Ok the much anticipated iPhone5 dismantling has been done (even IC scans woo hoo) quite sexy (If you get into that sort of thing I guess ... heh).
EEtimes version
UBM insites version
There has been a great deal of speculation on the iPhone5's processor (one of many speculations).
A lot of people 'are clueless' about the issues with multiple cores. So I'll keep it simple, more cores does not necessarily equate to more performance, standard languages make multicore support difficult even with thread support etc. C and C++ weren't designed with multiple cores in mind so all the extensions to add threading have been done mostly in an adhoc fashion. Every compilor vendor has there own variation and sometimes the OS doesn't help (windows was a bit nasty for threaded support up until the last few years).
So what has this to do with the iPhone5 well speculation was quad core or dual core. The difference is more important than you might think. Applications that have not been designed for multicore operation will have performance issues. It is also apparent Apple redid there OS for the iPhone5 purposefully, my guess is to improve core usage etc.
Multi core issues are numerous and can get darn confusing. For example core saturation (when MOST of the applicatins run on one core), can lead to weird heating issues as well as poor power performance etc. Core coherency or how well the application utilizes threaded is another. Threading in itself has a huge number of issues (accessing resources passing data etc.)
This is NO SMALL problem, in fact it IS the BIGGEST problem in computers today. Computers also cover a much wider landscape than what people percieve. Everything from a garage door too a ATM has a computer in it. Performance issues in portable devices (demand for watching TV streaming data emailing pictures) all require a great deal of performance, on a power strapped device.
So the number of cores is very important, quad core generally ends up underutilization of the other cores (programs aren't friendly that way I guess). Power issues are numerous with multiple cores. So fewer actually means they did something different than add more silicon to improve performance.
Cyb
EEtimes version
UBM insites version
There has been a great deal of speculation on the iPhone5's processor (one of many speculations).
A lot of people 'are clueless' about the issues with multiple cores. So I'll keep it simple, more cores does not necessarily equate to more performance, standard languages make multicore support difficult even with thread support etc. C and C++ weren't designed with multiple cores in mind so all the extensions to add threading have been done mostly in an adhoc fashion. Every compilor vendor has there own variation and sometimes the OS doesn't help (windows was a bit nasty for threaded support up until the last few years).
So what has this to do with the iPhone5 well speculation was quad core or dual core. The difference is more important than you might think. Applications that have not been designed for multicore operation will have performance issues. It is also apparent Apple redid there OS for the iPhone5 purposefully, my guess is to improve core usage etc.
Multi core issues are numerous and can get darn confusing. For example core saturation (when MOST of the applicatins run on one core), can lead to weird heating issues as well as poor power performance etc. Core coherency or how well the application utilizes threaded is another. Threading in itself has a huge number of issues (accessing resources passing data etc.)
This is NO SMALL problem, in fact it IS the BIGGEST problem in computers today. Computers also cover a much wider landscape than what people percieve. Everything from a garage door too a ATM has a computer in it. Performance issues in portable devices (demand for watching TV streaming data emailing pictures) all require a great deal of performance, on a power strapped device.
So the number of cores is very important, quad core generally ends up underutilization of the other cores (programs aren't friendly that way I guess). Power issues are numerous with multiple cores. So fewer actually means they did something different than add more silicon to improve performance.
Cyb