The mobile phone "nuclear war" is not over yet

Once upon a time, when we bought mobile phones and computers, we would definitely pay attention to this data: how many cores the processor has.

At that time, TV commercials were also promoting dual-core processors, quad-core processors, and octa-core processors. As a result, even the elderly who were far away from the technology circle would greet each other when they were taking a walk: "Have you changed your phone? How many cores does it have?"

Unconsciously, the concept of how many cores a mobile phone has seems to have become a thing of the past. Perhaps for ordinary users, mobile phones have become daily necessities, and since the configurations of mobile phones at the same price are almost the same, there seems to be nothing to compare carefully?

So, is the issue of the "core" of mobile phone CPUs completely over?

Perhaps not. The reason is that the concept of core count may be well known, but the difference between large cores and small cores is still very unfamiliar to most consumers. A new opportunity in the era of mobile phone inventory wars is hidden in this familiar yet unfamiliar topic.

Is it outdated to talk about "nuclear" on mobile phones?

Since the rise of smartphones, manufacturers have begun to educate users about the number of CPU cores. Generally speaking, the more CPU cores there are, the stronger the processing power is, and the better the performance of the phone is.

After all, no matter how many CPU cores there are, it will never reach three digits. This concept is very easy to understand, so most consumers begin to use it as a reference when purchasing mobile phones.

However, what most consumers may not understand is that mobile phone CPU cores are actually divided into large cores and small cores.

The concept of big and small cores in mobile phone CPUs was proposed by Arm, a famous British semiconductor manufacturer, in 2011. Before that, CPUs really only differed in the number of cores.

In Arm's design, mobile phone CPUs can not only use several cores with the same performance in parallel, but also move towards a new way of playing with large and small cores.

Generally speaking, the pipeline of a large core is three or even four issues, while the pipeline of a small core is generally two issues. Compared with a small core, a large core has a faster instruction processing speed and core bus throughput, and its performance can be about 2 to 3 times higher than that of a small core.

Why should we divide it into big and small cores?

The reason is that the multi-core design of mobile phone CPUs is originally designed to handle large-scale computing tasks. However, in the actual use of mobile phones, sometimes what is needed is not long-term large-scale computing, but rapid computing power in a short period of time. For example, when loading applications quickly or when the mobile phone touch screen needs a smooth experience.

Obviously, there are many such "explosive power" scenarios, but calling on multi-core processing power will reduce efficiency. Therefore, a more practical way is to use a large core to provide high-performance response for a short period of time, and use small cores to ensure battery life at other times.

The big and small core design not only solves the performance requirements in practical scenarios of mobile phones in a more practical way, but more importantly, it provides new possibilities for mobile phone experience: for example, a quad-core processor with one large core and three small cores may not be inferior to an octa-core processor with eight small cores in actual applications, while the cost paid by consumers may be greatly reduced.

In other words, chip manufacturers' understanding and innovation of core architecture are giving new imagination to the old topic of "mobile phone nuclear war".

In the era of stock war,

What does a big-core CPU mean?

What criteria should be used to determine whether a nucleus is large or small?

In fact, it is also very simple. Users can use GeekBench and other performance benchmark tools to check the single-core benchmark score of the mobile phone CPU. Usually, if the frequency is 2.0GHz, the single-core benchmark score of the large core is at least 1600, and the small core can reach up to 1200.

The change opportunities that big and small core processors bring to the entire mobile phone industry are that this innovation can greatly improve the user's mobile phone experience without basically increasing user costs.

The reason is that in daily practical scenarios of mobile phones, only a single core is working most of the time. Improving the performance of this single core means that the most common experience of most users, such as interaction and launching apps, has been greatly improved. And because the number of cores in the chip has not increased, the user cost will not increase significantly.

This combination of low cost and performance optimization coincides with the current demand of the mobile phone market. As of today, the shipment volume of the Chinese mobile phone market has dropped significantly, the user growth dividend has basically ended, and the industry as a whole has entered an era of stock war.

Unlike flagship phone users who basically only consider brand value, core technological innovation, and software ecosystem experience when purchasing products, more than 85% of domestic mobile phone shipments are completed by mid- and low-end models.

The characteristics of these models are that the product models are quite complex and the homogeneous competition is fierce. It is difficult for users to judge how to choose the product. In this case, the large-core CPU chip obviously brings users a new weight of choice under the premise of the same price.

On the other hand, the incremental market for mobile phone products has now shifted to overseas markets such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These markets are in the early stages of development, and the shipment volume of high-end phones is limited. How to ensure the quality and low price of mobile phone products starting from the chip end is the main theme that the industry is seeking together. Then the large-core CPU happens to hit such a demand point.

Therefore, how to ensure that the price-performance ratio of large-core CPU mobile phones is strong enough is likely to be the next major challenge in the "mobile phone nuclear war" - and this is also a new strategic opportunity for mobile chip manufacturers.

The “nuclear war” continues, opening up new opportunities for the industry

In fact, big-core CPUs have been used in Huawei and Samsung's flagship products since 2014, and are still the mainstream choice for flagship phones. However, due to the high cost, they have not been widely used in the mid- and low-end markets after several years. Most of the mobile phone chip products we see today still use the four-small-core model. Even some eight-core processors that focus on cost-effectiveness have not launched products with big- and small-core designs.

However, the market changes brought by the big-core CPU are likely to start in 2019. As we have seen today, Unisoc released the next-generation LTE platform Tiger T310 chip in early April. This new product uses a combination of 1 big-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 processor core and 3 small-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A55 processor cores. The main selling point is "quad-core configuration, octa-core performance".

In order to match the characteristics of large and small cores, the Tiger T310 adopts the Arm DynamIQ architecture that is only used in mid-to-high-end platforms. It can configure different performance for each core and perform independent frequency and voltage control. Such architectural characteristics enable the CPU to achieve higher performance while finely controlling power consumption. Such technological innovation allows the 4-core processor to achieve higher performance than the 8-core processor in some scenarios. Ultimately, the low-power core of the quad-core is retained at a low cost, and users gain the performance experience that only high-end machines can have.

There is reason to believe that the Huben T310 is the beginning of an industry opportunity. Through more advantageous architectural innovation and refined calling, low-cost configurations can achieve high-level performance, which will be the main channel for the mobile phone chip market in the future.

Today, the innovation ability of mobile phone products has generally slowed down. Manufacturers can only emphasize innovation in terms of materials, appearance design, etc. However, the innovation of basic computing power has not actually stopped. In other words, the innovation of core experience is the basis for the supply chain and mobile phone manufacturers to finally gain user reputation. The innovative solution ability of the "big core CPU" is extremely valuable at this node.

Perhaps in a sense, the mobile phone "nuclear war" has just begun.