Could computers be made more powerful by using smartphone technology?

[adamnation]

So I just got a galaxy s3 and the performance is amazing. It can browse the internet just as fast as my laptop and do other things just as well. I was wondering if laptop or desktop engineers could cram in much more hardware than they already do by using shrunken smartphone technology.

 

[Astronuc]

Smartphones are using computer technology - chipsets and OS. I believe the OS is simpler than that found in a computer though.

More powerful computers are made multiple cores and the appropriate supporting hardware and OS/apps.

 

[wuliheron]

Definitely yes. Some smartphones are among the first commercial products to use stacked chips. That's where they actually stack one chip right on top of another to reduce space, power requirements, and latencies. It is also possible to place several chips side-by-side on a thin silicon "transposer" to achieve similar results and to combine transposers with stacked chips. Like many other advances the first applications of the technology are for the most expensive portable items. Here's a thread I started on the subject:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=618354

I didn't go into all the motivations and technical reasons for these trends, but suffice it to say the semiconductor industry is particularly brute force oriented and ruled by economic concerns. These days it is even supply line concerns that seem to dominate much of the industry. It just doesn't matter if you have the most advanced technology in the world if you can't mass produce it and bring it to market fast.

Rumor has it Intel's Haswell chip coming out next year has 3-5 times the graphics processing power of their current offerings, when normally you can expect at most 15-20% improvement, and that's without resorting like may smartphones do to using simplified processors made for specific applications.

 

[rishi.sharma]

Yes , but it can't be mass produced.Its all about economic concerns.
+1 for the above post.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

The O.P. doesn't even tell us what kind of laptop he has, or what its hardware specs are. That being said a smartphone is just a small computer with a simpler low-overhead operating system, and for surfing the internet it will be pretty fast (of course probably not as good on complex all-flash websites though).

There's nothing "magic" about smart phones, modern computers are FAR more powerful BUT they can have a lot more overhead too. Let us know how fast your phone is in a year after you've installed 300 apps and have had a few OS updates...

 

[rorix_bw]

So I just got a galaxy s3 and the performance is amazing. It can browse the internet just as fast as my laptop and do other things just as well. I was wondering if laptop or desktop engineers could cram in much more hardware than they already do by using shrunken smartphone technology.

No offence meant, but that's because your laptop is in some way old or broken and you are comparing systems of different health or generations. The S3 is actually more expensive than a low end laptop in any case.