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Apple engineering is finally hitting its stride with the latest chips, etc. Watch out, Intel, Microsoft, et al. better look in the rearview mirror because things are waaaay closer than they look. 😬
 
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For all its years spent as the underdog in performance, I feel like the Turtle that is Apple is finally overtaking the tired and exhausted Rabbit that is it’s competition, which has raced for years to always add more numbers to everything and appear faster in this or that, from PC’s to phones. The rabbit has now found its place drifting behind the turtle who has found its legs and is gaining pace to win the technological race for dominance in the planets digital devices race. Apple loyalists have always held onto this prediction even at times when apple seemed like it would never catch up to the competition and yet here we are. It feels like the momentum and tailwind apple has behind it will is so strong that in 5 years it may be so far ahead of the competition in various technological areas that we may not even bother content to mentioning them anymore. Android? Oh I remember that. Windows, oh I used to use that as a child. Soon...
 
It was never going to beat the A14...it’s a big improvement from older versions though which is what android users wanted
 
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I am curious what are the real-world benefits to the average iPhone user for a faster CPU? I am still using XS Max and really have not seen an advantage to upgrade in my case. That doesn't mean one exists and perhaps I am missing it.
They don't just get faster, they also get more efficient. Even if the performance improvement isn't noticeable to you, a newer model will be able to complete the same tasks using less power. Of course, this has major implications for battery life.
 
I am curious what are the real-world benefits to the average iPhone user for a faster CPU? I am still using XS Max and really have not seen an advantage to upgrade in my case. That doesn't mean one exists and perhaps I am missing it.
There is a huge difference for the average iphone user.
cPU power is not just how fast whatsapp opens, means better pictures, better AI, more secure platform for faster complex algorithm to compute.
Think this, smarthphone camera’s hardware improve just very little compared to how fast software computing is improving or what the developers have in mind, many times developers are just waiting to CPU be enough powerful to do this or this thing, to improve the resulted pic or video. Noise, light, color accuracy, sharpnesss, all elements in a pic are processed by CPU to show you what you see. How fast and efficiency can process those data would make you have or not have the option to HDR, night vision, deep focus, ETC...
The small speed percetange you win over the next year, would be enough to improve Siri’s AI, to handle new image rendering processing, new smooth visual effects, better “anything” that you have in the XS but you didn’t have in your iPhone 4S
Power and energy efficiency are slow improvements and are necessary generation by generation.

think in a supercomputer in a smartphone, could do things you can imagine now until hardware and software developers brings to you (120mhz or beyond screens, any zoom you like to do in your ultra high quality videos, pics at night as lighday at 1/60 speed... send huge files, export videos in a blink...)

all were happy with the iphone 3g screen until we saw retina screen in the iphone, the best screen you could imagine, until you see the iPhone 12 pro max... until you see the iPhone 14 por max screen, not possible today by many factors, one the CPU
 
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Breaking: Microsoft to buy Qualcomm so their ARM windows 64bit version can run at least half the speed of iOS!
Close.

Microsoft wants to start designing their own chips

 
I am curious what are the real-world benefits to the average iPhone user for a faster CPU? I am still using XS Max and really have not seen an advantage to upgrade in my case. That doesn't mean one exists and perhaps I am missing it.
It’s not about a fast CPU right now. It’s about future development.

Right now most people don’t need the power of the iPhone 12. But you want that phone to hold up and be working for many years to come and not become unusable after only 1-2.
 
Breaking: Microsoft to buy Qualcomm so their ARM windows 64bit version can run at least half the speed of iOS!
I know this is humorous, but, really, an M1-like variant of these Qualcomm chips or the upcoming Samsung chips (basically ARM reference designed chips) would make for a very solid Surfacebook Pro - more X1 cores with faster clocks (and in Qualcomm's case bigger caches) and a bigger version of their GPU would make for a great Windows SOC. Combined with M1 computers, it could really accelerate ARM application development for both Windows and Mac.

The gap is definitely shrinking. It'll soon be down just to the quality of software and overall operating systems integration.

The performance gains are quite good, but this is a similar pattern that we've seen with the last few cycles - not quite matching last year's A series single threaded performance and just exceeding last year's A-series multithreaded performance. Having said that ARM seems to be taking performance more seriously in its reference design and going wider in its chips. A real gap seems to be actually Icestorm vs A55/A77. According to Andrei @ Anandtech Icestorm cores have a power efficiency close to the A55 but the performance of an A77.

They might not bet the A14, but they still look pretty competitive with Intel. Hopefully that means more ARM laptops in the Windows camp, too.

Seems reasonable to me too :)

Pretty well known by now that Qualcomm designs for sustained performance, with lower power requirements, particularly with the Adreno GPU. Apple has always been better at quick performance bursts, which helps with things like app launches. But Qualcomm excels at sustained performance activities like gaming, with little or no throttling of the CPU+GPU.

