[citation][nom]Lekko[/nom]I don't understand why they went with 4+4 rather than 2+4. I think a low-power dual core would make more sense in terms of die real estate. I can't think of a situation that would require 3-4 cores of power while remaining in the lower power state. As soon as you need that 3rd core or 4th, you're probably doing something intensive, so it would switch to the high power quad anyway.[/citation]
It would seem so but that would probably be extremely difficult to design as the A7 and A15 cores are built together in a module called big.LITTLE, so until ARM releases libraries that accommodate switching tasks to different core architectures we won't see those. Right now the only way to make such a set-up would be to have a 2 module big.LITTLE for 2+2, and a dual core A15 on the side of that. Personally I believe that a tri-module big.LITTLE for 3+3 would be the optimum given todays computing requirements but building hi-end phones isn't so much about optimizing from an engineering stand point as it is about bragging rights of the marketing departments.