A11 Bionic Chip in iPhone 8 and iPhone X on Par With 13-Inch MacBook Pro, Outperforms iPad Pro

[Hastings101]

A9 was already impressively fast, A10 was overkill, A11 is more of the same. Doesn't matter how powerful an iPhone or iPad is anymore, they haven't been slow since the A7 and now they've mostly got the RAM to back it up.

Would like to see the software give a reason for all this power now, maybe something similar to Samsung's DeX (though I'd imagine they're afraid of killing Mac sales) would win over professional/enthusiast software and gaming developers.

 

[Speedy2]

If only people stopped using these pointless Geekbench numbers to compare ARM and Intel chips....
This benchmark is a toy. It says nothing about real world performance with proper workloads.

Take a serious benchmark suite like SPEC and you'll see that the fastest Apple ARM chips are nowhere near Intels "proper" Core processors used in the Macbook Pro. Integer performance merely matches a slow Core M CPU while FPU performance is far behind.

See for instance http://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro-review/4

Make no mistake, it's a beast of a CPU for a phone, but please stop with the megalomania.

 

[M5RahuL]

I think you're against technology advancement. Who needs more than 128K RAM!?

Ugh.. ok it’s pointless now.

 

[yellowscreen]

High end Android phones lag as much as any iPhone...rarely.

androids lag every time a larger, more complicated app is being opened.

lag = is observed when UI doesnt react to user actions in a timely manner, (doherty threshold?). it happens because app starting animation is poorly designed and/or system hardware/software isnt fast enough. on android devices, i think, both is the case.

observe the lag between touching and launching minecraft, asphalt, gta and zynga poker on note 8 - Link

also, video encoding speed difference?

 

[iPadPublisher]

I wonder how long it'll be before we start to see A chips showing up in MacBooks. Probably won't happen with the pros but it makes sense for the normal MacBook considering the huge power boost you'd get and native support of iOS apps, etc.

My completely uninformed guess is that this new A11 chip could ALMOST cut the mustard in the lowest end MacBook Air. Maybe one or two more A chips down the road and we're there.

 

[POLJC]

How is this an accurate comparison? MacBook Pros run macOS and iPhones run iOS. Just wondering.

 

[rcooked]

It’s all use case. The core question is how can does CPU power directly benefit me in my personal use.

What would be more valuable to me, Galaxy Note 8 style functionality on an A10 based iPhone or the A11 in an iPhone 8 as is?

I’d take note 8 style functionality.

I’m looking more forward to software enhancements than hardware. That’s just me though.

I concur about those software enhancements. They are the most important to me moving forward. I'm really enjoying iOS 11 on the iPad - what a difference.

 

[blackcrayon]

People doesn't seem to understand that these scores are completely meaningless when it's across OS and architecture.

Just because it's faster in geekbench, doesn't mean the CPU is actually faster than a MacBook Pro.
The general processing and instruction set that it supported is far from what we have in Macbook, and nowhere near it.

It runs fine in a mobile device, but when it scale up to do general tasking, it's gonna stall and runs like crap.
There are many reasons why Microsoft essentially abandon the Windows RT for ARM chipset.

Yes, I'd say one reason is that Microsoft doesn't have the best mobile device ARM SoC team in the world making chips for their devices. Apple has no such restrictions since if they want to put it in a desktop, they can

I don't think anyone thinks the A11 is really a drop in replacement for a Skylake or Kaby Lake intel chip in every way. But it should be right there with it in some tasks. I know I've done a few direct comparisons between my iPad 10.5 and my 2016 13" MBP and it's pretty close.

JetStream javacript benchmark... Higher #s are better, quit out of all apps:
2016 13" MBP - 237.15
iPad 10.5" - 207.83

The A11 is obviously going to start to compete if the A10X can.

 

[jgdeschamps]

And my dad can beat up your dad. Has anyone stopped to wonder why on earth we need all this power in a friggin' cell phone?

So it can drive the acquired data from a 3d digitizer to analyze it and interpret it as your face in a fraction of a second, or drive the digitizers, lenses and depth measuring systems that allow you to take high quality photos that you can tweak later without needing years of experience in Photoshop, or drive a higher-than-HD-touch-and-force-sensitive display that has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and adjusts its tint taking into account the time of day without malfunctioning due to the rapid changes of color of each individual pixel so you get a fluid UI response, etc.

