MediaTek is working on mobile central processing units that run off 10 and 12 cores, at least according to a new report.
Chinese site MyDrivers reckons the Taiwanese chip-making firm is working on CPUs with chip counts that trump the current octa-core processors that appear on current flagship smartphones.
What’s more, the site also alleges that if MediaTek can keep on track with production then we’ll see such chips within the year.
This means that the smartphones of early 2016 could be running 12-core – ‘dodecacore’, we reckon – chips courtesy of the semiconductor company.
So would you see a noticeable difference between a smartphone running 12 cores compared to current 8-core fare? Probably not, unfortunately.
Multiple cores is the equivalent of having multiple processors on a chip, which sounds great.
Unfortunately, most current smartphone applications aren’t even designed to make use of four cores, never mind 8, 10, or 12.
This means that unless app-designers start coding their software to run off all 12 cores, it really won’t make a difference.
If you have lots of high-performance apps running all at once, it could make a difference, but it would certainly be a very rare use-case scenario.
Related: HTC One M9 'Hima' tipped with MediaTek chip
That being said, Qualcomm mocked MediaTek for its early octa-core processors, only to then release the Snapdragon 615 and Snapdragon 810, both with eight cores in tow, as noted by GForGames.
It’s not clear whether MediaTek will actually release these frankly unnecessarily core-laden processors, but such wares would certainly sit well with the current tech trend of spec-sheet one-upmanship.
