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All iPads A7 the beginning of the end?

S

Scorpion008

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 28, 2013
57
0
...Of #X chips? Is Apple going to have the same chip in it's iPhone/iPad Air/iPad Mini from now on? No more A5X, A6X, etc? Will this mean that the iPads will be comparatively underpowered? Is this due to the fact that iPhones have the largest margin and sell the most units of an Apple device? I wonder if the iPads will even get more ram to compensate. I understand that the iPad Air and Mini need the same hardware, due to pushing the same number of pixels, but the iPhone only needs to deal with 23.1% as many.

Also, what about the iPod touch and iPhone 5c? My guess is that they get updated every second year, and each time they do, they get last years tech, however with the 5c starting out ahead.
That means this year:
5c - one year old (A6)
iPod touch 5 - two years old (A5)
Next year: 5c two years old (A6)
iPod touch 6: one year old (A7) or if Apple is extra nasty, A6 (two years old)

Thoughts?
 
Bit early given we haven't seen teardowns, but if they are the same it says to me that the Mini form factor is massively, massively more convenient for a lot of people and the Mini 1 sold like hotcakes.

I'm expecting higher clock speed & ram in the Air though.

Myself, I'm seriously torn between the Air and the Mini 2.
 
yegon said:
Bit early given we haven't seen teardowns, but if they are the same it says to me that the Mini form factor is massively, massively more convenient for a lot of people and the Mini 1 sold like hotcakes.

I'm expecting higher clock speed & ram in the Air though.

Myself, I'm seriously torn between the Air and the Mini 2.
Click to expand...

Bit early for what? All that Apple hasn't announced is the ram (and clocking). And now, if one gets 2gb, the other will have to as well, since they have the same cpu and screen.
 
Think people need to remember the X SoC's were very much products of necessity and required to get the Retina display up and running in 2012. The A5X in particular was just insane when you look at the size, heat and power it produced. Kinda like that trend of putting a desktop CPU in a laptop chassis to create a gaming rig we saw a few years ago. As a direct result of that (and the Retina display) Apple made a significantly thicker and heavier device than the one that came before it which I think is more-or-less unprecedented? Basically Apple delivered the Retina display a year earlier than everyone else but with compromises that were required just to provide an equivalent experience to the iPhone.

Any fears about them being underpowered though are, IMO, unfounded. Lot of people don't realise that the A7 is an absolute beast, a generational jump over the A6 and A6X. The iPhone 5S slaughters the iPad 4 at most benchmarks and I'm reasonably sure the iPad Air is going to be noticeably faster in the real world than its predecessor. And that's if they keep the clock speed the same, with the extra headroom a bigger battery and roomier chassis allows I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some tweaks under the hood.

If anything it's actually the iPhone that's over-specced, the A7 is a quad core GPU after all and WAY faster than really needed for that screen resolution. Think Apple have taken a very smart gamble here and it's paid off in spades. They now have a SoC that's the equivalent of the X series but that sips power, uses ARMv8 months before anyone else and is small enough to fit in all of their devices.
 
smiddlehurst said:
Think people need to remember the X SoC's were very much products of necessity and required to get the Retina display up and running in 2012. The A5X in particular was just insane when you look at the size, heat and power it produced. Kinda like that trend of putting a desktop CPU in a laptop chassis to create a gaming rig we saw a few years ago. As a direct result of that (and the Retina display) Apple made a significantly thicker and heavier device than the one that came before it which I think is more-or-less unprecedented? Basically Apple delivered the Retina display a year earlier than everyone else but with compromises that were required just to provide an equivalent experience to the iPhone.

Any fears about them being underpowered though are, IMO, unfounded. Lot of people don't realise that the A7 is an absolute beast, a generational jump over the A6 and A6X. The iPhone 5S slaughters the iPad 4 at most benchmarks and I'm reasonably sure the iPad Air is going to be noticeably faster in the real world than its predecessor. And that's if they keep the clock speed the same, with the extra headroom a bigger battery and roomier chassis allows I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some tweaks under the hood.

If anything it's actually the iPhone that's over-specced, the A7 is a quad core GPU after all and WAY faster than really needed for that screen resolution. Think Apple have taken a very smart gamble here and it's paid off in spades. They now have a SoC that's the equivalent of the X series but that sips power, uses ARMv8 months before anyone else and is small enough to fit in all of their devices.
Click to expand...

