Intel Corp (INTC)

[Tenchu]

Unkwn, I never liked the heterogeneous core concept. Software guys really have to program specifically for said architectures. Dynamically scheduling lightweight threads to use the little cores in order to free up the big cores doesn't provide much benefit, in my mind.

The idea, at least from this hardware designer's POV, is to save power. But there is little power cost in just scheduling the lightweight threads on big cores. Clock and power-gating ensures that the big cores don't run longer or harder than they need to. They are flexible enough to handle both light loads efficiently and heavy loads effectively.

IMO, the advantages of heterogeneous cores is on the order of milliwatts. That's actually significant in the mobile world, to be sure, but the costs and difficulty in programming for heterogeneous cores isn't worth it.

Tenchu