Forget Dual-Core, Here Comes the 64-Core Smartphone Chip.

WSJ ^ | 10/05/11 | Nick Clayton

[TigerLikesRooster]

October 5, 2011, 9:16 AM GMT.

Forget Dual-Core, Here Comes the 64-Core Smartphone Chip.

By Nick Clayton

A “core” is essentially an independent processor on a chip. But it is not quite a case of the more, the merrier for every computer, tablet or smartphone chip. Software has to support multiple cores and there is a trade-off on power consumption.

Nevertheless, the presence of a dual-core processor is a key element in premium, high-performance smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation and, of course, the newly-announced iPhone 4S which Apple says is twice as fast at processor tasks and seven times faster at graphics than the previous model.

So imagine what a 64-core processor could do. PC World says that is what chip company Adapteva is offering smartphone and tablet makers with its Epihany IV chip. It is not designed to be the CPU but is designed to sit alongside chips from Intel, AMD or ARM.

[RetroSexual]

The Singularity approacheth.

[edpc]

Your iPhone will become self-aware and decide your fate in a microsecond: Extermination.

Actually.....that's fairly unimpressive. If it takes microseconds, the power and speed ain't that great.

[Erik Latranyi]

Your iPhone will become self-aware and decide your fate in a microsecond: Extermination.

Actually.....that's fairly unimpressive. If it takes microseconds, the power and speed ain't that great.

Those microseconds will be mandated by liberals......just to make it fair! :)

[ari-freedom]

“Your iPhone will become self-aware and decide your fate in a microsecond: Extermination.”

good thing I have an Android phone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTUwqxHpXMY

[Psycho_Bunny]

In a world where it’s rare to see a Xeon or i7 peg all their cores outside a laboratory or hardcore data center, this seems like a complete waste.

The bottle neck - even with SSDs - is almost always the throughput of the disk bus, which usually hits 100% long before all the CPU cores have enough to chew on.

[Yo-Yo]

The bottle neck - even with SSDs - is almost always the throughput of the disk bus, which usually hits 100% long before all the CPU cores have enough to chew on.

You need some Samsung SSD Awesomeness: http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=2788084%2C6

[Jack of all Trades]

Think real time control. When Johnny Jihad gets around to putting one of these in an RC plane to create his own cruise missiles, he's not going to want the the GPS subsystem timing to effect the actuator control response.

Redundant, independently timed cores are useful even if they're not max’d out on cycles.

Powerful handheld computers like we're seeing are a big time technological genie IMHO.

[rarestia]

Even with a 6GBps SATA interface, SSDs can’t provide a Xeon or i7 proc with enough work to do.

I have a liquid-cooled i7 and two liquid cooled nVidia graphics cards, and even with two high-utilization games running simultaneously, my i7 barely uses 3 cores (6 threads) and the GPUs don’t balk much either.

The BIGGEST issue with these new procs is HEAT. The i7, stock, will run at 50C - 60C with normal use. That’s a quad-core desktop proc. If we cram too many cores into a proc, forget about the power consumption, you’ll have a hole burned into your hand first!