Smart phones these days
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
Specialized hardware with super strict constraints. All phones (of the same model) have the same hardware (screen, storage, ...) , it's not hard to optimize power usage.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
This is possible because of: 1. improvements in power consumption - CPU, memory, storage, display 2. Improvements in CPU technology (instruction set, NPUs, GPUs, etc.) 3. Improvements in display technology 4. Improvements in CPU speed Also, the phone O/S is optimized to aggressively manage power, turning off idle devices and suspending idle processes. This was not true of desktop O/Ses at the turn of the century.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
There have been a number of factors at play in the the years since the introduction of the x86 architecture Pentium processors (circa 1993). The scaling of the physical transistors (roughly 800 nanometer to current 7 nanometer geometry) This lowers the distance between transistors and so the resistance to electron flow (Heat Loss). The raising of the clock speed From below 100 megahertz to the common gigahertz ranges today. (again by having less distance to travel there is less heat generated by higher clocking.) The chip architecture is different. (ARM versus X86) the ARM architecture was designed with low power mobile in mind. The CPU support chip architecture has changed dramatically with dynamic speed adjustment depending on load, putting idle resources into low power states. Mobile operating systems also have special code to take advantage of power saving hardware and subsystems where old pre-mobile desk top systems did not.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
Can two possible reasons be: 1. The screen of a smartphone is mostly in dark mode. Meaning that its mostly off/standby 2. The processes in a smartphone are also mostly in "daemon"/standby mode.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
As previous replies have said, there are many factors at play. One that hasn't been mentioned is the CPU voltage that went down from 5V to 1.8V or less. For a more in depth discussion see Processor power dissipation - Wikipedia[^]
Mircea
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As previous replies have said, there are many factors at play. One that hasn't been mentioned is the CPU voltage that went down from 5V to 1.8V or less. For a more in depth discussion see Processor power dissipation - Wikipedia[^]
Mircea
Thanks for your feedback everyone. I think I understand smaller transistor means less power to operate the Boolean gates ( same math at lower cost). And it’s not just mobile processors. Math on desktop processors got cheaper too.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
Gets power from your brain waves as it reads your mind. Hope I'm just joking.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
All smartphones use ARM processors, and even back in the pentium days, the ARM sales guys would happily demonstrate that they could run they processor using only the waste heat from a pentium ... If you generate heat in a chip, that's using power - and the more power, the more heat. ARM chips are very well designed to use low power and to waste less of what they do use, whereas the Pentiums were designed for brute force power. Add in that the Pentium machine code was (and still is) a horrendous mess compared the RISC ARM code and you get to do more with less! Then there is the OS: Windows is a big, heavy OS that evolved from a 16 bit command line only DOS to a fully GUI monster that needs loads of RAM, loads of SSD, and loads of threads to do anything, compared with Android / iOS which often struggles to do one thing at a time well :D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing powe
Nowadays, a Pentium-equivalent CPU also only consumes a factor of less energy. I would simply call it technical progress :doh: :confused:
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing powe
Nowadays, a Pentium-equivalent CPU also only consumes a factor of less energy. I would simply call it technical progress :doh: :confused:
Yeah I have been thinking the same thing after reading some of the posts above.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
AI. What else could do it? :doh:
>64 It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
In some ways, what you're asking has the same answer as comparing any older technology to a newer technology. At one end of the spectrum we find:
Quote:
ENIAC weighed 30 tons, covered 1,500 square feet of floor space, used over 17,000 vacuum tubes (five times more than any previous device), 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, and 6,000 manual switches, consumed 174,000 watts of power, and cost about $500,000.
And at the other end of the spectrum we find smart phones, SBC's like rPi's, heck, single chips that "do it all." Technological advancements are almost always about efficiency and performance, which then allows for innovation in products so we don't have to lug the 30 tons of an Eniac around to play Wordle. The more interesting question for me is, with all this computing power, why do we still complain about how long it takes for the computer to do what we want? :laugh: There must be something equivalent to a Moore's Law like "the more efficient the technology becomes, the less efficient the code will be utilizing the technology." :sigh: Or, if you prefer a "softer" version: "The more efficient the technology becomes, the more that will be demanded of it."
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In some ways, what you're asking has the same answer as comparing any older technology to a newer technology. At one end of the spectrum we find:
Quote:
ENIAC weighed 30 tons, covered 1,500 square feet of floor space, used over 17,000 vacuum tubes (five times more than any previous device), 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, and 6,000 manual switches, consumed 174,000 watts of power, and cost about $500,000.
And at the other end of the spectrum we find smart phones, SBC's like rPi's, heck, single chips that "do it all." Technological advancements are almost always about efficiency and performance, which then allows for innovation in products so we don't have to lug the 30 tons of an Eniac around to play Wordle. The more interesting question for me is, with all this computing power, why do we still complain about how long it takes for the computer to do what we want? :laugh: There must be something equivalent to a Moore's Law like "the more efficient the technology becomes, the less efficient the code will be utilizing the technology." :sigh: Or, if you prefer a "softer" version: "The more efficient the technology becomes, the more that will be demanded of it."
