Apple's A14 Chip Rumored to Become First Arm-Based Mobile Processor to Exceed 3GHz

[firewood]

Impressive, but the issue with mobile processors in phones is the inability to sustain those speeds due to heat issues since there is no active cooling like on a laptop

Maybe. But you can put your iPhone on top of a high airflow fan if you want or need the sustained performance.

I’ve actually done that when doing extended testing and benchmarking of a prototype of a math intensive iPhone app. Made the test numbers a bit more consistent.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Impressive, but the issue with mobile processors in phones is the inability to sustain those speeds due to heat issues since there is no active cooling like on a laptop (even tablets can manage better due to the heat sink effect of large aluminum surface area).

So what you're saying is that it'll make a fantastic chip for laptops?

 

[CarlJ]

If only Apple would license the a14 out to server makers. A 50-core a14!

I'm sorta wondering when Apple starts building their own lightweight high-performance low-power ARM-based servers for their server farms. They could literally make one that works exactly how they want. And be increasingly less beholden to Azure/Amazon for services.

 

[JosephAW]

Might be time to start addressing heat issues with iOS devices.
One thing that really annoys me is the dimming of the screen when the CPU / battery gets hot and refresh rate slows.
There is no backlight on OLED screens so why are they dimming it? That should be a thing of the past.
Use the metal Apple logo as an external heatsink for the cpu/battery and have the case carry away the heat.

 

[tridley68]

No that's what I'm talking about Apple.

 

[Hastings101]

It’s still going to be slowed down in a future software update though.

Don't be so hard on Apple, in 2024 these phone chips more powerful than many laptops couldn’t possibly run iOS 18 with the new AniMoji Pro update smoothly. It’s just too much. Never mind that Windows 10 and even Apple’s own macOS doesn’t have this problem...

 

[827538]

I’m very curious to see how Apple’s ARM chip stacks up to the best Intel and AMD have to offer in the same benchmarks with similar sized cores, similar power/thermals.
I guess we will find out next year, could be a reckoning.

 

[russell_314]

Yea but 5g causes cancer so not worth it

Do people really believe this in 2020?.... It reminds me of the flat earth thing.

 

[Virinprew]

For how many milliseconds?

 

[pweicks]

If only Apple’s software team could keep up with their hardware team. They were actually starting to do it with iOS 12 and then they took another nose dive with 13.

 

[JDGwf]

If only Apple would license the a14 out to server makers. A 50-core a14!

Only if they support Linux out of the box. MacOS is not an defacto Internet server OS

 

[vader3d1]

Congratulations everyone on the hard work. As we sit in a circle to praise each other on this rumored 3Ghz, lets not forget how it will improve the world's morale in these tough times. We can always depend on these rumors to ease the world's soul. Again, lets pat each others back but not too friendly as this is not that type of circle.

 

[jinnj]

If only Apple would license the a14 out to server makers. A 50-core a14!

That will NEVER happen. It stifles innovation. They won't be able to make major changes to the CPU.

 

[genovelle]

It’s still going to be slowed down in a future software update though.

Nah...They will just let the battery die naturally and it’s spikes kill the device. That way you have to buy a new device. Trying to extend device life was a huge mistake that got the sued a lot!

 

[jinnj]

Do you remember that keynote when Steve Jobs actually apologized because Apple didn’t keep the promise of putting a 3Ghz G5 processor in their top of the line workstation?
Now they are putting a processor that runs circles around it, in a phone.

Yeah that was Motorola's fault. Look where they are at now. A department within Alphabet (google).

 

[cmaier]

Yeah that was Motorola's fault. Look where they are at now. A department within Alphabet (google).

Actually, the CPU division of Motorola is Freescale Semiconductor, and google sold the rest (the phone stuff) to Lenovo.

 

[citysnaps]

That's nice for the 1 second it will run at 3 GHz. Apple is the king of throttling.

Nothing wrong with that if it keeps your phone healthy and reliable.

 

[munpip214]

Nope.