My point is, that even though you think it's just a small cell phone that has an overkill of a processor, the CPU is actually being pushed to its limits with each iteration so it can coordinate and do more things with all sorts of different hardware and software technologies at the same time while being packed in a real tiny glass box, in a relatively stable manner while consuming less electricity than a christmas light and not generating dangerous heat levels. That's the actual feat here. Driving Pro Tools or XCode in iPhone is not Apple's priority and shouldn't be a complain or subject of reference for its benchmarks. Just my opinion, of course.

 

[JuliusPap]

find it really hard to believe.

 

[thunng8]

The point being, for the tasks you listed (except maybe AR) even the A8 chip is overkill.

That's is simply ridiculous. Exporting long editedvideo can take minutes. Developing a raw file needs all the speed it can get.

 

[Populus]

I just can't imagine an A11X chip. It would be so powerful, it could power a MacBook Pro and actually beat Intel lakes...

 

[LizKat]

All that power and the home screen is still a grid of Apps..there are innovative ways to use power and Apple fails to realize that.

Oh I am very sure that Apple realizes it. The engineers and developers who work with scientists, artists, musicians, mathematicians, physicians-- and gamers!-- etc., are extremely innovative.

The problem with offering very innovative mobile computing usually comes down to how much more difficult it is to get the human interfaces right. There's a need to make processes ever more resilient, staying functional despite user errors in complex computing scenarios and not making users go back and retrace inputs that were okay just because at some point they messed up. Sophisticated users will spend a little more time up front learning how the thing works too.

However, the general purpose market for smartphones, at least in the USA, is not particularly tech-oriented, doesn't ask much of any computing device and is fairly impatient with the learning curve of any skill if it takes more than a minute or two. If it weren't for video and games that market wouldn't generally even stress out an iPhone 3G.

It's not that that market wouldn't enjoy being shown some other stuff they could do with their computing power, it's that they resist stuff with much of any learning curve.

If it takes more than a couple minutes --am I being too generous here?-- to figure out what an app does, then a lot of people just lose interest. You can tell that by going to any tech forum and prowling around for half an hour to see the questions that get asked by people who "just downloaded this cool app but how does it work?... can't get it to look like the demo screenshot."

Meanwhile in that two minute experimentation period, most apps take a severe beating regarding how good their idiot-proofing has been. It's probably why there seems to be a trend towards more public betas of apps now. Might as well throw it out there and let them start doing whatever they're going to do anyway no matter if you spent $5 million on quality assurance and another $5 million on good docu and help files. The company's employees who were doing quality assurance were not idiots, see, and the scenarios they stepped through were not prepared by idiots either.

 

[BrooksA]

Rather than expecting an Intel killer, I expect a dual A12 phone. I wonder how long till Apple deprecates the laptop and sticks with an iPhone as a headless mode device airplay to a 4K TV, wireless headphone and keyboard. We are right there now.

For what I need, I'd buy one of those

 

[Pilgrim1099]

These benchmarks are based on the integration of the hardware and software. There is no way you can get that kind of result on a MacBook with an A11, because the OS is doing so much more. iOS and MacOS are not even close in terms of size and processor requirements just to get the dang thing running. I, for one, cannot wait for the day that my laptop is just a keyboard and screen and the phone is the brains. Those days are not here yet! And I'm not saying the A11 can't run MacOS, I am sure it can.. it just can't do it nearly as fast as an i series.

Samsung already did that with the desktop. And I believe one other manufacturer (Toshiba?) as well using the phone to operate the laptop. It's already here.

 

[tooltalk]

Apple's acquisition of PA Semi was probably one of its greatest strategic decisions in the past decade.

Not sure what you mean. I'm told that many of the key members of PA Semi left soon after the acquision. Also note that the company was most notable for their low-power/efficiency design on PowerPC and the acquisition was not seen as to be too successful. I always thought it was Intrinsity that enabled Apple to get ahead of others. Intrinsity co-developed the Hummingbird SOC with Samsung, used in both Apple and Samsung's smartphones in 2008-9 -- Apple acquired Intrinsity only after Intrinsity-Samsung collaboration succeeded.

 

[kreasonos]

Why don't they just make the iphone so you can plug it into an external monitor and it switches to Apple's desktop OS, then you can have one device for your computer and phone.

 

[miknos]

Not very useful with Apple's planned obsolescence.

 

[blackcrayon]

Not very useful with Apple's planned obsolescence.

Right, I hear it's really hard to even get a software update on an iPhone. What with the carrier, OS maker, and hardware manufacturer having to agree on when you get it...

