it wasn't long ago that the idea of putting several processors into one
package seemed exotic but with modern multi-core cpus and integrated graphics
maybe it was only a matter of time before Intel and AMD added even more
functionality to your computer's most important component
the CPU both companies are working on hybrid cpus that could really shake up
what the future of computing will look like specifically for laptops and
devices that depend heavily on good battery life but what exactly is a
hybrid CPU the basic idea is that it's a multi-core CPU where all the cores
are not the same instead you get a mix of high power and low power cores a
paradigm that's already used in many ARM chips for smartphones called big little
the advantage of this is many of the tasks we do on our laptop such as
working in a word processor or browsing social media don't necessarily use tons
of computing power but the processing cores which are designed to do a lot
more can still use a lot of electricity when they're doing those things even if
the system is throttling their clock speed so instead a hybrid CPU takes
advantage of cores that specifically don't have the same capabilities as a
traditional laptop processor core but the major plus is that they use a lot
less energy but when your pc is doing something that needs some extra
processing muscle you still have those higher power cores for the heavy lifting
assigning tasks to the low power or the high power cores is the responsibility
of a scheduler a scheduler is typically
built into the operating system and is responsible for deciding the order in
which your computer will execute tasks in a hybrid CPU the hardware is
specifically designed to coordinate with the operating system scheduler so that
the CPU and Windows or whatever os you're using can work together to figure
out what tasks makes the most sense to assign to each core so a demanding
foreground task like photo editing could get assigned to the big core while
background tasks will be delegated to the little cores which are more power
efficient but i can hear you already what about just putting armed cpus
inside of laptops apple's doing it so why doesn't everybody just follow suit
well the big difference is that AMD and Intel's hybrid projects are still built
around x86 architecture the same one they've been using for decades
and the one that most Windows applications are written for apple has
the luxury of being able to rewrite its own operating system and software to
work well on its in-house designed ARM cpus but on Windows laptops trying to
translate x86 applications to run on ARM cpus results in significant performance
loss in fact qualcomm a major manufacturer of ARM chips has tried to
break into the Windows laptop market with armed cpus but the slowdowns that
result from the fact that Windows applications won't run natively on ARM
has prevented qualcomm from becoming a major player in the laptop processor
market but this doesn't mean that just because hybrid processors run on x86
architecture that they're perfect solutions scheduling for maximum
efficiency presents a real engineering challenge and because you're mixing
different types of processor cores code that might work on one type of core may
not work on another so chip makers might
be forced to remove support for certain instructions from one or more cores to
ensure programs can run on both sets of cores without causing an error as
software typically assumes all cores support the same instructions but
despite those challenges the technology does have promise Intel in particular
has sunk a great deal of money into developing it and at the time we shot
this episode there's already one laptop that features an Intel hybrid CPU
codenamed lakefield we also know AMD has filed a patent for a similar technology
though it's unclear when we'll see hybrid cpus from team red but as for me
i just want something that'll last a long time even
if i misplaced my laptop charger which
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