POWER CONSUMPTION OF MULTICORE PROCESSORS IN

SMARTPHONES

ABSTRACT:
Smartphones are the fastest growing technology of today’s electronic world. Today smart
phones are able to run the complex tasks and applications that were originally designed for general-
purpose machines. Power consumption and fast battery discharge in Smartphones has become a hot
topic for developers and manufacturers they are trying that how a battery life of a smartphone can be
extend with the advent of multi-core processors. This is a review paper concerned about different
processors, chipset, Gpu used in today’s smartphones and their effect on smartphones power
consumption.

INTRODUCTION:-
web, 3D gaming, and 3D interfaces are stretching the capabilities of current single core mobile
processors. To over-come these facts mobile phones has jumped from single to multicore processors [1].

NEED OF MULTI-CORE PROCESSORS:

People use mobile device much like they use their PC, and expect a similar level of capabilities - while
maintaining and increasing battery life. Mobile use cases such as HD video playback, streaming video
and audio, multitasking, browsing the web, 3D gaming, and 3D interfaces are stretching the capabilities
of current single core mobile processors. In order to further increase the performance, and extend
battery life, mobile devices will transition to multi-core CPUs [1]

Battery dissipation in Multi-core processors:

Smartphones are used for multi-purpose tasks in today’s electronic world. Users use the smartphones
for calling, multimedia, social network, online maps and many other tasks. For computing these tasks
there is a need of power and smartphones tackle it with battery (Li-ion). Smartphones has jump from
single to multitasking device and many other function has been added to modern phone that has largely
collapse the Pc and Laptops industry. The last year survey says that smartphones were sold in a larger
quantity then Laptops. With the advent of multi core processors in smartphones researchers are now
working that how a battery life of smart phones may be increased.
 I studied different papers that what is the need of multi-core processors in smart
phones, how and where power are being consumed in a smartphones and the way to control the
battery from draining shortly. This review paper also include the latest mobiles processors manufactured
by different companies Like ARM, INTEL etc.

DIFFERENT MOBILE PROCESSORS:

ARM:

The increased need for mobile productivity and entertainment has given rise to a relatively new
class of devices: smartphones and tablets. ARM is well-known for the design of mobile, power-efficient
processor designs. In recent years it has seen its technology used in the products of many prominent
electronics companies. Apple's A4/A5/A5X, Nvidia's Tegra, Samsung's Exynos and Texas Instruments'
OMAP products all integrate ARM processors into what is known as a system-on-a-chip (SoC). SoCs
merge many of the essential components of a computer (such as the CPU, RAM, ROM etc.) on a single
chip which allows devices that utilize them to be lightweight and compact. These SoCs have gone on to
be implemented in blockbuster products such as Apple's iPhone and iPad or Samsung's series of Galaxy
phones. ARM's presence as the CPU and architecture of choice on many mobile devices cannot be
understated as estimates put their numbers in the billions.

Type of Additional
System-On-a-Chip Number
Notable Product(s) Containing ARM Product
(SoC) of Cores
Processor Information

iPhone 4, iPod Touch (4th Gen), iPad (1st

A4 Cortex-A8 1
Gen), AppleTV (2nd Gen)
Apple Apple
A5 iPhone 4S, iPad 2, AppleTV (3rd Gen) Cortex-A9 2

A5X iPad (3rd Gen, Retina Display) Cortex-A9 2

Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Exynos 3 Single Cortex-A8 1
S,

Samsung Galaxy SII, Samsung Galaxy

Exynos 4 Dual Cortex-A9 2
Samsung Note (International) Samsung

Exynos 4 Quad Samsung Galaxy SIII Cortex-A9 4

Exynos 5 Dual N/A Cortex-A15 2

Tegra Microsoft Zune HD ARM11 1

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, Samsung

Tegra 2 Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Xoom, Dell Cortex-A9 2
Nvidia Streak 7 & Pro, Sony Tablet S Nvidia

ASUS Transformer Pad 300, ASUS Nexus

Tegra 3 7, Acer Iconia Tab A510 & A700, HTC Cortex-A9 4
One X

Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 Nokia Lumia 900 N/A 1 Qualcomm

 Snapdragon S3 Galaxy Note LTE (AT&T), HP TouchPad N/A 2

Samsung Galaxy SIII LTE, HTC EVO 4G

Snapdragon S4 N/A 2, 4
LTE

OMAP 3 Barnes and Noble Nook Color Cortex-A8 1

Amazon Kindle Fire, Samsung Galaxy Tab

Texas
Texas Instruments OMAP 4 2, Blackberry Playbook, Samsung Galaxy Cortex-A9 2
Instruments
Nexus, Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet

OMAP 5 N/A Cortex-A15 2

The MPCore implementation of the processor offers advanced power management features to further
lower power consumption and exceed the power requirements across an increasing number of markets
and applications. The Cortex-A9 MPCore also delivers unprecedented levels of scalable performance
opening markets previously unable to enjoy the power efficiency inherent in the design of an ARM
processor [2].