 

[Jawnathin]

It shouldn't, but it bothers me when my phone is faster than my iPad. It just seems wrong. It is also surprising this time round, given the iPad has 3 high performance cores built on a 10-nanometer process. Hopefully the iPad Pro still has superior graphics performance.

Wouldn't worry about it. Both the A10X and A11 are wayyyy better than anything else out there. The 'standard' now is an A9 (not A9X) in the 2017 iPad, so anything more capable than that is gravy.

Comparing the A10X to A11, it appears the A11 is about 10%~ better in Single Thread and Multithreaded CPU benchmarks. On the other hand, the A11 is expected to have 3GB of memory vs the 4GB on the A10X, 33% in favor of the A10X. We haven't seen any benchmarks on the GPU yet, but with what we know, the A10X has 2x the performance of the A10 and the A11 has a 30% increase over the A10. I'd take that to mean the A10X is about 50% stronger GPU than what you get in the A11. Makes sense for the iPad to have higher GPU power due to the 120hz ProMotion display and higher resolution.

I guess the point is, both the A11 and A10X are very impressive and their design is appropriate for the devices they're used in. I would not call the A10X obsolete and in several ways it is better than an A11. Between the two I personally would trade 10% CPU performance for 33% more memory and 50% better GPU performance.

Thinking about the future, if they follow the '50% more CPU cores and 2x GPU cores' method they did with the A10 to A10X, the A11X is going to be a monster. That would be 20% better Single thread, 90% better multithread, and 30% better GPU on the A11X compared to the A10X. That multi-thread is probably a little high since that would mean it would be a 9 core processor (3 + 6) and they probably wouldn't do that, I'd expect something closer to a 3 + 4, but whatever they do, it'll be fast.

 

[jamesrick80]

So it can drive the acquired data from a 3d digitizer to analyze it and interpret it as your face in a fraction of a second, or drive the digitizers, lenses and depth measuring systems that allow you to take high quality photos that you can tweak later without needing years of experience in Photoshop, or drive a higher-than-HD-touch-and-force-sensitive display that has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and adjusts its tint taking into account the time of day without malfunctioning due to the rapid changes of color of each individual pixel so you get a fluid UI response, etc.

My point is, that even though you think it's just a small cell phone that has an overkill of a processor, the CPU is actually being pushed to its limits with each iteration so it can coordinate and do more things with all sorts of different hardware and software technologies at the same time while being packed in a real tiny glass box, in a relatively stable manner while consuming less electricity than a christmas light and not generating dangerous heat levels. That's the actual feat here. Driving Pro Tools or XCode in iPhone is not Apple's priority and shouldn't be a complain or subject of reference for its benchmarks. Just my opinion, of course.

FaceID failed during the demo as we all remember. Maybe it needs more processing power. It also fails during some YouTube hands on.

 

[mkeeley]

Yes, I'd say one reason is that Microsoft doesn't have the best mobile device ARM SoC team in the world making chips for their devices. Apple has no such restrictions since if they want to put it in a desktop, they can

I don't think anyone thinks the A11 is really a drop in replacement for a Skylake or Kaby Lake intel chip in every way. But it should be right there with it in some tasks. I know I've done a few direct comparisons between my iPad 10.5 and my 2016 13" MBP and it's pretty close.

JetStream javacript benchmark... Higher #s are better, quit out of all apps:
2016 13" MBP - 237.15
iPad 10.5" - 207.83

The A11 is obviously going to start to compete if the A10X can.

Plenty do think it is a replacement when non-stories like this are banded around.

 

[Dimsum114]

So it really smoked all android devices out there, poor Samsung

Shouldn't say "smoke" and "Samsung" in the same sentence or you might cause a riot.

 

[blackcrayon]

FaceID failed during the demo as we all remember. Maybe it needs more processing power. It also fails during some YouTube hands on.

Well we know the iPhone X isn't released yet and they're still working on the software- but hopefully that glitch something to make you feel a bit better, what with the 2017 devices in your sig laggy & barely as fast as an iPhone 6s.

 

[DNichter]

If you are gonna advance hardware. Please have some rightful use cases for the advancement. Apple does not. Opening a app a millisecond faster or editing a video a few seconds faster doesn't cut it. AR will remain a gimmick for the next few years so that's neglible as well.

AR, Camera Features, Facial Recognition, AI... seems like they have plenty of use cases. AR definitely has future applications, much more so than VR.