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Forget octo-core big.LITTLE. What your next smartphone needs is a tri-cluster deca-core System-on-a-Chip (SoC) from MediaTek:
Right off the bat, MediaTek manages to raise eyebrows with what is the first 10 core System-on-a-Chip design. The 10 processor cores are arranged in a tri-cluster orientation, which is a new facet against a myriad of dual-cluster big.LITTLE heterogeneous CPU designs. The three clusters consist of a low power quad-core A53 cluster clocked at 1.4 GHz, a power/performance balanced quad-core A53 cluster at 2.0GHz, and an extreme performance dual-core A72 cluster clocked in at 2.5GHz. To achieve this tri-cluster design, MediaTek choose to employ a custom interconnect IP called the MediaTek Coherent System Interconnect (MCSI).
Contrary to what MediaTek presents as an "introduction of a Mid cluster", I like to see MediaTek's tri-cluster approach as an extension to the existing dual A53 cluster designs - where the added A72 cluster is truly optimized for only the highest frequencies. Indeed, we are told that the A72 cluster can reach up to 2.5GHz on a TSMC 20nm process. ARM aims similar clocks for the A72 but at only 14/16nm FinFET processes, so to see MediaTek go this high on 20nm is impressive, even if it's only a two-core cluster. It will be interesting to see how MediaTek chooses the lower frequency limits on each cluster, especially the A72 CPUs, or how these options will be presented to OEMs.
The [Helio] X20 samples in H2 2015 and devices with it are planned to be shipping in Q1 2016.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday May 13 2015, @11:16AM
As mobile goes past "good enough" to insanely overpowered they'll throw more and more cores as a selling point....cores which will either be turned off most of the time to save power or be twiddling their thumbs waiting for useful work. And just like the PC more and more will simply keep what they have until it breaks, just as I have office buildings full of Phenom Is I'm seeing more Galaxy IIs and iPhone 4s because "if it ain't broke"
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:19PM
Until the user of the iPhone is tricked into "upgrade" to iOS 7 or dito Android trap.. Making the phone slow as syrup..
Otoh, these overpowered phones will be nice when the hipsters throw them away such that geeks can add them to computing clusters or as a I/O controller. Provided that they can be installed with a real OS.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:05PM
Then they'll take it to the little phone shop down the street which offers "downgrades" and pretty much any other repair service, just as we PC shops offer the same for your laptop or desktop.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:49PM
This is actually a pretty natural next step in solving the dark silicon [wikipedia.org] problem: you can't use all of the transistors on your processor at the same time, so you optimize different sections of it for different workloads and switch which section you power up based on the current workload. Currently we're only seeing processors specialized for different amounts of load on the system, but expect to see an increasing number of specialized/semi-specialized cores in the future.