Yet every year or every other year we buy a phone an it's BLAZING fast because our two year old BLAZING fast phone now lags.
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Apple's Custom Mobile Chip Designs Gradually Expanding to Include Graphics Hardware
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Yet every year or every other year we buy a phone an it's BLAZING fast because our two year old BLAZING fast phone now lags.
A MacBook running an A10 chip...I'd buy it, providing compatibility comes with it, and these chips are getting so powerful now.
Plans they have (people talk about arm macs in test since the A7 chip) but is not from the day form another they release this, they need more tests, a bit more of raw power, drives and of course applications, yes, applications not apps, the Mac App Store is a joke and translates iOS apps don't work because people use macs to a type of work with don't have apps, and if have they are poor shadows, for exemple , if you need make a web page, a simple server or working with code, you need take applications outside from App Store.
And yet a giant pressure-sensitive screen with a separate box for the computer hardware is considered wildly innovative in the Surface Studio thread.
Odd, as my 5S seems fine. Even a little snappier on iOS 10 compared to iOS 9.
Performance plummeting with iOS updates happened a lot back in the day. Just look at the iPhone 4. A gorgeous, capable phone was utterly crippled by software.
But that was largely due to the hand-over-fist performance increases that engineers managed to achieve with sub-mobile chips. Performance has grown exponentially. Much like the CPU boom of the late '90s.
Now even an iPhone 5 has an appropriate experience on iOS 10. And that's 5 years old. Look at the competitors and you'd be lucky to get an update at all for a phone that age.
I wouldn't call my Mac Pro a gaming machine.
edit: The Mac Pro gaming reference jumped out at me but comparing a mobile system on a chip design to the base integrated graphics that come on desktop chipsets isn't really an appropriate comparison anyway. In any case, you can play video games on a Mac; I do so, and not on my Mac Pro (I use my MacBook Pro). People who are really serious about gaming though (as opposed to me who just occasionally plays games poorly) go the PC route and buy the latest discrete graphics cards so they can max out settings (or conversely not get annoyed with dropping frames on lower powered graphics cards). High end PC gamers are not the core Apple audience.
I was an Android user from the G1 to the Nexus 5 and even now from a purely interface and interaction level, it's kind of a wash. I like and dislike both. I started with Android because I wasn't on AT&T. However, from a responsiveness and performance basis, iPhones have always been, in my experience, vastly superior. Custom hardware has a lot to do with it, but Apple's software ecosystem is very, very awesome as well. (Not using Java doesn't hurt either.)
This is one of those areas that people who compare spec sheets rather than the product holistically miss the point and continue to miss the point.
I wonder if Apple will move their GPU work into the desktop.
Man, if they announce something similar for tomorrow....... *'Dream On' plays in the distance*
Watch the video game progress on the iPhone @ 5:23 (game starts at 5:14). You'll see reflections in puddles on the road. The same game on the Pixel doesn't reach that point until 5:41 and there are no reflections. Not only is the iPhone much faster than the Pixel, but it's rendering a scene with much greater complexity. I suspect that's due to Apple's internal GPU efforts.
I do expect Apple will carry this expertise into the Mac family, giving Wintel more serious competition while retaining margin on their own IP. Apple can't possibly like waiting for Intel to make progress while simultaneously paying them for the "advantage" of the X86.
I have a feeling Apple will eventually replace integrated graphics on macs with in-house custom developed chips.
There was discussion yesterday on the thread about the new MBP function bar about how Xcode wasn't released with the OS update this week, and the speculation was that it was because of the toolbar. Would it be possible that Apple is also holding it back for tomorrow's announcement of A series architecture in Macs combined with Bitcode?
