How fast will mobile phone CPU's get?

[Glaucus]

Yep I expect CPUs to keep increasing. Absolutely no reason for them to do, except continuing to sale products.

Smart phones have hit a Temporary limit which will stay for years to come.

Tie the ip4 let alone the dual core androids. Next gen might open something's slightly faster, but when do you ever look at your phone going, I wish you would load faster.
I can't see anyforth coming technology that will need the increase of speed.
What we have in the pipeline 4g and smart pay systems. Neither of which need more CPU power.
Screen are already as good as you need, as are cameras.

What they should do is as CPU improves release the same speed but use less power.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

is it likely we'll see cpu speeds going up and up to like 3 or 4ghz in years to come? If so, why?

Of course, yes.

As to why - well in 1992 I really couldn't see why I would ever need more than the 25mhz 68040 chip I had in my Amiga at the time - I used to think a 50mhz 68060 was overkill

 

[Emphacy]

Beyond 1.2ghz dual core which is plenty fast enough for a phone, is it likely we'll see cpu speeds going up and up to like 3 or 4ghz in years to come? If so, why? I can't really envisage the necessity for it in the same way a pc needs it. Have we almost reached a practical limit with the samsung galaxy S2, HTC Sensation and others springing up with dual core cpu's?

Yes and no, I believe the architecture of future CPU's will become so sophisticated and efficient, there will be no need for a super-duper clock speed.

It's similar in reason why my old 8800GT has a higher clock than my 5870. The architecture. Before long I think we'll be completely away from strained silicon chips and onto some form of nanotechnology, best guesses right now are probably carbon nanotubes.

If you ask me, mobile phones will end up just as powerful as computers, in fact. I think they will be replaced by tablets, with video call.

Video calling will be the phone future. Maybe 3D video call!

 

[Amp34]

I broadly agree with the latter point of your post, which is why I think Microsofts way of porting full OS versions onto tablets is the right way round. That means for the vast majority of people they have a perfect touch screen tablet that is fine for ambling around in public with just a screen and also a full computer that just needs a dock/wireless keyboard and mouse for proper work (writing up homework/reports/doing yearly accounts etc). Obviously there will still be a need for desktops for those more demanding applications but convertable tablets could easily make up the majority laptop share over a tablet with android/iOS.

How is this specifically relevant to phones (rather than tablets)? Well the number of phones that slot into a dumb screen is starting to rise, they could easily be the base of it all. For that they would need more power, could even have dedicated hardware that switches on and off like laptop gpus do now.

 

[PermaBanned]

Of course, yes.

As to why - well in 1992 I really couldn't see why I would ever need more than the 25mhz 68040 chip I had in my Amiga at the time - I used to think a 50mhz 68060 was overkill

And it was, because people knew how to program properly

Modern hardware is just an excuse for people to be more lazy with it - hence Gate's Law.

 

[gambitt]

It won't be long before they start clustering old smartphones to make a supercomputer

 

[manic_man]

It won't be long before they start clustering old smartphones to make a supercomputer

Not so dumb! Already the use of "microserver" blades that use multiple ARM based processors instead of x86 ones is becoming a reality. Why host simple web-apps on a power hungry x86 machine when an ultra low power ARM Cortex based device will do the same for much lower cost and power.

Also, if interested, take a look at this: Steve Furber (co-inventor of the ARM architecture and Acorn computers) is currently heading a European research project to tie many small ARM cores together in an asynchronous mesh network and then use it to simulate brain function at the neuron level: http://apt.cs.man.ac.uk/projects/SpiNNaker/ that's fairly close to the super computer paradigm tbh!

 

[ng93]

Well the SGS2 is already a cut down pc in many ways, but I can't see phones ever replacing a laptop or full size desktop pc. It would be far too limited in what you could do in terms of upgrading and adding components.

How many consumers actually upgrade their computers though? And the Motorola Atrix can already be used as a laptop/desktop (linky). Admittedly its not really powerful enough for the job, but then Nvidias Kal-El should be out fairly soon, which has four cores

 

[gambitt]

Once virtual desktops become mainstream for office workers, all you'll need is a (future) phone with DVI out to plug in a monitor and maybe extra USB for keyboard/mouse (already in the office) then log in to your VDI via web browser and start work.