Latest Articles:
A Lightweight Thread Safe In-Memory Keyed Generic Cache Collection Service A Dynamic Where Implementation for Entity FrameworkWhen I was very young I used to watch a TV series and read comic book series called Dick Tracey. He would talk into his watch to communicate with his associates. Back then I would never have imagined that that would be possible and now... Try doing something like that with an ENIAC strapped to your wrist. :)
Definition of a burocrate; Delegate, Take Credit, shift blame. PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.3.1 JaxCoder.com Latest Article: EventAggregator
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In some ways, what you're asking has the same answer as comparing any older technology to a newer technology. At one end of the spectrum we find:
Quote:
ENIAC weighed 30 tons, covered 1,500 square feet of floor space, used over 17,000 vacuum tubes (five times more than any previous device), 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, and 6,000 manual switches, consumed 174,000 watts of power, and cost about $500,000.
And at the other end of the spectrum we find smart phones, SBC's like rPi's, heck, single chips that "do it all." Technological advancements are almost always about efficiency and performance, which then allows for innovation in products so we don't have to lug the 30 tons of an Eniac around to play Wordle. The more interesting question for me is, with all this computing power, why do we still complain about how long it takes for the computer to do what we want? :laugh: There must be something equivalent to a Moore's Law like "the more efficient the technology becomes, the less efficient the code will be utilizing the technology." :sigh: Or, if you prefer a "softer" version: "The more efficient the technology becomes, the more that will be demanded of it."
Latest Articles:
A Lightweight Thread Safe In-Memory Keyed Generic Cache Collection Service A Dynamic Where Implementation for Entity Framework -
All smartphones use ARM processors, and even back in the pentium days, the ARM sales guys would happily demonstrate that they could run they processor using only the waste heat from a pentium ... If you generate heat in a chip, that's using power - and the more power, the more heat. ARM chips are very well designed to use low power and to waste less of what they do use, whereas the Pentiums were designed for brute force power. Add in that the Pentium machine code was (and still is) a horrendous mess compared the RISC ARM code and you get to do more with less! Then there is the OS: Windows is a big, heavy OS that evolved from a 16 bit command line only DOS to a fully GUI monster that needs loads of RAM, loads of SSD, and loads of threads to do anything, compared with Android / iOS which often struggles to do one thing at a time well :D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
To say Windows today has evolved from the early DOS based products (1-3, 95) is not strictly true - Windows NT (which begat Windows XP, Vista, 7, etc) was a completely different codebase to the older 16 bit DOS based Windows for home use.
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When I was very young I used to watch a TV series and read comic book series called Dick Tracey. He would talk into his watch to communicate with his associates. Back then I would never have imagined that that would be possible and now... Try doing something like that with an ENIAC strapped to your wrist. :)
Definition of a burocrate; Delegate, Take Credit, shift blame. PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.3.1 JaxCoder.com Latest Article: EventAggregator
I'm reminded of Thackery (I think it was he), who wrote "They are making haste to build a telegraph line from Maine to Houston. But what can it be that Maine and Houston have to say to each other?" I prefer to talk to trees. They never argue, they just listen quietly and sympathetically with the occasional sigh, taking it all in.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
My smartphone ruthlessly kills every application left in the background so it is super energy saver. I spend the spared energy and more instead of it. I hate when scrolled to content in the browser, left it alone, going back and it reloads the page, goes to top. I hate that I have yet to find an email client that has decent search capabilities AND works all the time. I hate when the energy-saving-maimed background processes fail to update my calendar so at first opportunity they sync nothing to my phone where originally I registered the appointment. I hate when the energy-saving-maimed clipboard loses everything a hour later. Productivity-wise a 2000's Pentium system is still lightyears ahead of anything mobile. Just there is no business in writing the software to be cramped into those systems, and there is no business in replacing the old HDDs with UFS SSDs. And there are digital nomads getting paid who "work" on mobile...
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All smartphones use ARM processors, and even back in the pentium days, the ARM sales guys would happily demonstrate that they could run they processor using only the waste heat from a pentium ... If you generate heat in a chip, that's using power - and the more power, the more heat. ARM chips are very well designed to use low power and to waste less of what they do use, whereas the Pentiums were designed for brute force power. Add in that the Pentium machine code was (and still is) a horrendous mess compared the RISC ARM code and you get to do more with less! Then there is the OS: Windows is a big, heavy OS that evolved from a 16 bit command line only DOS to a fully GUI monster that needs loads of RAM, loads of SSD, and loads of threads to do anything, compared with Android / iOS which often struggles to do one thing at a time well :D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Add in that the Pentium machine code was (and still is) a horrendous mess compared the RISC ARM code and you get to do more with less!
Except when order of execution matters[[CLR - .NET Development for ARM Processors | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2012/august/clr-net-development-for-arm-processors#running-on-arm)]. Then you fill your code with order pinning instructions, denying what ARM is. Or design a new CPU HW for it, like Apple did, and voila, you have decent x86/x64 emulation speed. But don't have an ARM CPU.
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A smart phone now a days has way less power consumption than what a Pentium at the turn of the century had yet the amount of computing power and memory of the former is ten fold greater then of the later. How can that be explained. Why does the smart phone OS work with less juice? The resolution is the same or better so that should count in favor of greater power consumption. On the other hand there are no drivers and less hardware resources to listen to on mobiles.
