Play Store Open & Scroll

Google's Play Store is used by almost every Android user. Many times it seems though as Google's own app is quite performance hungry or un-optimized when it comes to using it, so let's have a closer look at what happens when opening up the app and browsing its home-activity.
 

The little cores all have significant load placed onto them. It looks like the app multi-threads well in this scenario and the little threads are well fitted to accomodate the load that is placed onto them.

Surpsingly, we also see the big CPUs having some continuous load. The app launch itself triggers the big cluster to go to full speed of 2.1GHz and migrate threads onto all 4 CPUs. Scrolling through the page also loads at least 1 significant big thread. The CPU's frequency remains quite moderate though as we only see some small bursts to up to 1GHz while the rest of the time the big cores idle on the minimum 800MHz frequency.

Overall, the Play Store app also seems to be optimized and aimed for 4-core designs. Here big.LITTLE seems to work well as we see a mix of small threads with a mix of big threads running concurrently on both clusters. 

App: Reddit Sync Scrolling App: Play Store App Updates
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  • TylerGrunter - Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - link

    In fact you are in the right place to ask that question, as one of the profets os the mantra was Anand Lal Shimpi himself:
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-r...
    Quoting from the article:
    "two faster cores are still better for most uses than four cores running at lower frequencies"
    You can read the rest if you are interested, but that´s how much of the mantra started.
  • retrospooty - Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - link

    I wont hold that against Anand, he was lobbying toward a job at Apple ;)

    But seriously, it was 2 years ago. At that time ""two faster cores are still better for most uses than four cores running at lower frequencies" may well have been the case. Also, no matter how you slice it, an 8 core big.little is not a true 8 core CPU. It's really still 4 cores.
  • retrospooty - Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - link

    /edit. I do remember alot of people crying "you dont need 8 cores" but again, that was people misunderstanding ARM's big.little architecture made worse by marketing calling it "8" cores" in the first place.
  • TylerGrunter - Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - link

    I agree with you, and he may not have been THAT wrong at the time. But with the current implementations of power gating and turbos most of what he said has been rendered false.
    AFAIK, big.LITTLE can be a true 8 core, it actually depends on the implementation.
  • lilmoe - Sunday, September 6, 2015 - link

    "Also, no matter how you slice it, an 8 core big.little is not a true 8 core CPU. It's really still 4 cores."

    An 8 core big.LITTLE chip running in HMP mode (like the Exynos 5422 onward) is in fact a "true" 8 core chip in which all 8 cores can be running at the same time. You're thinking core migration and cluster migration setups in which only 4 cores (or a combination of 4) can be running at the simultaneously.
  • lilmoe - Sunday, September 6, 2015 - link

    "can be running at the simultaneously."
    *corrected: can be running simultaneously.
  • osxandwindows - Friday, September 25, 2015 - link

    If i run all 8 cores at the same time, wood it affect battery life?
  • mkozakewich - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link

    If the option is really four weak cores or two powerful cores, I think the two powerful ones would make a better system. If we could have two powerful cores AND four weak cores, that would be even better.

    So I think he was probably justified.
  • mkozakewich - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link

    Just everyone who's easily influenced, really. I heard it from pretty much everyone. Someone I was talking to apparently "knew someone who designed a Galaxy phone." He claimed they wanted to design it with two cores, or something, but the marketers wanted eight.
  • StormyParis - Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - link

    Very interesting, thank you.

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