Counterclockwise: CPU cores grow not just in numbers, but in variety too

We traced the "Gigahertz wars" in a previous Counterclockwise article. It veered off into counting CPU cores because mobile chipsets hit a wall, just like desktop CPUs did a decade earlier. It's a simple, but unforgiving equation - increasing the clock speed by 10% increases power usage and heat by more than 10%. Back in 2017 (when the article was published), the highest clock speed we reported was 2.6GHz. Since then we've had our first 3GHz mobile chipset - the binned Snapdragon 845 inside the Asus ROG Phone. Okay, it's 2.96GHz if you want to be precise, but we're going to be squint a...