Recently phones are having more cores for processing (iPhone 7 quad core processor) ( Most often Android phones with at least dual cores or more) soon will they go the route where they choose hyper threading or more cores like intel and AMD did ? or does that seem like a dumb option because im probably missing something here like " a phone can't handle hyperthreaded performance on a phone." or something like that.
with hyperthreading it can mostly increase more compute perfomance as we see with hyperthreaded CPU from Intel and AMD is somewhat going with that route with the New "Zen" line up. Also if hyperthreading is already implemented is there some form of directX12 route for phones where they use more multicore performance "rather than having core 0 doing most of the work" and have the rest do nothing. PC has this issue with world of tanks for Some processors.
ARM doesn't really have HT.. Nor does it need it to begin with. Possibly the Atom based phones from Asus but thats all I can think of.
2 Likes
I can confirm what Aremis said. All the phones equipped with ARM processor at the moment don't have any hyperthreading (wich is an Intel proprietary technology btw, so if we're talking in general is SMT). Only some mobile devices equipped with old Atom CPUs had it. AMD have never realized CPUs with SMT.
I think it will never be implemented in smartphones because those CPUs are so low power that increase the core count is much easier and almost has expensive as implementing hyperthreading, without the added complication of making a whole new architecture from the ground up.
P.S. WoT is really core efficient right now so I don't know what you're talking about.
the atom phones dont have it.
way back when I don't know what time exactly WoT wasn't as efficent as it use to be it , in it's early days it have the frequent issue where it will only use up 1 core which they patched it later on. Sorry this example was a pretty bad one i should have done something differn't.
Also how expensive are talking about here?
I mean after a while i feel like some company of no one ever heard of will try to make it a living thing where trying to create a new architecture or ripping out the old architecture and putting modified configurations, which I like to call the "New Testament" route which some company either Google or Apple tries to out buy there idea and patient it to make a successful line up of new phones, and I wouldn't be surprised if that actually happened.
then we have the war similar to AMD and Intel if "artificial threads and cores" increase compute performance , cut down the cost of making a "natural core"( that doesn't really sound right Ig)
Why do you say that it doesn't need it ? I'm not arguing I actually want your opinion on the matter.
as the third reply i would like to ask way back when where core clock speeds were just above the Ghz where we wanted more faster CPUs and after a while later be more efficient... Since people reference that phone are basically mini-computers what if we hit that stage where a 2 Ghz phone is actually reasonable where you need that much of a faster clock speed but without having fans and power efficient where the phone will ration the power more efficiently without wasting it.
But lets think practically the time where we hit that 2Ghz is the norm for a phone we will probably be long gone unless we hit a break through in energy efficiency in the near future.
Also who would need that much power and what for? oh what the question the future holds.
what others have said
on arm, no
on x86.. some of the atoms
one thing I have never liked about arm phones is the big / little configurations and the crappy marketing of them as quad cores or eight cores.
Remember that crap when someone tried suing amd for false advertising of core count on fx?
Phones are WAY worse.
Sorry for veering a little offtopic, just hate misleading marketing
SMT on ARM might be great. Its may not be as important as on desktop chips though. The power draw of an ARM core is so low that adding another to the cpu package is basically non-consequential, and may have similar heat ramifications to implementing SMT. It may actually turn out that a well implemented big-little scheme is more efficient. Have 4 big and 4 little. Use the 4 little when the 4 big would be overkill and a waste of power, and use all 8 cores when the task really requires it. The power draw and heat output of adding 4 little cores may actually be comparable to implementing SMT, as SMT does in fact add some heat and power usage. With how little heat is put off by a single little core, it could make sense.
It's ok , I see that there are pros and cons to ARM phones that there awkward with there configurations and crappy marketing but i would see from above theorizing that what if a group of wealthy and smart people in the near future create a technology that improves the ARM to have
Support for artificial cores and threads.
Have a more friendly configurations that aren't odd.
like before phones are becoming more faster and more effcient compared to what we had 10 years ago. Implementing similar characters as our PC cousins where they producing more efficient ways of computing on phones and be aware that technology is going fast.
Hmm interesting as you say right at this moment that it will be overkill because the apps and programs we have now are too easy and really not hard for this type of new method but as the years go by and more apps require more power and performance wise then this will me a more viable option but the waste of power could be change to where we have a more efficient way of rationing power.
Overall the SMT and ARM Characters of this period of time are not able to do this type of computing but upgrading over time to make it be able to handle or just wiping the state and creating a new type of architecture that supports this Artificial creation of cores and threads to way later on in the years be able to be a more powerful and cheaper way to be implemented on to phones than just more physical cores.
And since the phone market is hopping on the more cores route will it be some sort of API that will produce a better and more efficient way of splitting up cores to do specific tasks rather than just have a 4 core phone that uses only a full core and a half to do a certain job. I feel like having this sort of API will help produce a better energy efficiency with phones and also will make better heat dissipation.
Based European Samsung with the true 8 core Exynos processor. All the way back in my note 2.
Arm is like a big endian chip. It runs a few MAJOR processes with child processes linked to them and then everything else is shoved into what is left in overhead. Pretty efficient if you know how to make shit for the processor.
arm is still RISC xD
more high efficiency (but slower) cores tend to use less power than few high power/high performance cores. In the case of the nexus 5x the little cluster at max freq. actually uses less power than the big cluster at its lowest freq. even though there are twice as many cores in the little cluster.
the big.little thing that is becoming more popular is actually kinda like reverse hyper-threading is some cases.
assume 2 low power cores and 2 high power, the os treats this as if there were only 2 threads, and the kernel migrates between the low and high power cores to suit the task.
This also helps with android's encryption as certain arm cores are significantly better suited to it than other (lower power) cores; allowing all the benefits of the powersaving cores while not having to deal with terribly slow storage
*******The Future*************
this is what the current thing they are betting on with these high powered phones
computing from a cell phone....
windows has already an implementation of this with their nokia line. the idea is instead of having to have a computer at home you can simply plug in your device to a port splitter and connect monitor, mouse, & keyboard. With hopes you will keep all your stored information and data (ie office suite on cell). it is possible for web surfers and light app. you have to think most people rarely download a program. they are creating programs to run in browser for a monthly cost
again this is the current vision of the future instead of those usb computers. so people thinking hyper threading is dumb its one step closer to a all powerful phone.
If you know how to create your own custom kernel from source or have a dev already making one for your phone you can get around all of that by limiting the frequencies of certain cores when you're using the phone vs. Locked screen & idle. There's much more useful workarounds you can implement like arch power functions, choosing and customizing your own hotplug to limit the active cores when idle, you can even under clock your GPU and CPU if you've got an unlocked bootloader. I've got my GPU at 27Mhz minimum when the stock was 200. CPU at 268Mhz when stock is 300. Really depends on the chip lottery, you can also undervolt specific frequency steps. I use kernel audiutor-mod to tweak all this stuff.
1 Like
SMT on a phone would be darn near pointless and borderline stupid.
SMT is a two way street. The hardware and software has to both support smt in order for it to show a tangible difference.
So can anyone tell me why it would be a good idea to take a whole software ecosystem and tweak it to work with SMT so that we can all play candy crush a little bit better?