Inquisitive Universe: I wanted to go brush up on my knowledge right because I wanted us to discuss big.little and DynamIQ. Imagine my surprise when I went to Google and they recommended my video back to me Alright so let's do this one quick. I want to discuss big.LITTLE and DynamIQ quickly before many people go to sleep. In the early days of smartphones, most smartphone had processors or SoCs with one CPU core. A very good example is the Apple APL0098 that ran on the original iPhone in 2007. So most smartphone companies believed that a single CPU was good enough to run tasks. All they needed to do was bump up the power and so they did. However they soon realized that with increased processing power came increased heating and battery consumption. I'd love to think that they tried several solutions such as moderating the clock speed on the CPU core amongst other things but didn't get a satisfactory result. So ARM and MediaTek came up with a fantastic solution. Sometimes we now know today as big.LITTLE. So big little is a very clever way to solve the performance vs battery consumption/heating problem. How it was solved is very very simple. Each processor would have 2 sets of CPU cores. 1. Performance CPUs or Big cores 2. Battery Efficient CPUs or Small cores One set (Big Cores) was very powerful and could handle complex and heavy tasks. However as a result of being powerful, they would heat up quickly and drain a lot of battery. The second set (Small cores) was much weaker and could only handle light and basic tasks. However because they were less powerful, they would consume less battery and wouldn't heat up at all. So they were used to prolong battery life. This is how they solved the problem of having better CPUs without the attendant problem of heating and battery drain. So how it works is simple. If you were just casually using your phone or you leave it alone to just idle away, it is the little cores that would be in use. They would run cool and not consume much battery. However, when you want to do something very tasking like record 4K video at 30fps over 10 mins, playing eFootball, PUBG, having a zoom meeting etc. the big cores are called into action. They are very capable of running these heavy jobs but as a byproduct would cause your phone to heat up and the battery to run down rather very quickly. This means that you couldn't have them running all the time. To save battery and reduce the heating, your phone would simply switch to and run on the small cores. The big cores will go to sleep and only come back when they're needed. Typical example of a big.LITTLE set up would include: 4 Cortex A73 + 4 Cortex A53 2 Cortex A75 + 6 Cortex A55 2 Cortex A76 + 6 Cortex A55 2 Cortex A78 + 6 Cortex A55 4 Cortex A78 + 4 Cortex A55 2 Oryon (P) + 6 Oryon (L) This setup worked very well for a very long time. However with arrival of the Snapdragon 855 5G, smartphone OEMs wanted to find a way to increase the power of their flagship processors. This is where DynamIQ comes in. Now ignore the flashy name. DynamIQ is just a variation of the big.LITTLE set up. You can even call it the big.LITTLE Pro Max even. In DynamIQ, you have the regular big and little cores with a new addition. The prime core. The prime core is usually an ultra powerful CPU core that packs a mighty punch when it comes to CPU performance but it also greatly drains battery and causes heating. So it is only called in when the big cores need a hand. So in a DynamIQ setup you've got Prime cores Big cores Small or little cores A very good example is the Unisoc T9100. It's got: 1x Cortex A76 (2.7GHz) 3x Cortex A76 (2.3GHz) 4x Cortex A55 (2.1GHz) DynamIQ allows the SoC manufacturer (Unisoc) to convert one of the big cores into a prime core for even better performance. With DynamIQ 2nd gen, SoC manufacturers can have as many as 4 to 5 CPU clusters and up to 10-core CPUs without worrying about over heating or battery drain. For those who remember the ill-fated Helio X series, MediaTek were too far ahead of everyone and didn't wait for the technology to catch up. They crashed and burned, literally. Both the Xiaomi XRING O1 and the Samsung Exynos 2500 both use quad cluster DynamIQ Setups. Xiaomi XRING O1 2x Cortex-X925 (3.9GHz) 4x Cortex-A725 (3.4GHz) 2x Cortex-A520 (1.89GHz) 2x Cortex-A520 (1.8GHz) Samsung Exynos 2500 1x Cortex X925 (3.3GHz) 2x Cortex A725 (2.75GHz) 3x Cortex A725 (2.37GHz) 4x Cortex A520 (1.8GHz) Surprisingly, Qualcomm reverted to big.LITTLE is still comfortably outscored them. So with that, I'll come to a conclusion. At least we should know why CPUs are arranged the way that they are. Quick summary: Big Little and DynamIQ are both CPU microarchitectures. They are solutions to problems of heating and battery drain. Big little has the big and little or small cores. The big cores handle the heavy tasks whilst heating up and draining the battery whilst the small cores help to increase battery life and are only used for light tasks. Prime cores were introduced with DynamIQ and they pack a lot of power. DynamIQ setup allows SoC OEMs the flexibility to use multiple CPU clusters with varying levels of performance to achieve different power levels and control battery consumption and heating. That's it. Good night 🙏🏽