Cortex-X3, the next high-performance core for Android could come with a major disadvantage

We already know that the current high-end chipsets, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200, come with disadvantages in terms of battery efficiency and temperature management. The really bad news is that the Cortex-X3, the next high-performance core reserved for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and other top chipsets, also claims to be a solution with major disadvantages in terms of battery consumption.

Assuming that battery suppliers won’t announce major innovations overnight to address limited battery life, the next generation of high-end phones is unlikely to forget the problems of fast, battery-intensive battery usage. state-of-the-art smartphone.

In terms of impact on battery consumption, the Cortex-X1 core performed noticeably better than the current Cortex-X2 solution, which Samsung and other smartphone manufacturers are almost desperately trying to “optimize” to extinction, in terms of usage. real in applications. As a result, with the exception of well-known benchmarks, which make a decisive contribution to sales figures by displaying “stellar” scores, almost no common application is allowed to take full advantage of the processing power available at least theoretically on the series. Galaxy S22 phones. So great is the sacrifice of performance decided without the knowledge of users that the Geekbench developer was forced to stand up for his own reputation, officially announcing the “disqualification” of the entire Galaxy S22 series, on the grounds that the manufacturer blatantly falsifies the performance shown to users .

According to rumors as yet unconfirmed from multiple sources, it seems that the ARM Cortex-X3 core developed by ARM for the next generation of high-end chipsets exceeds the possibilities of the manufacturing technologies on which it is based. Thus, using the Cortex-X3 core at the intended frequency of 3.0GHz would consume up to 10% of the battery reserve, in a typical intensive use scenario. The quoted source does not specify exactly what combination of applications it is, or at least the length of time, the intention seems rather to illustrate in a suggestive way the disadvantages of the chase after performance, in the context of the next generation of high-end phones.

The good news is that other performance issues will continue to grow steadily. For example, the speed of the AI ​​accelerator will increase by more than 100% compared to the current generation of chipsets.

Coming as a somewhat longer-term promise, it’s reasonable to believe that the level of performance and energy efficiency displayed by smartphone and tablet chipsets will improve in the latter, with relatively recent device owners stubbornly resisting the temptation to upgrade. the most earned.