There a few stands (Symbian’s included) showing off Symbian OS’s SMP (Symmetrical Multi-processing) support. We’ve announced SMP support some time ago but this is the first we’ve publically shown Symbian OS actually running on multi-core hardware. The hardware in question is rather beastly actually, boasting four ARM11 cores each running at several hundred MHz! (for comparison a Nokia N95 has a single ARM11 core at 332MHz)

The plan is to optimize for power consumption. X cores running at Y MHz each consume less power than one core running at X * Y MHz so you can potentially get a lot of performance without killing the battery! Furthermore, individual cores can be powered down when not in use further saving power. A lot of the time a phone will be your pocket not doing very much, so a just single core can be kept switched on to keep things ticking over. When you then take your phone out to play games / watch videos / browse the Web it can switch on more cores as and when it needs them. All in the blink of an eye!

I can’t wait for the day when this finds its way into real phones and I can run Quake on it to dish out some serious quad damage!

Welcome to the future!