So do you think that the iPhone 5s will remain a viable choice for much longer than an of its predecessors, i.e., more than 4 years, since it is so overpowered?
 
Scorpion008 said:
...Of #X chips? Is Apple going to have the same chip in it's iPhone/iPad Air/iPad Mini from now on? No more A5X, A6X, etc? Will this mean that the iPads will be comparatively underpowered? Is this due to the fact that iPhones have the largest margin and sell the most units of an Apple device? I wonder if the iPads will even get more ram to compensate. I understand that the iPad Air and Mini need the same hardware, due to pushing the same number of pixels, but the iPhone only needs to deal with 23.1% as many.

Also, what about the iPod touch and iPhone 5c? My guess is that they get updated every second year, and each time they do, they get last years tech, however with the 5c starting out ahead.
That means this year:
5c - one year old (A6)
iPod touch 5 - two years old (A5)
Next year: 5c two years old (A6)
iPod touch 6: one year old (A7) or if Apple is extra nasty, A6 (two years old)

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I get what you mean, but you are ignoring the part that the A7 chip is way too powerful and it's 64 bit. It's a lot of horsepower for a mobile device. It's 8 times faster than the first iPad in less than 4 years.

No product line has progressed so far, not even cars, notebooks, camera. There has been virtually no major innovation in desktop processors since Intel's 1st Gen i7, 3-4 years ago.
 
Scorpion008 said:
So do you think that the iPhone 5s will remain a viable choice for much longer than an of its predecessors, i.e., more than 4 years, since it is so overpowered?
Click to expand...

Tricky one. It's certainly possible but I suspect RAM may catch up to it before the SoC feels slow. Plus it was clearly designed around iOS7 (or vice versa) so it's got an advantage there. I'd probably say that when it gets to the point the 4 and 4S are now it'll feel just as fast as the 5 does providing Apple don't radically change the work the OS does. Plus apps may move on depending on where Apple go with the A8, 9 etc.
 
smiddlehurst said:
Tricky one. It's certainly possible but I suspect RAM may catch up to it before the SoC feels slow. Plus it was clearly designed around iOS7 (or vice versa) so it's got an advantage there. I'd probably say that when it gets to the point the 4 and 4S are now it'll feel just as fast as the 5 does providing Apple don't radically change the work the OS does. Plus apps may move on depending on where Apple go with the A8, 9 etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, I suppose the longevity would have been yet better if the ram was doubled. I wonder if the A7 running 5S will become obsolete prematurely due to iOS 10 being based on OS X, the Mac software.
 
Scorpion008 said:
...Of #X chips? Is Apple going to have the same chip in it's iPhone/iPad Air/iPad Mini from now on? No more A5X, A6X, etc? Will this mean that the iPads will be comparatively underpowered? Is this due to the fact that iPhones have the largest margin and sell the most units of an Apple device? I wonder if the iPads will even get more ram to compensate. I understand that the iPad Air and Mini need the same hardware, due to pushing the same number of pixels, but the iPhone only needs to deal with 23.1% as many.

Also, what about the iPod touch and iPhone 5c? My guess is that they get updated every second year, and each time they do, they get last years tech, however with the 5c starting out ahead.
That means this year:
5c - one year old (A6)
iPod touch 5 - two years old (A5)
Next year: 5c two years old (A6)
iPod touch 6: one year old (A7) or if Apple is extra nasty, A6 (two years old)

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

They said iPad air offers 2x performance in GPU and CPU over A6X and iPad mini retina (same soc) offers 4X in CPU and 8X in GPU performance over first gen mini (A5 soc), meaning they had to use Rouge 6630 in iPads' A7 soc compared to 6430 in iPhone 5s, so I guess it's just about the name. The raw power is higher than iPhone's A7.
 
Who knows what the people in Apple really thought about?

My guess is that they put the A7 in the 5s because they want to make a clean break with 32 bits. Now they can show that they are 64 bit across the board. Remember that something like 92% of enterprise apps are written for iOS. This just solidifies that.
 
I'm guessing that the A7 can drive the retina resolution just fine and whether its 7.9 or 9.7 or 12.7 inches, it won't put any more stress on the CPU. So using the same CPU in all 3 makes sense. It also makes sense to have the same RAM and other specs. You don't one lagging where the other does not. Now its a matter of size preference. Yay!
 
Yup, just like the old A4 was at the time good enough for both the ipad 1 and iPhone 4.

The A7 is up to the task in both products and the 5S is massively overpowered.
 
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