iPhone 6 quad core CPU

[cynics]

I feel like a lot of people here are not on board with Apple upgrading the internals of the iPhone.

We are about to hit a wall with affordable dual core tech. 28nm 1.3-1.4 dual core 64 bit. I think it's impressive they done what they've done but with no active cooling heat will become an enemy.

 

[The Doctor11]

Not at the expense of battery life. What good is a fast phone that dies in 20 minutes.

You'll get a lot more done in that 20 minutes. If apple can get the battery life where it is now or better with a quad core I will be a extremely happy. More then apple can imagine

 

[Beachguy]

The point of multi-core is not speed (a core at 2 GHz still processes the same speed regardless of how many cores there are) but to handle the loading of the device more smoothly. Quad core doesn't hit saturation point (on well-designed software) as early and easily as dual core.

 

[I7guy]

Why would we see poor battery life? More powerful multi core CPU's are coming out all the time that are more efficient then prior models.

The main thing is time until idle. If a CPU uses 50% more power running at it's max but gets things done 75% faster then it used less battery.

Besides Apple wouldn't do something that severely crippled battery life to that extent (20 minutes).

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Boilerplate answer. In general beefier hardware will use more power even on a better manufacturing technology. 20 minutes was a grossly sardonic answer to make a point.

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You'll get a lot more done in that 20 minutes. If apple can get the battery life where it is now or better with a quad core I will be a extremely happy. More then apple can imagine

No you won't. You're assuming there is no think time and the phone will crunch away like a Cray 1 doing your thing. It might make a difference with video editing, however, that type of intensive crunching will kill the battery in short order.

I'm all for more hardware beefier hardware, has beefier hardware done anything for android?

 

[sviato]

The A7 in the 5s is very fast, it was nice moving from a 4s. If it was a bit faster that would be optimal, however, I can live with a less powerful processor if battery life doesn't suffer. Right now is a decent median.

 

[Riemann Zeta]

I don't know why any phone would really need a quad core CPU. Very few mobile apps are THAT multithreaded, and with battery constraints, most mobile quad core CPUs run with two of the cores throttled anyway. What Apple could do is bump the top clock speed of the Cyclone and add more L1/L2/L3 cache (and for hell's sake, more RAM on the PoP, from the sound of things, you can only have one tab open in 64bit iOS Safari before being out of memory).

 

[cynics]

I don't know why any phone would really need a quad core CPU. Very few mobile apps are THAT multithreaded, and with battery constraints, most mobile quad core CPUs run with two of the cores throttled anyway. What Apple could do is bump the top clock speed of the Cyclone and add more L1/L2/L3 cache (and for hell's sake, more RAM on the PoP, from the sound of things, you can only have one tab open in 64bit iOS Safari before being out of memory).

Thats not a very fair statement.

Once upon a time there wasn't that many apps that used dual core. A few months ago there weren't any uses for 64 bit. Etc

Do you think we'll be saying next year or years down the road, "I knew there was no reason for blah blah CPU" or do you think developers and iOS will utilize those advancements?

 

[yeah]

I don't know why any phone would really need a quad core CPU. Very few mobile apps are THAT multithreaded, and with battery constraints, most mobile quad core CPUs run with two of the cores throttled anyway. What Apple could do is bump the top clock speed of the Cyclone and add more L1/L2/L3 cache (and for hell's sake, more RAM on the PoP, from the sound of things, you can only have one tab open in 64bit iOS Safari before being out of memory).

That's a memory bug of iOS 7.

 

[LiveinRiot]

The rMBP13" is still dual-core for what iPhones need to be quad/octa-core? I know that architecture is different, but I don't see real gain of it. I think we need to worried about new softwares, and others utilities.

 

[I7guy]

I don't know why any phone would really need a quad core CPU. Very few mobile apps are THAT multithreaded, and with battery constraints, most mobile quad core CPUs run with two of the cores throttled anyway. What Apple could do is bump the top clock speed of the Cyclone and add more L1/L2/L3 cache (and for hell's sake, more RAM on the PoP, from the sound of things, you can only have one tab open in 64bit iOS Safari before being out of memory).

Yes and no. Obviously for those who understand there are trade-offs in an architecture. Unlike my 12 core desktop, who has an unlimited supply of power, a phone does not have a direct connection to the power station.

Battery life is always the first consideration. I think it's always a toss-up. Faster cpu, more cache, etc or more cpus, less cache, but more concurrency.

It gets to a point where clock speed and TDP becomes the limiting factor. Manufacturers have put in more cores. It takes power and the heat has to be dissipated. Smartphones have been screaming for a one cpu configuration to a dual cpu configuration for a long time. However the case for quad/octo configurations are not as clear. Given today's battery life scenarios how will 4 cores actually affect the battery.

 

[LostSoul80]

No, iPhone 6 will have a 6 cores processor.
Ain't that obvious?