Apple has some incredible chip designers on its team

[sjinsjca]

I get the enthusiasm but it's a bit misguided.

Apple does design the A-series processors but wouldn't be able to without the IP of ARM making it possible.

I get the skepticism but it's a bit misguided.

Apple was an early investor in ARM. Arguably, ARM exists today because of Apple's support and involvement back in the early '90s. With its technology license (one of a very few that provides design rights), Apple remains a leading contributor to the ARM world. Apple's innovations since the A7 have set the pace for the ARM world, with an increasingly wide gap between Apple's implementations and the rest.

 

[se1000]

I get the skepticism but it's a bit misguided.

Apple was an early investor in ARM. Arguably, ARM exists today because of Apple's support and involvement back in the early '90s. With its technology license (one of a very few that provides design rights), Apple remains a leading contributor to the ARM world. Apple's innovations since the A7 have set the pace for the ARM world, with an increasingly wide gap between Apple's implementations and the rest.

There is no skepticism. Apple does indeed design terrific processors, however they are not in any way vertically integrated from a hardware perspective nor do they show any signs of entering the processor fabrication business.

Interesting that you say "since the A7" I would actually argue that they had far bigger strides previous to the A7. I would also say that due to the way iOS has evolved, there has been less emphasis on the need for parallel processing, whereas other OS's, Android being one of them favor parallel processing. This has driven the types of CPU's we see in each of the ecosystems today, Apple focuses on single core performance and Android leans toward multi-core designs. This is most likely about to change, with iOS taking on more and more multitasking abilities, I predict future Apple processors will start to add more cores, I'd be very surprised if the A10 came out with any less than 3 cores, most likely 4. Not sure if they would actually do a big.LITTLE setup and go with a full 8-cores, that might be a little too much crow for them to swallow all in one gulp.

As far as Apple processors vs the competition, Samsung is now very much challenging them on the processor front, whereas Apple was easily a generation ahead previous to 2015. Qualcomm stumbled hard this year with the Snapdragon 810. 2015 was the first time in a long time where an Apple processor wasn't the first to premier a die shrink before anyone else. No matter how you look at it, the world wasn't expecting the Exynos 7420 and everything Samsung put into it. Regardless of if a company licenses the architecture or design, performance is performance. Qualcomm's previous Krait cores were no less unique than Apples A series.

Again, I'd be shocked to see Apple developing a x86-64 or compatible desktop class CPU and then go so far as to fabing it themselves. Ask AMD how well that worked out for them. My bet is in the next 2-3 years the question is if they (and everyone else really) will start transitioning more and more consumer level devices to ARM processors. Microsoft was a bit too soon with the Surface RT, but IMO, that's where we're all headed

 

[mtneer]

BGR has a report today saying that the A9 is matching up to Intel's chip used in the rMB. That is a remarkable achievement based on the number of people who were asserting that Intel's Core architecture is more powerful than ARM (in the recent past). Assuming that Apple can keep this blistering trend, how far do we think is Apple from smashing up to Intel' Xeon's? A11? or maybe the A12?

 

[Jman13]

I benchmarked my Asus Zenbook, which has a Core i5-5200U, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD last night, and its scores were nearly identical to the 6S (2600/5200) That's seriously impressive for a phone. The i5-5200 isn't a super fast chip, but it's good enough for good performance with 24MP RAW files in Lightroom and Photoshop. The fact the same power is available in a phone is crazy.

 

[defferoo]

Apple does design the A-series processors but wouldn't be able to without the IP of ARM making it possible. This is no different than Qualcomm's Snapdragon line, and Samsung's Exynos processors.

ehh, actually Samsung's Exynos chips all use ARM Cortex IP, they have yet to ship an in-house design. rumors are that they have a new core coming, but they're just rumors at this point. It'll be interesting to see A72 go against Kryo, A9, Denver, and Samsung's rumored custom core.

