I find the clustering approach in A510 very intriguing.
Why run the low power cores in pair? Is this because android _really_ struggles on single core due to the way it was designed? So you basically need two cores even when mostly idle?
The two cores only share FP and vector execution units. A ton of code doesn't use those at all, and so they are effectively two separate cores most of the time. It provides full compatibility on both cores, full performance very often, and saves a lot of die area (FP and vector are going to be very transistor-heavy). It's just a tradeoff.
Why run the low power cores in pair? Is this because android _really_ struggles on single core due to the way it was designed? So you basically need two cores even when mostly idle?