What is Quad-Core in mobiles used for?

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Finch

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Topic # 98705 5-Mar-2012 01:00

Hi there. This might seem like a silly question but I was wondering what is Quad-Core in cellphones mainly used for/will it be used for?

I am more than likely going to choose the Sony Xperia S for my next smartphone, but im also considering the HTC One X. The Sony Xperia S looks as if it would be more than able to do everything I need (I dont push my smartphone to limits, root or any of that stuff), but I am also thinking about what the future will hold and obviously by this time next year Quad-Core will be in full swing (im guessing).

So I guess I have a few questions which all relate to the same thing. What is Quad-Core used for? Is there much of a difference between Quad-Core and Dual Core? What does Quad-Core do that Dual Core doesnt?

Cheers :D

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3 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 590354 5-Mar-2012 01:34

Interesting point, I always thought the only point of multi-core was fro multi-tasking, distributing threads over different cores. But who multitasks on a smartphone? That stuff got to be more about just playing one up on the competition/

trig42

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Reply # 590366 5-Mar-2012 06:26

Marketing?

muppet

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Reply # 590392 5-Mar-2012 08:31

trig42: Marketing?

Don't forget: To ensure the battery goes flat quickly.

toyonut

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Reply # 590395 5-Mar-2012 08:35

I think it is mostly useful for multimedia, rich web and for a bit of one upmanship in the spec wars. Being able to play 1080p video and 720p games from your phone is impressive. I think the other idea is that the cores can also be divided up for graphics and cpu so games can be better and faster. As phones have more demands placed on them to be pocket computers, more cores doing more work makes sense.

Also as cpu's can now turn off cores to save power, quad core makes more sense because they are there if multi threading is required, but use little power if not.
Heck, tegra 3 is a 5 core. 4 big ones and a little one for when not much processing is going on.

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shadybrothers

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Reply # 590413 5-Mar-2012 09:02

muppet:
Don't forget: To ensure the battery goes flat quickly.

This, it is so that you have to charge your phone every 5-6 hours.

this is a slap in the face!

vinnieg

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Reply # 590422 5-Mar-2012 09:11

shadybrothers:
muppet:
Don't forget: To ensure the battery goes flat quickly.

This, it is so that you have to charge your phone every 5-6 hours.

Actually, being a smaller chip, and also having 4 cores available, should mean the battery lasts longer.

Just as with the Transformer vs Transformer Prime

the 4 cores each run tasks, at lower clock speeds, than two cores at high clock speeds, if that makes sense?
(it might not, because I haven't had a coffee yet)

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sittingduckz

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Reply # 590436 5-Mar-2012 09:36

+1 (for battery saving)

Also, you may only have 1 app open, but the phone itself is running several services in the background.

Linuxluver

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Reply # 590479 5-Mar-2012 10:44

bonker: Interesting point, I always thought the only point of multi-core was fro multi-tasking, distributing threads over different cores. But who multitasks on a smartphone? That stuff got to be more about just playing one up on the competition/

The phone multitasks all the time. Background sync while you're watching a video or playing MP3 tunes while someone is FTP-ing files from your phone (I've done it).

Here is a video I made a while ago about multi-tasking on my old HTC Magic.

You can do much more now on the more capable devices around now.

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timmmay

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Reply # 590482 5-Mar-2012 10:50

Marketing, mostly. The Tegra 3 has 5 cores, one very low power, which is used when the thing isn't busy.

The screen takes most of the power on my tablet, not sure on phones. I find a phone with battery life of a day stupid and impractical, I still use an older design Nokia with a battery life of 3-5 days. I have computers everywhere I go, a tablet PC, the 30 minutes a day i'm away from a computer I can live without the internet.

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n4

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Reply # 590513 5-Mar-2012 11:18

Having a core dedicated to the UI would have to be a good thing for smooth lag free performance.

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gzt

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Reply # 590523 5-Mar-2012 11:22

n4: Having a core dedicated to the UI would have to be a good thing for smooth lag free performance.

Lol. Don't forget to tell Microsoft, Windows.

stevenz

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Reply # 590540 5-Mar-2012 11:43

muppet:
trig42: Marketing?

Don't forget: To ensure the battery goes flat quickly.

MultiCore CPUs will shutdown individual cores if they are not in use to save power. As mentioned elsewhere, all cores will fire up to get a job done quickly and then shutdown again when no longer required.

Multicore will help to some extent with video decoding, less so when the native GPU supports hardware assisted decoding.

To a large extent it is marketing, but if/when they get Ubuntu working as a Docked OS, that CPU power will be a welcome advantage.

@KnightNZ