Also, side note. Apple's A7 is where performance of their chips really picked up. Apple's Swift cores in the A6 were pretty fast, but it was their first custom design and Qualcomm's Krait cores weren't far behind. A7 was the first time they iterated and they blew the performance gap wide open with a much wider design than the A6. I don't know how you could think their biggest strides came before the A7 as the A4 was really just a repackaged Exynos and A5 was still using Cortex-A9 cores.

Another side note, iOS is already designed to be multi-threaded, actual threads are abstracted away from developers using GCD (Grand Central Dispatch), but it actually makes it easier to be thread safe while writing multi-threaded code. Android isn't inherently more parallelized, it's just that since there are more weak cores, devs must utilize all of them to get the most out of the CPU. For certain tasks that's easy, but it's not so simple when you have a lot of code that must be executed sequentially.

 

[AppleRobert]

My goodness, a tech related thread.

Too many rose gold threads on this forum if you ask me!

 

[se1000]

ehh, actually Samsung's Exynos chips all use ARM Cortex IP, they have yet to ship an in-house design. rumors are that they have a new core coming, but they're just rumors at this point. It'll be interesting to see A72 go against Kryo, A9, Denver, and Samsung's rumored custom core.

Correct Apple's past few generation A-series and Qualcomm's Krait cores were architecture licenses while Samsung's Exynos is a core license, which is different, but they all are ARM based cores, which was my point.

Also, side note. Apple's A7 is where performance of their chips really picked up. Apple's Swift cores in the A6 were pretty fast, but it was their first custom design and Qualcomm's Krait cores weren't far behind. A7 was the first time they iterated and they blew the performance gap wide open with a much wider design than the A6. I don't know how you could think their biggest strides came before the A7 as the A4 was really just a repackaged Exynos and A5 was still using Cortex-A9 cores.

That kind of proves my point though, the A4 to A5 to A6 to A7 were huge leaps in how Apple approached making their processors, and also made drastic improvements on the GPU side as well. Performance wise yes there were bigger gains after, but the generations before it laid the groundwork.

Another side note, iOS is already designed to be multi-threaded, actual threads are abstracted away from developers using GCD (Grand Central Dispatch), but it actually makes it easier to be thread safe while writing multi-threaded code. Android isn't inherently more parallelized, it's just that since there are more weak cores, devs must utilize all of them to get the most out of the CPU. For certain tasks that's easy, but it's not so simple when you have a lot of code that must be executed sequentially.

I agree for apps this is true, but from an OS perspective Apple has been evolving out of primarily a less multi-threaded/multi-task environment and now starting to really use it more. It wasn't too long ago that iOS couldn't run but a handful of background tasks and API's that were specifically defined. I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, but my point is that it's probably why Apple has engineer their processors to be the way they are. I've always thought they did the right thing by focusing on GPU performance as well.

 

[defferoo]

That kind of proves my point though, the A4 to A5 to A6 to A7 were huge leaps in how Apple approached making their processors, and also made drastic improvements on the GPU side as well. Performance wise yes there were bigger gains after, but the generations before it laid the groundwork.

IMO the A4 was mostly a marketing gimmick, it was pretty much the same as Samsung's SoC. A5 was pretty standard as well, using Cortex-A9 and PowerVR 5 series. They didn't really differentiate themselves until the A6 came out with custom cores, but even those weren't all that powerful. The biggest leap has been the A7, which doubled CPU performance in one generation, since then they've been iterating on the same basic design because it was such a good foundation.

To me, their chip design didn't really start taking flight until the A6 -> A7 transition. It almost felt like with the A6 they were testing the waters with their first custom design and A7 they went all out.

 

[soupcan]

IMO the A4 was mostly a marketing gimmick, it was pretty much the same as Samsung's SoC. A5 was pretty standard as well, using Cortex-A9 and PowerVR 5 series. They didn't really differentiate themselves until the A6 came out with custom cores, but even those weren't all that powerful. The biggest leap has been the A7, which doubled CPU performance in one generation, since then they've been iterating on the same basic design because it was such a good foundation.