AMD:

AMD is considered to be a viable alternative to Intel. Their current offerings are flanked by the Phenom
series processors and Fusion APU processors. The Fusion APU (AMD A-Series) is a relatively new
platform (as of 2011 and ongoing) that attempts to merge high-end graphical capabilities on the same
chip as the processor. This means if your work or play requires a powerful graphics card, then AMD can
potentially offer a cost effective alternative.

INTEL:

Intel is the premier chip maker for personal computers—companies such as Apple, Dell, HP,
Samsung, Sony have product lines that depend on the processors that Intel produces. Intel's processors
generally offer the best performance for all-around usage. This has been especially the case the last
several years with the introduction and evolution of Intel's Core series product line. Intel Atom
processor z series are being used in smartphones which claims to be a powerful processor then its
competitors.
According to Koerper, ARM's strength in mobile devices is its low- cost, low-power core, and its design
flexibility. The ARM Cortex A8 consumes less than 50 milliwatts of power in active mode, compared to
Atom's higher usage rates of up to two watts.

PAPERS REVIEWED ABOUT THE POWER CONSUMPTION OF SMARTPHONES:

1) One of the least exciting-sounding benefits of a multi-core system could prove to be the most useful –
battery life. This may sound counterintuitive, but with two cores whirring away at the heart of a mobile
phone, when the extra power of the second core isn't needed, it can effectively be put to sleep.
Then, if that extra burst of power is needed, for an intensive app or game, that second core can step into
the ring at any time. With two cores to tap into, each core doesn't need to be quite as powerful as its
single core counterpart, so more effort can be put into minimising how much power they suck up.
Quad core processors are even more impressive. The processor in the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime,
the Nvidia Tegra 3, has four high powered cores and a smaller fifth core, known as a 'companion core'.
This small, energy efficient companion core handles basic functions, like music playback and email, as
well as calls and messages in smartphones, while the main cores remain ideal. When you need more
power – when jumping onto YouTube or capturing HD video – the other larger cores jump in. The
system always uses the minimum amount of processing power, thereby saving energy. [1]
2) For accurate online power estimation profiles of battery- powered devices (smartphones),
PowerTutor was proposed [3]. Though PowerTutor shows sufficient accuracy on the single- core
(CPU) smartphones, it does not consider multi-core (CPU) smartphones, which have already
become a mainstream of smartphone design. In addition, PowerTutor assumes that the power
consumption of the display is (linearly) proportional to the backlight brightness. However, the
advanced display components used in recent smartphones shows non-linear power consumption
characteristics [4].

3) In order to meet peak performance demands in a multitasking environment, a single core CPU not
only runs at higher clock frequencies and voltages than a dual core CPU, but also takes longer periods of
time to complete a given task. The Cortex A9 dual core CPU implementation in NVIDIA Tegra is more
power efficient and delivers higher performance per watt than competing solutions for the following
reasons:

● NVIDIA Tegra employs SMP technology to distribute and share task workloads across the two
processing cores and thus each core is not fully loaded and does not have to run at peak capacity/speed.
This enables the system level power management control logic to run the two cores at much lower
operating frequency and voltage and thus achieve significant power savings. [5]

● For tasks that are highly parallel, NVIDIA Tegra is able to distribute the workload acrossthe two CPU
cores and complete the task much faster than a single core CPU solution. Thus the dual core CPU on
NVIDIA Tegra would be able to complete a task quickly and enter into a low power state to conserve
power, while a single core processor would have to be in an active high power state for longer periods of
time to process the same task.

● For low intensity workloads that only require the processing power of a single core, the other core can
be turned off, reducing power consumption to almost the same level as that of a single core CPU.

4)

O-Sleep

is a smartphone's output-oriented power saving mode. Rather than entering processor sleep mode
when there is no user input, o-sleep puts a smartphone's user interface into sleep mode when there is
no meaningful output from the phone. While a device is processing a user's request, output from the
device may require processing time. We consider the situation as the device's output idle time and
put the phone's user interfaces into sleep mode while maintaining other subsystems in active state.
[6]

REFERENCES:-

[1] Whitepaper by Nvidia™ (The Benefits of Multiple CPU Cores in Mobile Devices)

[2] White paper by The ARM Cortex-A9 Processors

[3] L. Zhang et al. "Accurate online power estimation and automatic battery behavior based power
model generation for smartphones", Proc. of 8th CODES+ISSS, Oct 2010, pp. 105-114.

[4] An Online Power Estimation Technique for Multi-Core Smartphones with Advanced Display
Components Minyong Kim, Student Member, IEEE, Joonho Kong, and Sung Woo Chung, Member, IEEE
Korea University, Seoul, Korea

[5] Evaluating and Modeling Power Consumption of Multi-Core Processors, Robert Basmadjian

University of Passau Innstrasse 43 Passau, Germany basmadji@fim.uni-passau.de, Hermann de Meer

University of Passau Innstrasse 43 Passau, Germany demeer@fim.uni-passau.de.

[6] O-Sleep : Smartphones' Output-Oriented Power Saving Mode, Jungseok Kim, Hyunwoo Joe,
Hyungshin Kim* Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering Chungnam National University Daejeon,
Korea {kimjungseok, jhwzero, hyungshin}@cnu.ac.kr