Qualcomm eight-core mass production to begin in summer

A man went swimming, and his invisible hand under water grabbed the cores and his voice rang out: plus two or minus two? Plus is always better than minus, he thought, and answered: plus two. He got out of the water - and he has 4 cores. Thinks: I’ll climb back, now I’ll say minus two. He returned to the water, his hand grabbed again and a voice came again: plus four or minus four?



I recalled this joke when I read that the mass production of the first eight-core processors of the California company Qualcomm will begin this summer. It seems that the invisible hand of the market grabbed the developers tightly and does not let go. Snapdragon 615 to be the

first on the assembly line of Taiwanese Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)- A chip for mid-range smartphones. And before the end of the year, Qualcomm promises to launch engines for future flagships: a 64-bit octa-core with support for 4G Snapdragon 810 and a six-core Snapdragon 808 , which were announced in April .

The main intrigue now is which of the top smartphones of the future will be the first to come out of the water with eight cores. Perhaps it will be the expected in September Samsung Galaxy Note 4 - or you will have to wait for the traditional flagship premieres in early 2015.

However, there is a small chance that the Kvalkomm plans for the championship will break LG, which is developing its own eight-core called Odin. There are speculations that the eight-core version will be shown at the upcoming premiere of LG G3 .

As for the processors themselves, to evaluate the news, it should be divided into semantic parts:

▌ on the one hand, the race for the number of cores in smartphones repeats the history of the race for megapixels, the number of which has long been simply a competition of advertising numbers - all other things being equal, for a certain limit the number of pixels on the shooting quality is no longer affected. The same thing is happening now with processors - neither the possibility of the number of cores, nor the increased bit depth of current software and the limited RAM sizes of modern smartphones really allow you to use it.

▌ on the other hand, new features will be dragged along by the software that uses them, and new requirements should be pulled by hardware. Somehow progress works, right?

And thirdly: new chips will be manufactured using a 20-nanometer process. And this is really good news, because Reducing the process means saving battery power, less overheating and better performance compared to 22 nm and higher chips dominating the market.

Since the impracticality of the race for the cores does not negate the benefits of improving the technology of production of processors, the news score is still in favor of Kvalkomma innovations. We are waiting for smartphones with new chips.