Smart Machine Hardware "nuclear war": "Eight Core" is a gimmick or innovation?

Zhang Jiaxin Liu Fangyuan The debate over whether a four-core cell phone is needed is not long ago, and the eight-core processor is coming. "There's been a lot of talk about the eight-core industry now, and MediaTek's eight nuclear smartphone program will be released in the fourth quarter." This is only our first step, there will be more new products. "September 2, Taiwan(China) chip manufacturers MediaTek related people told reporters. According to MediaTek, it will produce the first eight-chip MT6592 in November this year and is expected to see a phone listing using the processor in the next quarter. Samsung launched the so-called "4+4" eight nuclear chip Exynos 5410, has sparked controversy in the industry, and some people laugh called "pseudo-eight-core." Now, MediaTek's "True eight-core" name of the processor, but also caused the industry a debate on whether the eight-core is a gimmick. Like computers, the CPU of a mobile phone is one of the core elements of a smartphone. But from the user's point of view, there are many factors that affect the user experience. Baoshan, director of China's product marketing, said, "from the phone chip, in fact, the CPU in the entire mobile user experience accounted for a very small proportion, not more than 20%, the rest of the work is a graphics processor or photographic processing or audio processing, etc. to complete. "Still, many mobile phone manufacturers advertise their mobile phone performance, or in shopping malls to persuade consumers to buy, will focus on how often the processor frequency is a few cores." There is a reason for this phenomenon, ten years ago the function of mobile phone is to call and send text messages, at most, some simple photography and internet function, the progress of hardware function is not too much attention, and the early "Symbian" as the representative of the smart phone hardware requirements are not high. With the popularity of "Android" and other hardware-consuming systems, and the richness of the software running on it, the frequency of smartphone main processors has evolved from the previous 20M level to a hundredfold 2G level, and is accelerating The processor's core is naturally transitioning from a single nucleus to multitasking with a stronger dual-core and a four-core this year's mainstream. Coupled with the mobile phone manufacturers, hardware manufacturers hype, "nuclear war" more and more prominent. At the beginning of the four-core release, the industry also had a mobile phone with the four nuclear on the end there is no need for controversy. A basic consensus view is that most apps on a mobile phone do not require four cores, or, for most mobile apps, dual-core is enough to satisfy demand. However, this year we can see that the four-core mobile phone products have become mainstream. The logic of this phenomenon is: although you think the quad-core is not necessary, but the competitor has launched four core products and the price is similar to you, then you do or not do? The answer for most vendors is that they have to follow. Coupled with the operators behind the push, now we see the phenomenon is that four nuclear products in the market has been very common, many have fallen into the thousand level. Will the same situation be repeated in the eight-nuclear era? The manufacturer's innovation stunt is like a computer, the cell phone chip is the entire handset control central system, carries on the computation to execute the lifeMake and mobilize other hardware resources. As a result of consumer demand, hardware innovation, and the support of the operating system and software, the mobile processor has evolved from a single to a four-core, and is faster and more ferocious than a computer processor. Smartphones have been there for just more than 10 years and have been a single core processor. But with the increase in frequency and architecture and the innovation of technology, dual-core mobile phone processors have been on the market in the 2011. Mainstream processor manufacturers such as NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung and other companies have launched a dual-core products in the market in a fierce competition, even to optimize the system and software, but not blindly hardware has also launched its own A5 processor, and claimed that performance than the previous generation has been one-fold increase. Only a year later, Nvidia's TEGRA3 again kicked off the four nuclear. Another year after 2013, Samsung as the representative of the manufacturers have launched the "4+4" of the eight nuclear products, MediaTek is about to launch a complete eight core processor, the rapid development of the processor and the exponential growth of the number of consumers dizzying, and even think of next year and then will be superimposed to 16 cores, 32 Nuclear and more? At present, processor manufacturers are mainly in Android mobile phone show a number of contention. The reason is that the Android platform is the most open and the competition among manufacturers is fiercer. Under the pressure of differentiation, the pursuit of nuclear quantity becomes one of the most direct means of "innovation". And because of that, the next step in Android will also determine that such a "nuclear war" will not evolve indefinitely. At the same time the mobile phone is a whole, the current technology with the processor bottlenecks. For example, the capacity of the battery, manufacturing process technology, heat dissipation technology, which makes the chip manufacturers in addition to desperately improve performance, but also to consider power consumption