To me, their chip design didn't really start taking flight until the A6 -> A7 transition. It almost felt like with the A6 they were testing the waters with their first custom design and A7 they went all out.

The chip design after A7 wasn't too good, actually. It was a die shrink from 28 to 20 nm, and as evident by the CPU scores the performance increase wasn't too high. The A8 was sort of like the iPad 3. It was there, but that's about it, and it didn't improve things by a lot. Apple's focus clearly laid on reduced power consumption rather than performance. The A9 is what the A8 should've been, looking like a lovechild between the A7 and the A8, with the A7's huge jump in performance compared to it's predecessor and the A8's lowered power consumption. We're talking about a cpu with 2 cores being on-par with or in some cases smoking an A8X tri-core and Samsung's/Qualcomm's 2x4 big.LITTLE configs. In just one year we went from "it's pretty OK" to "this thing shreds everything to pieces and ***** on it afterwards".

 

[defferoo]

The chip design after A7 wasn't too good, actually. It was a die shrink from 28 to 20 nm, and as evident by the CPU scores the performance increase wasn't too high. The A8 was sort of like the iPad 3. It was there, but that's about it, and it didn't improve things by a lot. Apple's focus clearly laid on reduced power consumption rather than performance. The A9 is what the A8 should've been, looking like a lovechild between the A7 and the A8, with the A7's huge jump in performance compared to it's predecessor and the A8's lowered power consumption. We're talking about a cpu with 2 cores being on-par with or in some cases smoking an A8X tri-core and Samsung's/Qualcomm's 2x4 big.LITTLE configs. In just one year we went from "it's pretty OK" to "this thing shreds everything to pieces and ***** on it afterwards".

the way I see it, they've only drastically improved performance twice, once with the A7, and the second time with the A9. With the A8 they kept the changes to a minimum and tweaked things here and there. It's not like they start over with each chip, they iterate on what exists already and make improvements. Saying that their chip design dropped off with the A8 isn't quite right because their focus probably wasn't performance considering the amount of performance the A7 already had.

 

[QCassidy352]

There will be an arm based macbook in the next 2 years, with arm based mac os/osx. It is just a matter of time. The ipad pro is one step to achieve that, by alliwing developpers to make mire powerfull apps.

What about a 6 core a11x with 24 graphic cores and 12gb ram in 2 years?
If apple keeps improving the power of their socs by 70% each year, in 2 or 3 years time, they will have surpassed intel.

I think this is right. The iPhone 6s and iPad Air 2 already come very close to the retina MacBook, with the iPhone 6s actually beating the MacBook in single core. I expect the iPad pro to win convincingly over the MacBook, so the power is pretty much there already, at the low end. The issue, though, is losing bootcamp and easy software development for macs. It would be back to the bad old PPC days in terms of compatibility.

 

[nordique]

Apple focuses on all the right things when they design a new generation of CPU (especially the "S" models)

Especially once they went 64-bit, they really left the competition behind.

There are some very interesting tech write ups on how they accomplish so much with their mobile CPU and GPU design.

Consider: the iPhone 5S still benchmarks beyond most smart phones and even many phones released this year - and that phone came out in 2013

 

[Cayden]

These phones really are catching up with desktop-class processors. I can't wait to try mine out and see the blazing fast speeds

 

[grkm3]

A9 is no joke.does anyone have antutu scores yet? If apple could use the x1 gpu it would be one hell of a power house!

Sammy is also going custom core and they have a dev kit out but no 100% legit proof but the rumors are saying 23xx single and 8100 multi and quad core on the galaxy s7 soc

Nvidea also has a custom x2 core coming out and that thing is insane 2600 single core but I think it's a tablet soc and won't ever go in a phone

2016 is going to be a huge leap for all

 

[AFEPPL]

It's a pick and mix menu offered by ARM and consumers can simply pick how they want to package their SOC
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0388f/DDI0388F_cortex_a9_r2p2_trm.pdf