The area requirements of the efficiency cores are quite small. They’re so cheap that vendors have loved to spam little cores in economy models. I really question if there’s anything to gain by this strategy beyond marketing optics vs if they built the same SoC with one little core. In fact, many times little cores are given tasks like running Wi-Fi and Bluetooth firmware and not mentioned on the label because 1) not general purpose and 2) very small area footprint anyway so as to be inconsequential.
If you’re paying for those large cores, surely MediaTek could spare some pocket change to build a single little core. It strikes me as bold for the sake of being bold rather than making economic sense.
This is also silly from a thermal perspective. We are more limited by thermal capacity today than we are peak performance. Who is going to buy this chip? What is the objective? I’m confounded.
The area requirements of the efficiency cores are quite small. They’re so cheap that vendors have loved to spam little cores in economy models. I really question if there’s anything to gain by this strategy beyond marketing optics vs if they built the same SoC with one little core. In fact, many times little cores are given tasks like running Wi-Fi and Bluetooth firmware and not mentioned on the label because 1) not general purpose and 2) very small area footprint anyway so as to be inconsequential.
If you’re paying for those large cores, surely MediaTek could spare some pocket change to build a single little core. It strikes me as bold for the sake of being bold rather than making economic sense.
This is also silly from a thermal perspective. We are more limited by thermal capacity today than we are peak performance. Who is going to buy this chip? What is the objective? I’m confounded.