Slightly different approaches, but both companies are top shelf in this category.

Sort of: according to reviews, A-series chips still get better PPW out of their approach by using the same total energy for more performance even over sustained workloads and especially in single-threaded applications. I think a better way to characterize it is that Qualcomm goes for weaker, more numerous cores which helps them in multithreaded cases, but in single-threaded workloads is still behind (which still supports rather than contradicts your examples). ARM's reference X1 is a good step though and they seem to be going towards a wider, more performant core each cycle, similar to Apple. As I said to mdriftmeyer according to Anandtech reviews while Firestorm cores are the hot thing everyone focuses (with good reason), Icestorm efficiency cores are actually *really* good compared to ARM reference efficiency designs.
 
I am curious what are the real-world benefits to the average iPhone user for a faster CPU? I am still using XS Max and really have not seen an advantage to upgrade in my case. That doesn't mean one exists and perhaps I am missing it.
Same here. Still using XS max.
 
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Also keep in mind that single-threaded performance *SHOULD* have been the 888's most-likely chance of matching the A14, since all of the 888's high performance cores are not the same: the 888 has a primary high performance core that's the high performing high performance core (I know, you tell me), and 3 standard high performance cores, and then 4 high efficiency cores.

But it appears that any/each of the four of Apple's high performance cores out-performs the "hero" core of the 888. Is anyone surprised at this point?
Yep, I feel a little sad for ARM that their highest-performing mobile core isn't performing all that well, especially because this is now on 5 nm, albeit Samsung's. I guess Qualcomm makes up the difference by having another three A78 cores, versus only two Firestorm cores in the A14. But still, the results fall short of the hype ARM generated when they announced their new X1 core.

The ML core in the 888 on the other hand seems to kick some ass, I am curious whether the software isn't adapted as well for Apple's ML co-processor in the A14 or whether the 888's is really that much more capable. But then, how much will Android take advantage of those capabilities, given that it's a front end to Google's cloud and personalized advertising interests?
 
and what does Apple do with all that power in their smartphones? Nothing, every generation that much faster than the previous one (though apparently specs don’t matter) and yet not even the ability to do real multitasking. Even in the iPad they are wasted.
For one thing this results in better battery usage as the CPU can accomplish more with less power being used. Kind of important in a phone. Same with the tablets. And now same with the laptops. For desktops, it results in quieter, better sustained performance.
 
Yep, I feel a little sad for ARM that their highest-performing mobile core isn't performing all that well, especially because this is now on 5 nm, albeit Samsung's. I guess Qualcomm makes up the difference by having another three A78 cores, versus only two Firestorm cores in the A14. But still, the results fall short of the hype ARM generated when they announced their new X1 core.

The ML core in the 888 on the other hand seems to kick some ass, I am curious whether the software isn't adapted as well for Apple's ML co-processor in the A14 or whether the 888's is really that much more capable. But then, how much will Android take advantage of those capabilities, given that it's a front end to Google's cloud and personalized advertising interests?
To be fair, the Qualcomm version of the core is conservative (to borrow Anandtech's phrase) compared to the max of what ARM said could be put in the core in terms of clock speeds and cache.
 
This is really excellent.
Despite of course it being obvious that Apple is ahead. We should all be VERY pleased than Qualcomm are not that far behind, and themselves are increasing performance year after year, this will of course, ensure Apple will wish to maintain it's lead and stay ahead.
So for us consumers it's amazing news, as everyone wins :)

All that said, I do also feel that for most people the latest chips in the latest phones now are so fast that, these annual speed improvements, whilst great, are probably for the majority of people getting to the point of being unnecessary anymore.
The apps most people will use daily on their phones, are blazingly fast already.
That said, with more VR and AR stuff coming I'm sure at some point, even if not really at the moment, this power and future power will be put to more real-world use than one may argue it's being put to right now.
 
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and what does Apple do with all that power in their smartphones? Nothing, every generation that much faster than the previous one (though apparently specs don’t matter) and yet not even the ability to do real multitasking. Even in the iPad they are wasted.
I do admit that for real multitasking, I prefer UNIX over iOS on our 112-core compute cluster, lol. Given the small screen size of cell phones and the limitations of touch screen UIs, I don't need to have two Powerpoint files open side by side to copy/paste some slide detail into a new presentation. Or what do you mean by "multitasking"?

Other than that, I frankly don't care what Apple does with the compute power in my iPhone 12 mini as long as it blows away the 4-core i7-6920HQ in my 2016 MacBook Pro when I need to quickly log into work via VPN and 2-FA and look something up in a browser. Hell, my phone is even more fluent rotating protein 3D structures in the browser than my laptop, and unlike the latter it doesn't get loud nor hot nor does it use up its battery doing so. If that remains all that Apple is doing with the A14's power, I am okay with it.
 
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