Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa Functions as a Quad-Core Processor, Says Developer

[RedundantInk]

According to developer AndreiLux, a poor implementation of the big.LITTLE driver means that a maximum of four of the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa’s cores are actually operational.

Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa Functions as a Quad-Core Processor, Says Developer : Read more

 

[DRosencraft]

Driver development and implementation continues to be the bane of technology development. I feel for the people who have to read through and write all that code. When it doesn't work we get pissed and tend to forget the work that went into it. Usually it is something relatively small that makes a huge difference. Just glad they can fix this one without too much headache.

 

[siddallj]

Will we be able to get the 8 core S4 in the UK, im not bothered if it doesn't have 4G, i live in Wales, we're not gonna get it till S5/S6 time

 

[tipoo]

This is what bugged me about every blog calling it an octo core, sure it technically has eight cores in there but only four are ever active at once.

 

[ojas]

Har har. Who's surprised, except the Tom's news team and Zak Islam.
+1 to what tipoo said.

 

[vmem]

I think most of us figured this was the case just by reading the release specs on that processor. besides, it would be a bit strange for cellphone apps to be suddenly capable of using 8 cores when half of the phones are still dual-core. just remember how long it took us to make that jump on PCs. of course, it'll be faster, but we still need the majority of users to upgrade first before developers will bother doing it

 

[guru_urug]

Am I missing something here or is there a glaring mistake in the table? Shouldn't the 1st quad-core be mentioned as being based on the cortex A15 architecture?

 

[guru_urug]

Oops I just realised, they meant the instruction set which is indeed ARM v7a. In my haste I read it A7. My bad, guess I need some sleep.

 

[rwinches]

The big/little is about power/efficiency. There is no driver issue. I think this is great. ARM is moving at a lighting pace. Yeah OK so at some point there will be powerful multi-core low drain Soc's. Many commenters keep wanting more complexity and faster cores yet claim they hate bloat, long boot times and short battery life.

 

[soundping]

I wish I'd never bought a SHV-E300S. Biggest waste of money.

 

[redeemer]

With Tegra 4i and SnapDragon 800 around the corner how cares about Exynos 5, seriously.

 

[alextheblue]

Rwinches, that's exactly what I was thinking. Isn't this how big.LITTLE was intended to function? 4 cores at a time, which ones are in use depends on load? It's simpler and safer that way, plus the apps don't need to be aware.
The real problem is that they started marketing it as Octa-core. Stupid marketing mistake - all the geeks knew it was 4 cores at a time, with idle and near-idle power consumption being much lower than running high powered cores all the time.
Nvidia didn't advertise their Tegra 3 as being a Penta-core CPU, and for good reason.

 

[Xu En]

http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/big_LITTLE_Final_Final.pdf
quote (page 7)
"Since a big.LITTLE system containing Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 is fully coherent through CCI-400 another logical use-model is to allow both Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 to be powered on and simultaneously executing code. This is termed big.LITTLE MP, which is essentially Heterogeneous Multi-Processing."

 

[Xu En]

http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/big_LITTLE_Final_Final.pdf
quote (page 7)
"Since a big.LITTLE system containing Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 is fully coherent through CCI-400 another logical use-model is to allow both Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 to be powered on and simultaneously executing code. This is termed big.LITTLE MP, which is essentially Heterogeneous Multi-Processing."

 

[rdc85]

This make me remember the old days when first hyper threading, multi core, or amd module core...
they had the hardware but the software is still not able to utilize it ....
(in the other hand without the hardware, no way developer can test/implement better code)

 

[rwinches]

Xu En Yes MP for Big.LITTLE is not excluded.
SCSI spec allows for 16 devices per channel because each address has two sub addresses. The first and only implementation of this I came across was in '94 in a CD ROM tower using tech from ATTO. Just because a configuration it available does not necessarily mean it will or should be used.

 

[Djhg2000]

Can't they just cheat and use cgroups to prioritize the cores?

 

[yannigr]

There is no driver problem here. That's how the design works. It was never an octacore (except for the marketing team).

 

[mjv1121]

It is operating as correctly as designed. It is a big OR LITTLE operation. The idea is to allow for high performance when required (big=A15s) while keeping overall power usage to a minimum LITTLE=A7s). IT WORKS => pocketnow found that the octa S$ uses less power than the S600 Quad. People's capacity for willfully failing to comprehend was has been explained by ARM and Samsung a thousand times, never ceases to annoy.

 

[tului]

Waiting to replace my Note 2 with the Note 3. Hopefully they can get the Exynos in the US versions like the did with the 2. Although a Snapdragon 800 wouldn't be too bad I suppose.

 

[Non-Euclidean]

With Tegra 4i and SnapDragon 800 around the corner how cares about Exynos 5, seriously.

Gee, I dont know. Maybe the company that makes the most smartphones out there, which also has the largest market share? You know, Samsung. Maybe they care about the perfomance of their processor in their phones. Maybe anyone who will be buying a Samsung phone in the future cares also?

 

[kartu]

...this problem can be resolved by simply updating the kernel...

Yeah. Not a big deal, but leaves a bit taste. Yet another FUD compain vs yet another nVidia's competitor, sigh?

 

[Random Hasard]

If your DESKTOP COMPUTER doesn't even use QUAD core...
Do you REALLY think a phone ever will?! SERIOUSLY?!
Some of you might want to wake up...

 

[hotice]

YES!!!! That's right! Note to all! Please stop calling it an eight-core processor. It doesn't take a developer to figure this out. That fact was very clear day one but many people seemed to miss it, probably because Samsung kept referring to it as octa-core.

 

[spentshells]

Please give me one powerful core @ 1.2 or 1.5 with the latest adreno gpu and forget all this multiple core nonsense. It's a phone (and in my case a game boy)