What tasks could a quad-core A6 iphone do that an A5 can't?

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
Hypothetically, what could a quad-core A6 iphone or ipad be able to do that an A5 iphone or ipad couldn't. I obviously assume they will be faster and be able to render 3D graphics smoother and with more detail, but what other cool possibilities could they unleash??

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Commodification View Post


    Hypothetically, what could a quad-core A6 iphone or ipad be able to do that an A5 iphone or ipad couldn't. I obviously assume they will be faster and be able to render 3D graphics smoother and with more detail, but what other cool possibilities could they unleash??



    At this stage I think a dual core next-gen ARM chip is enough. The key is what they use for graphics. Done right, they could get PS-3 quality graphics in the A6. This is no small feat. Think about it. Imagine a PS3 you could hook up to your TV. Then just unplug, and take it on the go as a cool tablet to use and play where you wanted to. That's called... the iPad3.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    At this stage I think a dual core next-gen ARM chip is enough. The key is what they use for graphics. Done right, they could get PS-3 quality graphics in the A6. This is no small feat. Think about it. Imagine a PS3 you could hook up to your TV. Then just unplug, and take it on the go as a cool tablet to use and play where you wanted to. That's called... the iPad3.



    So you don't think that a Quad-Core ARM processor in inevitable in most all iOS products in the next year or so?
  • Reply 3 of 9
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    At this stage I think a dual core next-gen ARM chip is enough.



    That's (more or less) equivalent to someone back in 1990 saying, "this moto 68000 chip is enough. I don't see any need to develop and deploy better/faster CPUs for home computers."



    Of COURSE they'll move to quad-core (and faster and more efficient and smaller and etc.) They'll (eventually) be able to do whatever you can imagine... it's just a matter of time and money.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    2012= Quad-Cores for new iOS (ipad3, iphone5, Apple TV), new Droid, and Sony's PS Vita

    2013= Quad-Cores plus improvements for iOS (ipad 4, iphone 5S)

    2014= Six-Cores for new iOS (ipad 5, iphone 6, Apple TV) and Droid devices??

    2015= Six-Cores plus improvements for iOS (ipad 6, iphone 6S)

    2016= Eight-Cores for new iOS (ipad 7, iphone 7, Apple TV) and Droid devices??

    2018= Adding additional cores is no longer relevant and a new technology/metric emerges which results in the creation of a new type of mobile device to coincide with widespread 5G wireless adoption??.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    shrikeshrike Posts: 494member
    I'm hoping for a dual-core A15 rather than a quad-core A9 myself. We need as much single threaded performance as we can get. The multi-cores are limited by software and mostly benefit high-throughput or embarrassingly parallel apps, of which there isn't much application in the consumer space.



    Final Cut Pro X? Yes can use multicores like crazy.

    Audio processing apps? Yes.

    Solving matrix math? Yes.



    Basically everything a consumer does, doesn't need much CPU, GPU power.



    We need faster and more RAM, faster and more Flash storage, and ubiquitous >10 Mbit/s wireless data everywhere we go more than upping the core count. It's just a whole lot cheaper and easier for companies to put in more cores.



    Well, you could say this way. iPad successors with 13" and 17" displays will need a lot of cores eventually. Smartphones? Won't need a lot of cores as fast as the tablets.
  • Reply 6 of 9
    APPLE WILL FIND SOMETHING. They always do. There's gonna be some exclusive app that is gonna be tied to the processor.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    For more information on what the landscapes going to look like a year from now with ARM read Anandtech's info on the ARM A15 and how it's going to seamlessly link to the new Cortex A7 in what's known as a big.LITTLE configuration.



    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4991/a...ighend-devices



    In a nutshell heterogeneous computing is the next step with mobile. Rather than have one quad core that does everything albeit with a larger impact to power consumption the move is going towards having a multicore processor aimed at heavier tasks mated with a low power consumption core that handles the more mundane tasks.



    The Cortex A7 is going to be 2x faster than the A8 along with 5x the efficiency. That's amazing because it means our phones could start lasting a couple of days or more with a full charge yet retain all the speed we're accustomed to.



    Now move towards a tablet and you have this same A7 core that handles the basics with excellent battery life but say you need to do some high end processing the A15 kicks in and you have the power to crunch through audio or video processing or my hope is we see my cryptographic support. Filevault 2 for iOS anyone?
  • Reply 8 of 9
    I think the killer app to drive more powerful mobile devices will be smarter A.I. I'm not expecting true 'strong/general A.I.' that replicates real human-like intelligence, but a very creative use of narrow/applied A.I. that can fake it really good. Narrow/applied A.I. is able to take an element or narrow slice of intelligence and perform a particular task very effectively, but in order to fake strong/general human intelligence it would need multiple narrow A.I.s working together as one. The demand for multiple A.I.s working together could very well depend on multiple threaded processors working in tandem to accomplish this. This is my just my 2 cents on where I think things are going.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    RAW processing.



    Aperture for iPad.



    More CODEC support for video





    Final Cut Pro for iPad
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