Apple Started Developing A11 Bionic Chip When A8 Chip Was Released Three Years Ago

[Cloudkicker]

This article is just cancer. Most of the Android phones produce their so-called "First in tech" are half-baked. Look at that face unlock with a photo compared to the Neural Engine enabled face unlock. The difference is literally "light years".

Oh, I see. It's like that. When someone is ahead of Apple, it's half baked. When Apple does it (years) later, it's Apple wanting to have it like a flawless diamond [Apple Watch 1 was not]. When Apple does it first, they're innovators that competition will copy.

Amazon's personal assistant has been around for years. Apple has one soon (2018). Yet when Google -- who already has one -- has their next gen planned, MacRumors literally says Apple has set the bar high for Google to try to beat....... lmao right now a mythical product that isn't even in production!

So how many different ways do Apple faithfuls expect to get it? Apple uses "we got it on the shelf first so it's what matters" like a game of kids tag where the front porch is "home free". Ahhhhh... but only when they have a particular product they excel in.

 

[tripleh3lix]

Only Apple can do this.

It is incredible how far ahead they are of all the competition now.

I love Apple. Got a 1st gen iPhone on Launch Day. I also got a Note 7 last year before my i7+, and now have a Note 8. It has had all these features for a couple of years. The portrait feature on the front camera is also on the Note 8. Put all that aside, it's definitely going to work better on Apple. It's going to be more stable. Maybe they added a few facial unlocking features and algorithms for added security so no one can hack into my phone. I "like" Samsung but I don't love them.

However they weren't the first one's who invented this by far, or the only ones that can do this. They weren't the first ones to invent 70 percent of what's on iOS. They just perfect things. And for that, I'm going to hand my Note 8 in (because it's not my cup of tea) and I kind of don't want to. It's the first time I've gotten an Android device that I didn't want to hand in -- however there's one important thing Samsung keeps failing to impress me on - The front camera absolutely sucks on these things. There's no color. It's washed out. The back camera isn't that much better.

The colors are washed out on purpose to hide imperfections and overly saturated images on screen (because of OLED) -- South Korea is all about beauty. So unfortunately -- Apple wins the camera in my book and that's VERY important for me and a lot of other people. I love the S Pen feature so much --- it's making me look into buying an iPad pro just for digital art. That alone is worth it. It's one of the worlds best tablets for consumer digital artists (while being a fortune) and Apple has somehow perfected that as well.

 

[kdarling]

Given all their efforts on vertical integration, I'm surprised that aren't putting more effort into developing their own display panels. They had quality issues with panels from various suppliers several times over the years, and when it comes to OLED panels, they are apparently still completely dependent on Samsung, which seems to be the main factor holding back the iPhone X at the moment.

Apple doesn't like to actually make stuff themselves.

E.g. they may do or specify a custom design, but it's contracted out to a chip maker for production.

So it's hard to envision Apple wanting to actually run a RAM or OLED factory. Historically they'd much rather let others deal with the legal and labor hassles, while they get multiple fabs/factories to bid against each other.

 

[firewood]

Where have you been?
Apple has been designing chips since ...

The chips in the Apple IIe and IIc. IIRC, there was an Apple ASIC in the original Mac 128k as well.

 

[techwhiz]

Absolutely right on it being Apple versus Qualcomm. Until Intel and AMD enter this race, those are the two chip players and unfortunately, only Apple can uses Apple's SoC so that leaves everyone else with Qualcomm.

Actually that is not correct.
Samsung has it Exynos family for phones outside the US and have sed them inside the US. They use Qualcomm usually for modem technology. Huawei uses their own (Kirin) chips in their phones outside the US. Mediatek was making a series of high end chips and have now focused more on the mid tier market. NVidia makes tablet processors.

Intel sold it's ARM design team years ago but gained a silicon license when the bought Altera.
AMD is not entering the cell phone market.
The cell phone market is not a place to make money.
The next frontier is automotive vision systems and ASIL-D/ISO-26262 compute platforms.
NVidia has a platform, Velodyne Lidar, etc.

 

[JulianL]

Chip design arguably is the department where apple rocks most at the moment.

Would have liked it in my iPad Pro, but A10X already is incredibly strong and I'm looking forward to the capabilities of the new one.