 

[CivilDrone]

looking at how amd progresses with their cpu/gpu combo, we'll soon be lookin at a very good spec phones, again, as someone stated battery should be somewhat made of nuclear or at least solar powered energy

 

[Zarf]

I think they'll stay well under 2Ghz, keeping clock speeds low makes it much easier to build low power chips. They are going for performance per Watt here. Note how the shaders in GPU's have all run at around 1GHz for years.
I think we're rapidly approaching the point where we don't need any more performance from our mobile cpu's and the advancements will all be geared at decreasing power consumption. I just can't see myself doing anything on a phone that would benefit much from anything more than a quad core, hell even my snapdragon phone does everthing i want it to - hi-def playback, games, web browsing, Remote Desktop.

 

[Amp34]

Once virtual desktops become mainstream for office workers, all you'll need is a (future) phone with DVI out to plug in a monitor and maybe extra USB for keyboard/mouse (already in the office) then log in to your VDI via web browser and start work.

No need for that. WiDi sorts out the screen issue wirelessly and bluetooth/wireless mice and keyboards sort out USB slots. None of it is future tech, it's all stuff that is in consumer devices now. Add an induction pad and you will very rarely need wires to turn your tablet/phone into a full blown computer. I just think, until the advent of decent broadband connections everywhere for virtual desktops, current mobile OSs are a bit too limiting for computer use for most people.

 

[manic_man]

I think they'll stay well under 2Ghz, keeping clock speeds low makes it much easier to build low power chips. They are going for performance per Watt here. Note how the shaders in GPU's have all run at around 1GHz for years.
I think we're rapidly approaching the point where we don't need any more performance from our mobile cpu's and the advancements will all be geared at decreasing power consumption. I just can't see myself doing anything on a phone that would benefit much from anything more than a quad core, hell even my snapdragon phone does everthing i want it to - hi-def playback, games, web browsing, Remote Desktop.

Fully three dimensional, GPU accelerated GUI containing full shader effects?

You might not think you need it, and tbh you probably don't, but manufacturers are always looking to make their phones more attractive, they aren't the tool a desktop PC or laptop is, people like their phones to look pretty, and with modern smartphones, what you see on the screen makes up much of the phones appearance!

2Ghz multi-core Cortex based chips are already a reality, and they use about the same power and come in at the same price as current gen 1.2-1.5Ghz chips. As long as there is no obvious downside, manufacturers will keep putting the better spec in. It results in more immersive software and a better product spec sheet.

 

[apatia77]

It's all about balance imo. I bet they could make a mobile phone with some super fast cpu but then the battery would last few minutes only.

As the technology improves so will mobile phones.

 

[Sinny]

Will someone just think of the poor battery's.

Just think of the same logic that applies to laptop.

Not sure if Phone CPU's are the same but the smaller they make them the less power consumption they will consume and the cooler they will run so naturally they will get faster anyway, unless someone can point out that I'm wrong.

 

[sarge78]

^ It's all about heterogeneous computing and dark silicon in the mobile space.

 

[Myshra]

Not sure if Phone CPU's are the same but the smaller they make them the less power consumption they will consume and the cooler they will run so naturally they will get faster anyway, unless someone can point out that I'm wrong.

This is true but is only part of the equation - the smaller the design the less power per gate it really needs but smaller designs allow you to fit more stuff in a package so they fit more powerful gpus etc.. and then to top it off when you have a decent SoC you don't want it on a 320x240 you want it on the biggest screen you can grab which requires power to run and you want it connected constantly to the internet etc etc...3G connectivity power draw isn't pretty.

As Sarge hints - sleep is vital. BBOS and Symbian were sleep champions and were designed from the ground up to use as little battery as possible. iOS and Android do not share this opinion

 

[englishpremier]

how do mobile phone cpus compare to say a an AMD 2500+ barton?

 

[sarge78]

^ Fairly similar actually, a fully implemented dual core A9 @ 1-1.5GHz, like A5/Exynos/OMAP4 etc, would be in the same ball park. Slower for single threaded performance but much faster for film decoding etc.

Heterogeneous computing and dark silicon is all about die shrinks not offering the same significant power reduction (i.e transistors that lie unused because of power limitations)

So you use all that 'wasted space' for more dedicated processors/hardware.

Current ARM SoCs have loads already (~8?) but the OMAP4470 takes it to the next level with a dedicated 2D graphics core (for OS animations) and two 266Mhz Cortex-M3 cores (for multimedia processing and background realtime events) At 22nm expect to see even more dedicated hardware.

...and don't be surprised if Intel's 'next gen' Atom has a dedicated superPI processor that does nothing but generate good PI benchmarks

 

[PermaBanned]

It's not all that easy to compare literal performance between different architectures though, nor even RISC to CISC, since there's next to no software that runs just as well on both.