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Apple's Next-Generation A8 Chip Said to Top 2 GHz, Remain Dual-Core
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iOS devices don't multitask anywhere near enough to make a quad-core chip worth it. Besides, the trade off with a dual core is that you can have higher clocked chips when you don't have power draw and heat of extra cores to worry about.
Not to mention all the sensor processing is done off-die on a separate "Motion" chip.
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I'd say 50% more perf. Mobile chips are moving way faster than the desktop space.
Not to mention all the sensor processing is done off-die on a separate "Motion" chip.
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I'd say 50% more perf. Mobile chips are moving way faster than the desktop space.
True. The pace of hardware upgrades is being driven largely by competition from the Android platform, there aren't many Apple or 3rd party apps that really push it to its limits, other than games. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple decided to promote iOS gaming even more, just for this reason.
Its been that way every year to this point.....until I see it slow down, ya I'll think it'll keep doubling.
Actually, the A6 -> A7 was a more than double increase - at least as far as my personal geekbench tests.
If the next iPad doesn't have more than 1GB of Ram I will not upgrade, as simple as that. I'm tired of going to safari, going back and having to reload my game because it cannot stay active due to RAM
Maybe Apple will hire you to "upgrade the architecture". More likely you have no clue what this would take.
It hasn't been double every year. :\
Then you'd kidding yourself.
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Multiple people saying this doesn't make it any less false.
Yeah, I'd say that’s just the nature of computing (mobile or otherwise). So many common [client] tasks just aren’t that processor intensive outside of games and A/V/Photo work. Email? Browsing? Running a social app? Even “office” chores like word processing or creating presentations are fairly light usage.
I think you’re on the right about it: 1) being a quantifiable upgrade that can be marketed, and 2) it’s definitely useful for game development, especially if Apple wanted to really encroach on the consoles (potentially even with a standalone box, i.e., "AppleTV 4”)
Please, oh please just give us 2GB of ram! Processor speed is becoming less important, unless this thing is going to be recording 4K. You can read my speculation that the iPhone 6 might have 4K on this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1753111/
I generally agree. Most apps don't take advantage of multiple cores.
Yep. RAM is what needs a bump. I can't tell you how many times I've been watching a youtube video, switch to safari to browse the web and read some of my feeds in Reeder and then when I switch back to YouTube the Video isn't there anymore.
Going from 28nm to 20nm is huge. However, I have a feeling the die space will be used differently:
Upgrade from G6430 to a GX6650, with a 25-33% clockspeed increase (This should achieve the 2x performance gain they are notorious for announcing)
Bigger processor cores, with a modest clockspeed increase of .2-.4 GHz. I don't think quad core will be on the Apple roadmap for a while.
2GB RAM would be nice but I am not holding my breath.
Upgrade from G6430 to a GX6650, with a 25-33% clockspeed increase (This should achieve the 2x performance gain they are notorious for announcing)
Bigger processor cores, with a modest clockspeed increase of .2-.4 GHz. I don't think quad core will be on the Apple roadmap for a while.
2GB RAM would be nice but I am not holding my breath.
Oh, they'll certainly shut up when they find out how much battery power RAM uses. It's constantly sipping at the battery, so the size needs to be balanced for that not costs. I would love 2 GB of RAM too but I'd like to see some hard numbers before I start whining.
Because the simpletons of the world need something to represent what they perceive as better. A number is the easiest. 5.0 Engine, Quad Core, Dual Action, etc.
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Given Apple's recent effort to saddle the entry iMac with a MBA processor, the question is whether Apple is trying to reclassify "desktop" semantics or this is just another example of Apple keynote hyperbole.
64 bit ARM does throw out some obsolete cruft and constraints that allow better performance. x86 did the same thing several years back.
"desktop" is probably not the best adjective. Something like "fast enough for most folks" would be far closer to the real effect but too many words. What is being currently sold as desktop stomps both the A7 and any likely A8 in performance. The question for many users is whether that additional performance has deep value (general Mac $1000+ prices versus iOS device general sub $1000 prices. )
Beginning with the first Apple A# Chip (iPhones 1, 3G and 3GS all had Samsung ARM chips)
Geekbench 3 multicore scores:
iPhone 4 - 206
iPhone 4S - 406
iPhone 5 - 1276
iPhone 5S - 2378
I dunno....looks like AT LEAST double to me. That's the 4 year history of the Apple A# chip. Could we see an A8 that tops 5000? Based on the trend....
Keep in mind, I'm going by Geekbench scores and not the percentages listed in their keynote. The Geekbench scores work cross platform so one can compare an iPhone to a Macbook Air.
For comparison, here's the last 4 years of intro level MBAs:
Macbook Air (13" - Mid 2011) Core i5-2557M - 4282
Macbook Air (13" - Mid 2012) Core i5-3427U - 5142
Macbook Air (13" - Mid 2013) Core i5-4250U - 5022
Macbook Air (13" - Early 2014) Core i5-4260U - 5302
The i7, top of the line MBA (mid 2013) that I own gets a Geekbench 3 score of around 6182.
So, see its not that far away. The MBA line (which makes for a great all around laptop) isn't going for additional power these days. A desktop OS like OS X has no problem on an MBA and yet its score is only in the mid 4000s. And while it's a bit noisy (chip runs HOT), I can game on my i7 MBA.
We aren't that far away. I predict an A8 that's on par with the entry level MBAs and 2 GB of RAM for the next gen iPhones and iPads. Wouldn't surprise me either to see next year's entry level MBA with an A8 chip running it either considering my iPad can last longer than my MBA does on a smaller battery.
Evidence for increase to 2GB of RAM:
iPhone - 128 MB LPDDR (137 MHz)
iPhone 3G - 128 MB LPDDR (137 MHz)
iPhone 3GS - 256 MB LPDDR (200 MHz)
iPhone 4 - 512 MB LPDDR2 (200 MHz)
iPhone 4S - 512 MB LPDDR2 (200 MHz)
iPhone 5/5C - 1 GB LPDDR2
iPhone 5S - 1 GB LPDDR3
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Sticking with a dual core design seems pragmatic until they are unable to easily scale clock speeds any further. I imagine this will happen around 3GHz just like with desktop processors.
As an iOS developer what I'd like to see is 2GB of RAM at least on the iPad. I expected this last year and was quite disappointed when it didn't happen.
As an iOS developer what I'd like to see is 2GB of RAM at least on the iPad. I expected this last year and was quite disappointed when it didn't happen.
Quad core is already on Apple's roadmap. The myopic meme in these threads is that 'core' only applies to a dedicated general processing core.
A 2GHz general processing core that throttles down often wouldn't be surprising from Apple. It would turn in good "burst mode" synthetic benchmarks but still generally get very good battery life. The spec porn tech reviewer content creators would probably give is very high marks.
Same. Also, to avoid compatibility issues (i.e., “fragmentation”) with targeting 2GB devices, I thought Apple could use the additional 1GB as like a resource cache, so 1GB devices would continue to run apps as normal, and 2GB devices could do things like hold more Safari Tabs in memory, or cache more levels/textures, etc., in games.