Thinking back to the chart Steve put up 20 years ago showing the matrix of consumer/pro and desktop/mobile options it would be interesting to see apple stating that battery life and portability are the goals of consumer laptops where horsepower and virtualization are the goals of pro machines. This would open the door for intel on the pro and A series on the consumer machines.
probably due to the iPhone's superior single core performance. game engines typically rely on single core performance to boot up and only starts spreading the load after the games are up and running. if you monitor core loads on pc, practically every game will drop almost the entire load on one core while a few others will be running at perhaps 30% load and often some run at 10% or under suggesting the initialization of game engines is a difficult task to multithread. i decided to use a core observer on my moto z play, an 8 core mid range phone to try and see if the same phenomenon occurs on android. and it seems to be so, usually when a game was running, 4 cores would be running at roughly 40% load with a 15% variance between them. while the last 4 cores were barely active. however when a game was loading or booting up, one core would usually be at about 80% load while the others seemed to be in the 20% or below. suggesting mobile games are tied to single core performance in loading scenarios like pc games are.
since you mentioned resolution. resolution has no effect on loading times or boot-up times for games. it affects framerate however and onscreen graphics tests are invalid because of it, but for speed test like this that are only based on app loading time, resolution is entirely irrelevant.
It is in Apple's best interest to engineer custom components (chips, batteries, etc.) and prolong lifetime of their hardware. Every time a major OS release comes out some older devices (and certain applications) are no longer supported. While that may prompt people to purchase new hardware, that's not always a good thing for Apple.
Each time an active Apple user decides to purchase new hardware due to incompatibilities, there is a risk of attrition, where the user switches to other platforms. When that happens, Apple is not only losing a single device sale, but also potential long-term residual income, through services such as iCloud storage and Apple Music.
You're right. I mean, even if it was a 940MX in the 13", it would be heaps better than integrated GPUs.
I've been really interested in the ARM Mac theory lately.
If Apple is building their own CPUs and GPUs, there's a lot of potential here. They save a lot of money doing this in house, instead of relying on the duopolies of Intel/AMD and NVidia/AMD.
Apple doesn't have to blow away the competitors to win massively- if they can beat the midrange of those two companies with one system on a chip that is cheaper for them to make, they can save a tremendous amount of money and standardize the Mac lineup with decent graphics.
One of the big issues with the Mac lineup right now is that only the high end machines have decent graphics.
You cannot get a Mac with a graphics card better than an Intel Integrated for under $1799. Can't get a laptop with a graphics card for under $2499.
That's why gaming companies don't bother with Macs these days. Even Blizzard dropped support with Overwatch. Because the vast, vast majority of Mac users only have integrated chips.
If Apple can manufacture SoC's with decent graphics card- even if it's only at the level of entry-level to mid-level NVidia/ATi cards- if all Macs across Apple's line have decent graphics, we could see gaming return, since Blizzard and others can simply assume all Mac owners can run their games.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if within a year or two Apple can make a chip for under $100 in-house that nearly matches the performance of a $200-$300 Intel chip and a $200 NVidia chip. Slap that in a Mac Mini and $1999 MacBook Pro and those devices suddenly look way more powerful.
Apple could theoretically shrink all of their devices, while significantly improving their performance at the low end, while keeping the price the same and increasing profit margin. Win/win across the board, except the loss of Boot Camp and VMs, which is major for enterprise.
I'd be really curious how the iPhone 7's GPU stacks up to NVidia/ATi hardware, haven't seen any benchmarks on the GPU.
If Apple is building their own CPUs and GPUs, there's a lot of potential here. They save a lot of money doing this in house, instead of relying on the duopolies of Intel/AMD and NVidia/AMD.
Apple doesn't have to blow away the competitors to win massively- if they can beat the midrange of those two companies with one system on a chip that is cheaper for them to make, they can save a tremendous amount of money and standardize the Mac lineup with decent graphics.
One of the big issues with the Mac lineup right now is that only the high end machines have decent graphics.
You cannot get a Mac with a graphics card better than an Intel Integrated for under $1799. Can't get a laptop with a graphics card for under $2499.
That's why gaming companies don't bother with Macs these days. Even Blizzard dropped support with Overwatch. Because the vast, vast majority of Mac users only have integrated chips.
If Apple can manufacture SoC's with decent graphics card- even if it's only at the level of entry-level to mid-level NVidia/ATi cards- if all Macs across Apple's line have decent graphics, we could see gaming return, since Blizzard and others can simply assume all Mac owners can run their games.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if within a year or two Apple can make a chip for under $100 in-house that nearly matches the performance of a $200-$300 Intel chip and a $200 NVidia chip. Slap that in a Mac Mini and $1999 MacBook Pro and those devices suddenly look way more powerful.
