A smartphone is essentially a computer – like our home computer. What do we really do on a home computer? We surf the Internet, create documents, and play movies. Among other components, a computer contains a Central Processing Unit (CPU) to perform all these tasks. Traditionally, older CPUs had a single core.
Sailing on these changing tides of the market, the chipset manufacturers are developing and advancing this chipset technology and the smartphone companies are embedding more and more of these chipsets into their esteemed products.
The biggest challenge chip designers face today is the inefficiency of a CPU in terms of heat emission.CPUs with a single core produce a lot of heat which makes them inefficient in terms of power consumption. To solve this problem, chip designers created a multi-core processor . The processing is divided between multiple cores thereby reducing heat emissions and consequently reducing power consumption. It is common to see dual-core or even quad-core processors in computers today.
So far, phones usually had a CPU with a single core. With the launch of Samsung Galaxy S4, we are entering a new era of smartphone computing. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has an Octa-core processor (8 cores). Why does a smartphone need so much power? When a home computer can do everything with a slower processor (and single core), why does a smartphone need a faster processor (with 8 cores)?
- GPS tracks your location.
- Proximity Sensor turns the screen off when you hold it to your face.
- Ambient Light Sensor automatically adjusts brightness.
- Accelerometer senses movement and orientation.
- Barometer measures pressure.
- Temperature Sensor measures the temperature.
- Humidity Sensor measures the humidity.
- Magnetic Sensor measures the magnetic field.
- Gesture Sensor senses your hands to navigate.
- Infrared Sensor turns the phone into a remote control.
- Eye Tracker pauses video when you look away.
- NFC (Near Field Communication) shares data by touching two phones and also enables mobile payments.
- Dual Cameras are available; one on the front and one on the back of the phone. Both cameras can record simultaneously in the Samsung Galaxy S4.
- Dual Microphones are used in the phone; one microphone for voice and the other to listen to the ambient noise and create anti-noise using the noise-cancelling system.
These sensors constantly gather large amounts of data and need constant processing. A CPU must have multiple cores to compute all this data simultaneously. The CPU assigns tasks to different cores, keeping a single core from overheating. Less heat is generated and hence, less power is consumed.
With battery technology not evolving as fast as CPUs, manufacturers don’t have a choice but to make CPUs that are more efficient in terms of power consumption and heat emission. Unless better batteries are developed, smartphone manufactures will strive to use better processors with each new model to remain competitive.
Next time you use your smartphone, you might want to count the number of sensors it has. It would be really interesting to see how many of us are able to identify all the sensors on our smartphones!
Basic Processor Model
Is eight better than four?
Various ARM licensees have been offering eight-core configurations for a while now, but their approach is to have one cluster of four high-powered cores which don't priorities energy efficiency, and another of four low-powered cores which are much easier on the battery. Depending on the amount of work the processor is called upon to do at any point, it can rapidly switch between the two clusters.
ARM calls this arrangement big.LITTLE, and claims that it can be used to achieve far better control over power efficiency than is possible with clock speed scaling alone. The high-powered and low-powered cores do not generally operate at the same time, although this is possible in certain implementations and is known as heterogeneous multiprocessing.
MediaTek, on the other hand, is proud to boast that its MT6592 is a "true octa-core" chip, in which eight cores of the same design can operate simultaneously. While eight simultaneous cores would obviously be able to deliver superior performance to four, Mediatek's building blocks themselves aren't the most powerful. The architecture is also heavily dependent on the way the OS and applications are written.
Ideally, having more processor cores should allow a device to be more responsive, which means multitasking should feel snappier. Applications shouldn't have to wait as long for the processor to allocate resources to them, and cores not in use should be able to shut down completely in order to minimise their impact on battery life.
There are also other factors to be considered when comparing one processor to another. Beyond just the number of cores and their speed, the core architecture itself is obviously important. Improvements in manufacturing processes over the years also contribute to power efficiency, heat dissipation, size, cost and overall performance.
Today's mobile processors are integrated Systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), and have absorbed many of the features and functions that used to require dedicated chips, including mobile voice and data connectivity, Bluetooth, FM, USB, camera controller, sensor controllers, GPS, multimedia encode/decode acceleration, and of course graphics. Due to the presence of multiple ARM processor vendors, capabilities vary wildly between chips.
Graphics capabilities are especially important when it comes to today's visual-heavy OS interfaces, games, HD movies and content-rich websites. Most higher-end and even mid-range phones come with full-HD screens, and processors have to keep up with the increased visual and raw processing workload. Even if a processor boasts of eight CPU cores, weak integrated graphics will severely impact the usability experience.
Complete Story Conclusion
The Conclusion of this complete discussion is ,what we find that the multi core processors increases the efficiency of the processing and in technical terminology it just efficient in multitasking.
In nowadays their are more development is going on as per modern application which need variety of functionality so when more functionality is being done so the system(mobile/tablet) must also be efficient ,thats why they are coming up with the new processing power of the processor so that you can enjoy the true technology performance.
Must Like to Induce my Quotation in this Discussion
The More Cores in a device,the more efficient the device is.
