No, that's not a misprint for 5mp (i.e. 5 megapixels), it's SMP - Symmetric Multiprocessing. You may remember that Nokia's flagships, the N95 and N82, both have dual CPUs? This didn't really have as much effect on performance as their (also unique) graphics acceleration, but every little helps. However, SMP seems to be a technology that will make a bigger difference in the future, according to an interesting interview with Symbian's Jason Parker, over at SymbianOne.
Read on in the full article.
More features unused in my N82... Hmmmmm. Meaning I have a phone that could routeplan my Nokia maps directions 8-10x faster, but won't. A phone that could guarantee than phone tasks can run independant with optimal speed without being hampered by onboard applications. An OS that technically would be unable to deadlock itself since there is always cpu time availabe to kill some ill-mannered application. A GUI that would always respond even if a progam under it is 'busy'/unresponsive.
Yet this is all not really true. SMP is a Windows solution to a bad OS. Unix never has any problems with taskswitching and applications causing deadlocks (barring kernelhacks and kernelcrashes). But then UNIX has true preemptive multitasking while Windows just pretends it. And if I remember correct, Symbian does have real pre-emptive multitasking, which is the reason it runs much smoother than Windows Mobile and such.
The biggest advantage of SMP seems powermanagement. An unused running processor is a waste of power.
snoyt wrote:
Yet this is all not really true. SMP is a Windows solution to a bad OS.
Other than that this is just a myth (altough a popular myth amongst Microsoft haters, Apple fanbois and so forth). Windows NT and all it's derivatives (Windows 2000, XP, Vista, etc) have true pre-emptive multasking.
"Yet this is all not really true. SMP is a Windows solution to a bad OS."
I think you have Multiprocessing and Multitasking confused, these are two separate things. Windows 16 bit used coop multi tasking, not smp, which may be what you are referring to. And SMP definitely isn't a windows based solution. I would imagine that symbian os does support preemptive multitasking, but haven't developed for it, can any dev clear this up?
Unregistered wrote:"Yet this is all not really true. SMP is a Windows solution to a bad OS."I think you have Multiprocessing and Multitasking confused, these are two separate things.
The microsoft/intel cycle is more useless badly designed software, needing faster more expensive hardware, allowing more useless badly designed software etc... Even looking at the windows mobile platform and compare a 664 MHz version to a 224 MHz Sybian box. I'd pick the symbian anytime. And multiprocessing (corewise or bus wis) does not neccesary mean a system is faster (Xbox 360 vs PS3).
The popularity of the current netbooks running linux and 'obsolete' XP nicely shows the uselessness of this. No wonder the worldeconomy is crashing 😉
Unregistered wrote:"Yet this is all not really true. SMP is a Windows solution to a bad OS."I think you have Multiprocessing and Multitasking confused, these are two separate things. Windows 16 bit used coop multi tasking, not smp, which may be what you are referring to. And SMP definitely isn't a windows based solution. I would imagine that symbian os does support preemptive multitasking, but haven't developed for it, can any dev clear this up?
I don't know what 'Unregistered' is thinking of.
Symbian has fully pre-emptive multi-tasking for user tasks, similar to Unix or Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista.
Symmetric multi-processing means Symbian will run on dual (& more) core phones, and make maximum use of the CPU resources. Going from 1 CPU core to 2 cores at the same clock rate uses double the power, whereas doubling the clock speed would use approximately 4 times the power. This is why multi-core is attractive to phone makers, and their are more options for switching power saving as the CPU load moves between idle & maximum load.
ttfn