, strip out all fancy tech, cheaper camera's etc... combined, those things contribute the most to a smartphones cost... besides IP licensing. WP8 device manufacturers can't use the SoC as a way to hit different price points, but those extra few cent's certainly would have been worth it, even for the value-oriented WP8 customers.

 

[sholokov]

There is no inherent compatibility issue with lte and quqd core. The reason all of the lte phones are dual core is because Qualcomm's only SoC with integrated LTE is dual core. Samsung and NVIDIA haven't integrated it yet.

I think LG will be releasing a quad core LTE device this summer, using the S4 and a standalone lte modem.

That must add to the size of the phone.

Update: isn't iPhone 5 A6 chip quad core while the phone supports LTE.

 

[sholokov]

It would have been nice, but they need to hit the $0, $50, and $99 price points with WP8 phones so we need to set a realistic lower end.

Why? They can bring the Lumia in at $150-200 with contract and it will sell like hot cakes with whoever is interested in the phone for technology.

 

[a5cent]

That must add to the size of the phone.
Update: isn't iPhone 5 A6 chip quad core while the phone supports LTE.

No. The A6 is a dual core CPU. Nevertheless, as others have said, there is aboslutely no relationship between the number of cores and LTE capability. One doesn't affect the other.

Why? They can bring the Lumia in at $150-200 with contract and it will sell like hot cakes with whoever is interested in the phone for technology.

Because Nokia isn't just selling to the U.S. where you have expensive two year contracts in exchange for cheap phones (outside the U.S. many people prefer the oposite model, where you pay for your phone upfront, in exchange for the freedom to choose any phone on the market and get cheaper contracts with any carrier of your choice).

Also, don't forget two of the biggest markets in the world, China and India, where you need to hit unsubsidized price points well below $200 for mass market adoption.

 

[Major]

All this future proofing talk should be tempered by the fact that hardly anyone keeps their phone a minute past their upgrade date. Even if your device could handle everything you could throw at it two years after it was released, you'd still want a shiny new one. Future proofing is vastly overrated.

 

[sholokov]

All this future proofing talk should be tempered by the fact that hardly anyone keeps their phone a minute past their upgrade date. Even if your device could handle everything you could throw at it two years after it was released, you'd still want a shiny new one. Future proofing is vastly overrated.

I disagree. I used my touch pro2 more than a year past the contract expiry because there was nothing in the market that I liked (Till I got the Samsung Focus). I didn't want an Android cause my TP2 had XDAndroid running at 700MHz and I was running Windows Mobile 6.5.1 (Simplicity) at 768 MHz. Phones were just getting into the 1GHz range at the time.