Apple could theoretically shrink all of their devices, while significantly improving their performance at the low end, while keeping the price the same and increasing profit margin. Win/win across the board, except the loss of Boot Camp and VMs, which is major for enterprise.
I'd be really curious how the iPhone 7's GPU stacks up to NVidia/ATi hardware, haven't seen any benchmarks on the GPU.
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I agree. I think Apple is planning to ease off their dependence on Intel until they are completely free, but not by switching Macs to ARM. That would all at once put too much of their fate in the hands of developers. Instead--and I think others have theorized this before--I believe they plan to do this by expanding the functionality of iOS and the iOS app ecosystem to overtake that of MacOS. (They may even make an iOS desktop machine one day...weird...) Of course iOS/iOS ecosystem has a long long way to go. But if and when it happens and once Apple feels enough people have jumped completely over to iOS, Apple will likely then drop the Mac line (not for years though, I'd predict 2023 at the earliest). What will ultimately prolong the Mac line will be professional applications, since they take the longest to jump platforms, if ever. So it's possible Macs will be kept around indefinitely, but it's likely they will never see the limelight again. Just my prediction. Let's just hope iOS evolves into a truly capable OS and ecosystem for everyone and that Apple doesn't drop the Mac prematurely.
That's an unfair statement, on the grounds of the fact that the problems with bringing some newer games to macOS is due to lack of support for features that are available in DX/Vulkan but not Metal coupled with Apple's neglect of OpenGL, not due to the abundance of integrated GPUs.
The problems for game developers are rooted in software, not hardware.
I've posted this story here a few times over the year, but for those who missed it and want a deeper look into the organization and the man in charge of Apple's custom chip efforts, Johny Srouji, click here. Needless to say he was one of Apple's best hires. No doubt in my mind where Apple is going with this.
I'd want to point out that Apple has kind of already given themselves a way around this.
Both the Mac and iOS app stores allow developers to submit intermediary binaries instead of compiled binaries. WatchOS requires intermediary binaries.
Apple can actually recompile an intermediary binary to any CPU platform they'd like. So Apple can actually likely recompile a lot of the apps on the Mac app store- today- themselves- with no developer reliance, today.
This is also theoretically possible.
An ARM Mac could also technically run iOS applications in an overlay, Windows 10 style. I'd honestly prefer this to an iOS desktop, but I could see an iOS desktop if the system improves. I do like using full screen mode on my Mac a lot.
I think both are a major factor.
The reality is that 80-90% of Mac users are running on integrated graphics, and even the ones that don't use integrated graphics are on 2-year-old GPUs.
The majority of Mac users would not even be able to run Overwatch if they ported it, even if Apple had good software support. Apple's software support is a technical hurdle, and Apple's hardware support is a huge market limitation. Given both, I have a hard time blaming Blizzard, even if it makes me sad.
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Which one: ARM Macs, or iOS desktops?
I'm a bit leery of Apple going off the Intel lines, but I do see why it is needed. Intel seems to be a bit well, slow on their releases. Maybe they can buy AMD and get their engineers and x86 process. Heck, they're worth $6.8B now, and they get some fabs too.
Do not compare GPU performance from a phone to GPU performance of full computer. The capabilities aren't in the same breadth. Blow up a game from your phones resolution to your desktops and compare it to a leading title on PC. The sheer amount of detail is not even close.
Haven't we all!
Some money is saved but the real issue in my mind is being able to pilot your own ship. By this I mean the ability to innovate on the silicon with out restriction. Effectively the SoC and the silicon it is built upon is the modern day equivalent of the fiber glass circuit board of the 1980-90's. Back then engineer pieced together the functionality that they needed and glued it together on the printed circuit board. These days that is all done on silicon as part of the SoC.
The Mac Book would be perfectly fine as an ARM based laptop. I don't expect Apple to take the entire line to the ARM world but certainly it already makes sense for ultra portables and likely will make sense for Mid-Range machines very soon now.
Right now????. That has always been a Mac PROBLEM.
Yep and it sucks.
How can gaming return to a platform that was never a gaiming platform.
We may already be there. A10 Fusion is very good and we haven't even seen the performance version yet.