Qualcomm: Mobile Processor Core Wars are Pointless

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Samsung recently announced world's first eight-core mobile processor.

With quad-core smartphones now becoming more common, Qualcomm has stressed that mobile processor core wars in the smartphone industry are pointless and are not in the interest of consumers.

CEO Paul Jacobs was speaking during the Born Mobile presentation in China when he pointed out that Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa eight-core mobile chip simply utilizes a meaningless number for a publicity stunt.

He added that, when considering energy and thermal factors, the more cores a mobile manufacturer adds into their devices, the more challenging it becomes to manage them.

The executive stressed that the core wars will die down in the future. Instead, he believes the focus should be migrating towards real advantages for consumers such as smooth interface performance and faster downloads.

One of the predominant goals of mobile CPU advancements is preserving battery life while also maintaining performance levels. Samsung is doing exactly that with its eight-core processor through the utilization of big.LTTLE architecture.

Time will tell which architecture philosophy will come out on top.

UPDATE: Our story source, Unwired View, has updated with the following: "Qualcomm contacted us to point out that Paul Jacobs’ comments were taken out of context (having something translated from English to Chinese and then back to English again can do that, no doubt). Per Qualcomm, Jacobs did not use the words “misleading” or “publicity stunt” with relation to Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa processor. Furthermore, the words “publicity stunt” were not used at all. Qualcomm’s CEO did refer to the whole general focus on the number of cores in the mobile CPU space as “misleading”, though."

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Zak Islam
34 Comments Comment from the forums
  • I must admit, 8 cores is just ridiculous, even most gaming PCs only contain quad cores, I know its a 4+4 architecture, but its just pointless, maybe if they did a dual core A9 and a quad core A15 then this thing would save a lot of battery and have a tonne of power
    Reply
  • Avus
    When you are behind in technologies, saying your competitions' newest tech is useless.. sound like a loser to me..

    Reply
  • mikemp3
    Don't they consider battery life is also a consumer conseration, will you have to keep the phone tethered the the charger, or will they supply a 1Kg battery to go with it.
    Reply
  • MKBL
    It's a valid point at least for the moment, although it may not remain pointless next year or later. It all depends what other parts of technologies in the smartphone-sphere will throw at the processor eventually.
    Reply
  • deksman
    These mobile cpu wars ARE pointless.. at least for now because they still don't have enough power to run numerous complex programs native to PC.

    Also, the reason they are encountering problems with battery life and temperatures is because technology is made from outdated/inefficient materials and methods of production.
    Plus, we aren't constructing technology to reflect the BEST of what is possible and in line with latest scientific knowledge, but instead, companies focus on what's monetarily viable (cost effective/cheap).
    They don't care about technical efficiency, they care about COST EFFICIENCY.

    Realistically, smartphones could be orders of magnitude more powerful than the best supercomputers and consume ridiculously small amounts of power, and in a tiny form factor.
    But good luck seeing that in capitalistic oriented environment anytime soon.
    Reply
  • g00fysmiley
    to be fair the "8 core" samsung processor is a 4+4 processor 4 powerful cores for use when using games and demanding aps and 4 less beefy power saving cores for texting or internet browsing, also it is going into things like the galaxny note 3 which given the size an spec (and 5000mAh battery) to use and supply the chip
    Reply
  • jn77
    We are complaining about 4+4 or 8 cores now. In 10 years smart phones will have 16 or 32 cores, each core or sets of cores will be for different purposes or tasks.

    Computers will be the same way. Intel showed off silcone with 80 core per CPU dies on it a few years ago.

    The proof is also in the pudding......... More cores at lower power per core has generated CPU's that use less over all power than the previous 2 core or single core CPU.

    I will be more than happy to use my 64 or 128 core mobile phone while you use your java based half core mobile phone.
    Reply
  • ddpruitt
    Anything more than two cores is pointless. Few people will actually run anything that will utilize more than two cores. At least with two cores you can run the UI on one with more intensive tasks on another thus keeping the device responsive. The people who would use more than two cores are power users who'll end up using a more powerful form factor anyway.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    unless you can plug in a monitor and keyboard in to a quad core phone and start using full fledged programs instead of "apps", it will never neet to use more than 2 cores. Better off having less cores running faster, with boost clock or something to keep power optimised.
    Reply
  • jn77
    iam2thecroweunless you can plug in a monitor and keyboard in to a quad core phone and start using full fledged programs instead of "apps", it will never neet to use more than 2 cores. Better off having less cores running faster, with boost clock or something to keep power optimised.ddpruittAnything more than two cores is pointless. Few people will actually run anything that will utilize more than two cores. At least with two cores you can run the UI on one with more intensive tasks on another thus keeping the device responsive. The people who would use more than two cores are power users who'll end up using a more powerful form factor anyway.

    This is absurd. Even a GS3 will get bogged down (US Dual Core version) if you are running 2-3 apps at once and try to open a 1080p video (which it has to down scale). That problem won't happen with 4 cores, or the affect of the slow down will be lessened by the extra 2 cores.
    Reply