I agree. The A series SoCs keep getting better and better. With this quality in the team, and the resources that I am sure are available to them, I'm sure they'll carry on impressing us into the future.

The team that I'm hoping will come to the party soon is the W series people to take on bigger stuff for the various radios and modems in the iPhone, right now the W1 and W2 have been aimed at the AirPods and Apple Watch.

I'm pretty obsessed with battery life so I'd be interested to see what sort of efficiency and space savings Apple might be able to get by highly integrated custom designs tailored specifically for what the iPhone needs and no more. Any efficiency savings would obviously reduce power draw and any space savings that might be achieved by more integration might allow a PCB shrink to free up space for a bigger battery. From Apple's general strategic perspective it would also make it less reliant on the roadmap of third party suppliers.

 

[jimbo1mcm]

Buying or keeping a phone with a button or any kind of a front screen pressing device is nuts now.

 

[Jef88]

It won’t take long before the A serie will be used in the MAC serie and Apple can get rid of Intel. Just like before they did before.

The iPad,iPhone, Apple t.v and Apple Watch already make use of the A chips, and The A11 is on par with A MacBook Pro 13’’ (single core)
Meaning it’s more powerful than the MacBook

I will see it happening they will release a MacBookpro powered by an A14X chip by 2020.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Absolutely right on it being Apple versus Qualcomm. Until Intel and AMD enter this race, those are the two chip players and unfortunately, only Apple can uses Apple's SoC so that leaves everyone else with Qualcomm.

Sorely you're mistaken.

First Intel tried and failed, placing them back over 5yrs to last years mobile SoC technology and prowess.
Secodnly, AMD still does well in the low market cap for desktop/laptop GPU space ... but with careless vigor of increasing wattage - doesn't speak well to their views going fully mobile!

Samsung, and now even Huwaei with the HiSilicon's "Kiri" Soc are doing VERY well. IF either can separate those businesses into separately managed, funded and controlled entities then Apple could have some options. I'll wait when top engineers leave to start their own companies.

 

[pianophile]

I don't hear people crying for TouchID on their iMac)

Actually, it's great that now they have both TouchID and FaceID available now. For desktops, yes, including the iMac, TouchID on the keyboard would be great, and perhaps a better fit than FaceID for years to come. I'd buy it!

#deathToPasswords

 

[cgsnipinva]

Ah, you don't say! I appreciate the input, I wasn't aware. Are most of the mainstream Qualcomm chips already applying this method? My current phone is running an eight core Snapdragon 810.

Are Apple processors just rebranded ARM chips? Apple has a lot of input on the design, no?

---Edit---
After further investigation, I see that ARM is a licensed technology. Even Snapdragon processors use it. Interesting.

Apple licenses the ARM standard. However, they have a proprietary implementation of it. Similar to the x86 standard that Intel and AMD adhere to but using their own designs.

Apple's chips are not off the shelf ARM.

 

[Tunster]

I don't want 3 year old tech in my phone

It's not 3 year old. Conceptually it's 3 years old, but design to development to production takes a long time to become cheap enough for mass production.

They don't have magic wands that make these chips appear overnight you know . Also, at least Apple are still to some degree thinking of the low level engineering rather than putting the fattest/fastest chips in the phone just to claim the greatest. The day that happens, iPhone will lose it's number 1 top spot.

 

[firewood]

Apple licenses the ARM standard. However, they have a proprietary implementation of it. Similar to the x86 standard that Intel and AMD adhere to but using their own designs.

Apple's chips are not off the shelf ARM.

ARM offers several different kinds of license. Some license types only allow a company to stick one or more ARM-designed cores, such as an A53 or A57, into an SOC. However ARM offers some much more expensive architectural licenses, allowing a company to do a fully custom implementation of the ARM ISA. Only a few companies can afford one of these few architectural licenses: including Qualcomm, Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, and Apple. These companies do this because they think they have the secret sauce (and huge design teams) to do better custom implementations of CPUs than ARM. All other companies are just using off-the-shelf generic ARM cores.

 

[pankajdoharey]

Actually even google has a sense that Apple is aiming to build a processor that it can use in phones/tablets and laptops both. Eventually bridging the gap between iOS and MacOS, making maintaining the compiler for iOS and Mac easier. Google has already started on working on a new OS called Fuschia which will not be based on Java but instead on Dart a java like language and would provide performance benefits.