Frequency increase is 14%, but single core performance is 25% higher. 11% of the performance increase had to have come from architectural improvements.

And unless they added cores, the multi core performance increase of 33% means even more architectural improvements.

I didn’t say it was their only way of increasing performance, but majority of single thread comes from increasing their frequency. It gets more complicated how the big little cores are competing during benchmarking. Most likely the big core is run for single and all cores (big and little) run for multi, although benchmarks are hardly consistent with real world usage and power handling. Also we don’t know the frequency of big and little cores. 14% to big core, they may have done more to smaller cores. But yes they will have done some architectural improvements.

 

[anshuvorty]

I am almost certain the iPhone 12 series of phones is not coming out this year...

 

[cmaier]

I didn’t say it was their only way of increasing performance, but majority of single thread comes from increasing their frequency. It gets more complicated how the big little cores are competing during benchmarking. Most likely the big core is run for single and all cores (big and little) run for multi, although benchmarks are hardly consistent with real world usage and power handling. Also we don’t know the frequency of big and little cores. 14% to big core, they may have done more to smaller cores. But yes they will have done some architectural improvements.

We really can’t be sure yet. As others have noted, it is unlikely that the chip runs at top frequency for very long. Probably what has happened is that through improvements in microarchitecture and physical design they have reduce switching capacitance enough that they can run at a higher average frequency than before. One way to think of that is “increasing frequency,” but another way to think of that is “increasing efficiency.”

 

[firewood]

Only if they support Linux out of the box. MacOS is not an defacto Internet server OS

Linux in a Docker container on my MacBook Pro already outperforms the Linux server I rent in a Data Center.

 

[ddtmm]

It’s a first, like 64bit. Hopefully Apple will put those extra cycles to use.

First, like 64-bit? 64 bit OSes have been around since the 70s. Even Windows XP was 64-bit before Mac.

 

[Constable Odo]

One might think Apple could crush all Android smartphones with an A14 or any of its A-series processors, but it won't. Whereas most Android smartphones come with around 6GB to even 12GB of system RAM, Apple stiffs iPhone users with a measly 4GB so that apps are unable to stay in memory if you load a number of apps. I'm not sure why Apple is so stingy with RAM when they're saving money by designing their own processors. Whatever happened to the economy of scale for Apple? Apple is selling a crapload of high-end iPhones, so I'm sure they can afford to put in more RAM in their iPhones. Apple should strive to make the iPhone untouchable in terms of performance and use. Well, let's see what happens when Apple starts using its A-series processors in laptops and see if they're still going to be stingy with system RAM.

 

[Dean Yu]

For the record… At this rate the first ARM MacBook can have the CPU performance of a 7K+ 12 core Mac Pro.

Without any optimization a Surface Pro X with Qualcomm SQ1 runs x86 version GeekBench4 at roughly 60% speed of ARM GB4 (2200 vs. 3500 single core, and 6750 vs. 11500 multi core)

And the single core performance of this alleged “phone chip” times 60%, is pretty much the base line 8 core Mac Pro…
(That is, without considering sustained load)

Without porting AVX or SSE extension codepaths from x64 one can just *brute force* everything, aka literally emulating a x64 chip much faster than a real i5

 

[mistasopz]

It’s a phone. The necessity to run for an extended time at 3GHz is dubious. Plus, power consumption is equal to C times voltage squared times the frequency, so reducing the frequency when high speed is not required is a very good idea in a phone.

Now, think about 16 of these cores, with appropriate thermal solution, in a MacBook, and we are talking about something very cool.

Just pointing out that the throttling has been taking place for years in the macbook pro, which is not a phone and does require high performance *and* is supposed to have good thermal characteristics. When running demanding tasks, some users have placed their laptops in freezers. Imagine paying top dollar for a high-end processor only to learn that it runs at a reduced clock speed when you need it (ie. rendering). Apple sacrifices performance for thinness and aesthetics, so getting hyped for >3GHz capabilities is pointless because they are going to be running far less than that (even if you run something that needs it).