What does it mean when a smartphone cpu have 4 plus 4 cores?

[Dimitris_1]

Some smartphones say they have 4 plus 4 cores but they dont say octa core. what does 4 plus 4 mean? sorry for my english

 

[greens]

Uhh, basically...
4 really low power slow cores for like stand by and what not.
4 powerful cores for actual computing.

They don't usually say Octa-core because they really aren't, they don't work together really.

 

[lakimens]

It's like two different CPU's, one is usually a weak ~1.3Ghz and the other is ~2.5Ghz..
The slower is for less demanding tasks, because it saves power.
It's not actually Octa-core, because Octa-core is not worth it, nothing is optimized to run on 8 cores.

 

[shahbaz200]

My Note 4 also does have 4 high performance cores and 4 low performance cores. Hence you cant say octacore 2Ghz because 4 might be 2Ghz but other 4 aren't. So to just clear it they write it as 4+4. Greens is not correct, on my Note 4 and almost on all latest high end devices, under high demand all 8 cores fire up and run simultaneously. There is always a minimum limit on which CPU clocks on ideal, thats why they make lower perf cores because they run on lower clock on ideal to save power, higher perfs have high minimum clocks and thats why they are turned off to save power and low perf cores are used but as I said if needed, all can run and handle load.