What is a Multi-core processor? What is a CPU core?

 Hello friends and welcome again to your own tech guide Techanalysia. Today I am here with another interesting article on Processors/CPUs. Today we are going to look at what multi-core processors are? But before going any further, I suggest you visit my previous articles on Processors/CPUs, so you'll not face any problems understanding this one.

With that said, let's get started.

Multi-core processors

First thing first, in today's storyline with so many tech gadgets around yourself, it's important to know about the device you are using or buying. Let say if you're buying a phone or maybe planning to buy one in near future you should've checked a certain thing or points that will make your purchase justify. There is a lot of things to be considered while buying a new smartphone, and the 'Processor' is the important one to check out while buying a phone. Although in the processor itself there are lots of points to check like: the processor make, power, speed, no of cores, qualities, etc.

Today we are going to take down one of them and its "Core". What do cores mean in smartphone processors? What does single, dual, quad, Hexa, octa-core processors mean? What are multicore processors? 

Those were the days when early computers entering our lives, back those days processors had only one core to perform all the tasks within a device, that's how 'single-core processors' came to life, back then we couldn't imagine a multicore CPU. It was all about Clock speed. The greater the clock speed, the faster a CPU could process tasks. Then a day came, when CPUs with single-core were not so efficient, manufacturers started developing smartphone chips with multiple cores and threads.

But first take a look at the basic difference between CPU, Core, and Thread.

CPU 

A CPU (Central Processing Unit) is a chip responsible for executing information from others parts of the device. It is the brain of your device. CPUs with a single core were able to perform one task at a time.

Mow all modern PCs/Phones contain multiple cores in processors. This authorizes the execution of multiple tasks at a time.

What is a CPU core? 

A core is usually the basic computation unit of the CPU that handles the mathematical logical operations. Core works as a separate processing unit within the CPU itself. It acts like having multiple processors in a single CPU. CPUs task performing capabilities enhances with the number of cores in CPU respectively. The more number of cores s CPU has, the more tasks it can perform simultaneously.

CPU Threads  

Threads are the paths that your processor can take to process information and data to the other components of the CPU. For example, if you have a CPU with six cores and two threads per core, that means there are twelve paths for information to be processed.

The idea that separates Core from Threads is that the two threads within a core cannot operate parallel. On the other hand, cores can perform two tasks, one core alternative between the threads. This is how fast multitasking takes place in a device.

So, after having some knowledge about what core actually means, let's jump towards multicore processors.

What is a Multicore Processor?

A multi-core processor is a processor that integrated two or more separate processing units, which we called cores, each of the core read and executes program instructions as if the CPU has different processors. 

To deal with multiple applications on our device, you don't require a multi-core processor, a single-core processor can even perform multitasking but this will drain your battery very fast and the whole process will be slow compared to multi-core processors.

This is where multi-core processors come into play. That's why this single-core, dual-core, quad-core, Hexa core, octa cores came into existence.

As the name suggests, dual-core means(two-core processor), quad-core means (four-core processor), Hexa core means (six-core processor), octa-core means (eight-core processors) as the number of cores getting increased- the power, efficiency, and capability of multitasking also increases.  

Nowadays, in smartphones core are comes in cluster packages. Namely: 

• High Power Cluster Cores, which are basically the high-performance cores, clocked at a higher speed to operate operations, which uses more energy
• Low Power Cluster Cores, which are basically energy-efficient cores, clocked at lower to that of high power cluster cores, which use less energy.

Different type of applications uses these cores accordingly, a heavy requirement app will use high-performance cores, while the applications which had basic requirements runs fine on low powered or energy-efficient cores. 

Conclusion

So it ends here and I hope now you got a brief idea about multi-core processors, I tried my best to explain this in the simplest way possible. I hope you like it, and if so then do let me know in the comment section below and share with your friends also. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter, where you can have the notification of the latest articles I post every time.