and heat dissipation, more nuclear good also have to see whether can be "affordable." Ignorant consumers many people to promote the mobile phone "nuclear war" power attributed to consumer demand. In fact, the majority of consumers in the face of manufacturers or shopping guide publicity of various dazzling parameters. For example, on the processor, we most often focus on the main frequency and the number of cores, I do not know that there are core architecture, language instruction set, nano-process, two-level cache, etc. can affect the use of the experience of the parameters. So this explains the same four-core 1.5g-frequency CPU, why red rice is so cheap and millet 2 is so much more than the confusion. In some parameters of the same product to use the experience is not the same, the same nominal parameters are used incisively and vividly, and some of the constant, fever can fry eggs. With Apple and Android comparisons, the same hardware, Apple's iphone may be more fluid. Because of the uneven level of Android handset makers, it is not possible to optimize software for all models like Apple. The "fragmented" Android camp will also have the drawbacks of "eating" hardware that has been brought about by the lack of optimization. So it's not going to take the iphone a few years and still be a double core, to show that using Android's phone with dual-coreEnough, as it turns out. However, for consumers this has increased their confusion, what should I be the target to choose the phone? In fact, from the user experience point of view, "multi-core" in the end how much value also through the support of the software to reflect. After all, people use mobile phones not for pure hardware, but for the right hardware to drive operating systems and software to meet their own needs. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the eight core performance, if only eight core to meet certain useful needs, and the four core and the following products are not enough to meet the requirements of users, eight core is very necessary, otherwise it is a gimmick to consumers. Wang June, president of Testin Cloud Technology, said that according to their test statistics for 20多万个 's independent application, "even the quad-core processors, most of their 3rd and 42 cores are idle." "If the commonly used software does not support so many cores, the CPU has so high performance also nowhere to release." We can see that Apple, Samsung, Nokia and other manufacturers in the promotion of their products, basically watered down the main clock, nuclear and other hardware indicators, but focus on conveying their products to consumers what new features, what special experience. But the cost of such education is high. For most domestic plants, the number of cores and the frequency and speed of the mobile phone directly with the equal sign, is the most convenient way of publicity. In the two or three-line city, a large number of ignorant consumers tend to eat this set. "Forcing" the eight-core? Some people use "existence is reasonable" to describe the emergence of eight-core mobile phones. There will always be manufacturers out of their own reality and purpose, jumping out to be the first person to eat crabs. Other manufacturers, who claim that the eight-core is unnecessary, may be forced to follow suit under competitive pressure. Because this is like a game, if not follow up, may lose the market. Processor Manufacturer "Bo Tong" sales director Qian Zhijun said, they have always been not considered "nuclear war" is a correct direction, under the existing conditions to do eight nuclear, speculation is even greater. But the future may have to follow the market to make some "compromises." As Android and other "eat" hardware systems gradually replaced the low resource consumption of Symbian as the representative of the intelligent machine, coupled with the program's special effects and complexity to strengthen the hardware requirements of the rise, consumers more and more concerned about the parameters. Unlike the early years when you see the shape and function you like to buy, you also need to see if your hardware meets your needs. And mobile, Unicom, telecom three major operators with a large amount of procurement and attractive price subsidies, has made custom machines become a large number of mobile phone manufacturers of the big cakes. There is also competition between operators, they also have to look at the face of consumers, but also need to follow the trend of the market. Ding Bin, China's vice president for processor Marvell, said the Chinese market today is largely a custom market for operators. The success of the operator determines the rules of the game. He has talked to operators and, in private, operators understand that there is really no direct correlation between the numbers. "But once an operator comes in, other operators must follow, or elseLost the market. "So if the eight-core to the price of four nuclear, regardless of the performance increase is very large, as long as there is no excessive heat and power consumption of the" short plate, send a few more cores will always have a lot of consumers pay. Operators will also follow consumers to go, then also by the processor manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers of wishful thinking, the eight core, whether gimmick or innovation will occupy the market. MediaTek believes that its eight-core relative to the existing flagship chip, can provide the same level of computing efficiency, while lower power consumption. "More applications are expected in the future to take advantage of the eight-core computing power, such as multiple window applications," he said. ”