4 ms·

> However, single-core performance is generally considered more important when it comes to overall speed for everyday usage, as most tasks are unable to scale e

> However, single-core performance is generally considered more important when it comes to overall speed for everyday usage, as most tasks are unable to scale efficiently across multiple cores. Thank you for acknowledging this. I think few people actually appreciate the need for better single-core performance. It's, in comparison, easy to just add more cores and use more power, but what is hard is making one core faster and faster and use less power.

cubefox 4y ago
Counterargument: Single core performance is more important for most applications, but it is rather unimportant overall. Most phones have already more than enough performance for usual applications. What matters for performance is heavy applications, games, for which GPU and multi-core performance are important, not so much single core performance. Moreover, if someone really is interested in the speed of normal applications, then it is more useful to directly measure things like start-up times of popular apps. Apple isn't ahead here, as far as I know, despite higher single-core performance.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
"Few people appreciate it" because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications, which is why in almost every market imaginable, CPUs and SoCs have migrated toward higher core counts. It takes a special sort of arrogance to look at literally the entire industry and go "psssst, savages don't know what they're doing. Single core performance is where it's at."
- flykespice 4y ago
  > because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications The article just proves you wrong Apple's products are lightyears ahead from Android phones in perfomance. Apple CPU design always put single core perfomance upfront, because they know most application are still optimized to single core usage. how is not not relevant?
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  Very little of the hot loop involving user interaction will ever use more than one core. Single core performance is still the most important.
- kaba0 4y ago
  No longer relevant, wtf? It’s just that not much improvement can be done in single thread performance anymore and it is much more easier to design and market “n times as many cores” then “we bumped single threaded performance by 0.2%”. Mind you, almost every single application you have will ultimately depend on single threaded performance, relatively few problems can even theoretically make use of multiple cores, let alone are programmed to do so. Sure, multiple single-threaded process will like more available cores, but it is more limited on mobile devices, where few very fast cores and more slower ones are the norm.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Another tangential but related one is core architectural decisions made early on. Apple wanted to build apps using web technology, but realized it was nowhere near fast enough. So they reused parts of the OSX toolkit, including the programming language which compiles down to optimized assembly. (and it wasn't even that great in performance due to obj-c's way of doing things, it had more runtime overhead due to the message passing system). Meanwhile, Android always was on Java and the JVM, which, while pretty fast, isn't as fast or energy-efficient as a lower level language. If I recall correctly it took something like five years - and quadcore CPUs - before Android started to get close to iOS in terms of perceived performance and speed, and the iPhone still beat Android phones in terms of energy efficiency. It took even longer than that (again, if I recall correctly) for the iphone to even start having a dual-core CPU. And Apple is doing it again with their own CPUs now, the energy efficiency of their new macbooks with no compromise on performance is really impressive.

cubefox 4y ago

Counterargument: Single core performance is more important for most applications, but it is rather unimportant overall. Most phones have already more than enough performance for usual applications. What matters for performance is heavy applications, games, for which GPU and multi-core performance are important, not so much single core performance. Moreover, if someone really is interested in the speed of normal applications, then it is more useful to directly measure things like start-up times of popular apps. Apple isn't ahead here, as far as I know, despite higher single-core performance.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

"Few people appreciate it" because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications, which is why in almost every market imaginable, CPUs and SoCs have migrated toward higher core counts. It takes a special sort of arrogance to look at literally the entire industry and go "psssst, savages don't know what they're doing. Single core performance is where it's at."

flykespice 4y ago
> because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications The article just proves you wrong Apple's products are lightyears ahead from Android phones in perfomance. Apple CPU design always put single core perfomance upfront, because they know most application are still optimized to single core usage. how is not not relevant?
dontlaugh 4y ago
Very little of the hot loop involving user interaction will ever use more than one core. Single core performance is still the most important.
kaba0 4y ago
No longer relevant, wtf? It’s just that not much improvement can be done in single thread performance anymore and it is much more easier to design and market “n times as many cores” then “we bumped single threaded performance by 0.2%”. Mind you, almost every single application you have will ultimately depend on single threaded performance, relatively few problems can even theoretically make use of multiple cores, let alone are programmed to do so. Sure, multiple single-threaded process will like more available cores, but it is more limited on mobile devices, where few very fast cores and more slower ones are the norm.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

Another tangential but related one is core architectural decisions made early on. Apple wanted to build apps using web technology, but realized it was nowhere near fast enough. So they reused parts of the OSX toolkit, including the programming language which compiles down to optimized assembly. (and it wasn't even that great in performance due to obj-c's way of doing things, it had more runtime overhead due to the message passing system). Meanwhile, Android always was on Java and the JVM, which, while pretty fast, isn't as fast or energy-efficient as a lower level language. If I recall correctly it took something like five years - and quadcore CPUs - before Android started to get close to iOS in terms of perceived performance and speed, and the iPhone still beat Android phones in terms of energy efficiency. It took even longer than that (again, if I recall correctly) for the iphone to even start having a dual-core CPU. And Apple is doing it again with their own CPUs now, the energy efficiency of their new macbooks with no compromise on performance is really impressive.