WEBVTT

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it wasn't long ago that the idea of putting several processors into one

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package seemed exotic but with modern multi-core cpus and integrated graphics

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maybe it was only a matter of time before Intel and AMD added even more

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functionality to your computer's most important component

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the CPU both companies are working on hybrid cpus that could really shake up

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what the future of computing will look like specifically for laptops and

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devices that depend heavily on good battery life but what exactly is a

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hybrid CPU the basic idea is that it's a multi-core CPU where all the cores

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are not the same instead you get a mix of high power and low power cores a

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paradigm that's already used in many ARM chips for smartphones called big little

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the advantage of this is many of the tasks we do on our laptop such as

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working in a word processor or browsing social media don't necessarily use tons

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of computing power but the processing cores which are designed to do a lot

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more can still use a lot of electricity when they're doing those things even if

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the system is throttling their clock speed so instead a hybrid CPU takes

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advantage of cores that specifically don't have the same capabilities as a

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traditional laptop processor core but the major plus is that they use a lot

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less energy but when your pc is doing something that needs some extra

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processing muscle you still have those higher power cores for the heavy lifting

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assigning tasks to the low power or the high power cores is the responsibility

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of a scheduler a scheduler is typically

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built into the operating system and is responsible for deciding the order in

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which your computer will execute tasks in a hybrid CPU the hardware is

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specifically designed to coordinate with the operating system scheduler so that

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the CPU and Windows or whatever os you're using can work together to figure

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out what tasks makes the most sense to assign to each core so a demanding

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foreground task like photo editing could get assigned to the big core while

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background tasks will be delegated to the little cores which are more power

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efficient but i can hear you already what about just putting armed cpus

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inside of laptops apple's doing it so why doesn't everybody just follow suit

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well the big difference is that AMD and Intel's hybrid projects are still built

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around x86 architecture the same one they've been using for decades

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and the one that most Windows applications are written for apple has

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the luxury of being able to rewrite its own operating system and software to

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work well on its in-house designed ARM cpus but on Windows laptops trying to

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translate x86 applications to run on ARM cpus results in significant performance

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loss in fact qualcomm a major manufacturer of ARM chips has tried to

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break into the Windows laptop market with armed cpus but the slowdowns that

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result from the fact that Windows applications won't run natively on ARM

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has prevented qualcomm from becoming a major player in the laptop processor

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market but this doesn't mean that just because hybrid processors run on x86

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architecture that they're perfect solutions scheduling for maximum

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efficiency presents a real engineering challenge and because you're mixing

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different types of processor cores code that might work on one type of core may

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not work on another so chip makers might

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be forced to remove support for certain instructions from one or more cores to

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ensure programs can run on both sets of cores without causing an error as

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software typically assumes all cores support the same instructions but

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despite those challenges the technology does have promise Intel in particular

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has sunk a great deal of money into developing it and at the time we shot

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this episode there's already one laptop that features an Intel hybrid CPU

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codenamed lakefield we also know AMD has filed a patent for a similar technology

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though it's unclear when we'll see hybrid cpus from team red but as for me

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i just want something that'll last a long time even

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if i misplaced my laptop charger which

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i've done once or twice this episode is brought to

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dot com slash Techquickie so thanks for watching guys if you like this video

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