no small efficiency cores... really have to wonder what the battery life will be with this.
Then again, maybe simply running the large core at a lower speed will end up being the same efficiency as a small core? Qualcomm is also cutting down on small cores for the Gen 3...
At mid to high frequencies, the large (cortex 7xx) cores will have the efficiency advantage. At low frequencies, the small cores will sip battery. But, that's the tradeoff between performance and battery life. If you want a good battery life, have fewer large cores. The snapdragon 625 wasn't considered a battery champ for no reason. That thing could last long.
The area requirements of the efficiency cores are quite small. They're so cheap that vendors have loved to spam little cores in economy models. I really question if there's anything to gain by this strategy beyond marketing optics vs if they built the same SoC with one little core. In fact, many times little cores are given tasks like running Wi-Fi and Bluetooth firmware and not mentioned on the label because 1) not general purpose and 2) very small area footprint anyway so as to be inconsequential.
If you're paying for those large cores, surely MediaTek could spare some pocket change to build a single little core. It strikes me as bold for the sake of being bold rather than making economic sense.
This is also silly from a thermal perspective. We are more limited by thermal capacity today than we are peak performance. Who is going to buy this chip? What is the objective? I'm confounded.