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You're expecting a 50% increase. I'm still expecting a doubling.

Really, the amazing leaps so far have been because ARM was at such a low point before Apple took over. I was wrong that they haven't doubled since they started. Once was because of the move to dual core, and once was because the move to 64-bit. I'm sure that shrinking from their original, and the architecture change in the iPhone 5, helped out.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/5
 
Dualcore is still fine, just give us 2GB RAM this time! :confused:

When I did have the iPhone 5s speed was never the issue. It was the low memory errors that made me dump it for the Note 3. And it was the reason why I did not buy the iPads. Got to figure that iPad apps are even more high demanding than phone apps.
 
Entry-level MacBook Air does not need to be as powerful as a Haswell.

Moving that goalpost, are we?

Double that.

1.4 GHz with turbo mode to 2.0 GHz. Plus smaller technology process.

We get to doubling the performance, with tweaks here and there, the same as they were for jumping from A6 to A7.

We get to range of 5000 points in multicore score in Geekbench 3, in 2.5W power envelope.

Thats pretty amazing.

Except the double from A6 to A7 had to do with moving to 64-bit. And moving from the A5 to the A6 was helped by a move to a custom architecture.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/5

It's "ARM compatible", not ARM itself.

So what's going to give us this doubling?
 
heres hoping they keep 1gb ram so my ipad air is forced into obsolescence a little slower :p

When apple does finally bump to 2 gigs, it will be interesting to see how quickly devs (and apple as far as features go) drop support for 1gb devices
 
I've never felt that I need more CPU power on my iOS devices thus far while using iPhone 5 and iPad Mini Retina. I couldn't care less about the CPU performance since it will be more than enough than I'll ever need. I do however feel the need for RAM. Please Apple, get with the times and give us at least 2GB of RAM so Safari doesn't have to crash all the time.

Safari shouldn't crash because of lack of ram... that's a software issue.
 
When I did have the iPhone 5s speed was never the issue. It was the low memory errors that made me dump it for the Note 3. And it was the reason why I did not buy the iPads. Got to figure that iPad apps are even more high demanding than phone apps.

Low memory errors in the crash log? The OS is supposed to work that way BTW. You'll still get them with 2 GB. Unless you mean application errors that you knew were only due to insufficient memory in the device.
 
heres hoping they keep 1gb ram so my ipad air is forced into obsolescence a little slower :p

When apple does finally bump to 2 gigs, it will be interesting to see how quickly devs drop support for 1gb devices

Apple will likely require devs to keep support for 1gb devices and put in extra measures within Xcode to keep the devices relevant for as long as possible.
 
Moving that goalpost, are we?



Except the double from A6 to A7 had to do with moving to 64-bit. And moving from the A5 to the A6 was helped by a move to a custom architecture.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/5

It's "ARM compatible", not ARM itself.

So what's going to give us this doubling?
Precisely the masses are using less computing power. This is great because we will potentially see prices go down for entry-level laptops
 
Moving that goalpost, are we?



Except the double from A6 to A7 had to do with moving to 64-bit. And moving from the A5 to the A6 was helped by a move to a custom architecture.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/5

It's "ARM compatible", not ARM itself.

So what's going to give us this doubling?

https://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/0...eculation-on-processor-architecture-advances/

This. A6 was in fact only A5 chip with smaller node, and custom design(macroscalar), and higher clock.

A7 was a way larger chip in terms of registers in the Processor itself.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchitecture-detailed
64 bit architecture, didn't made a big difference in changing the power of the phone.

Here, in A8 we have increasing clock, and smaller technology process. If we add little changes to architecture itself - we end up in doubling the power of the chip. And 5000 points in Geekbench 3.
 
Most people here won't admit that. I don't care how optimized iOS is, 1gb of ram for almost anything in the 2nd half or 2014 is hard to defend. (but they still will)

Ram is the only thing I'll admit I wish apple would out more of in their devices across the board. It's especially bad in ios devices where there isn't even an option for a build to order upgrade. With that said, I don't think 1GB is too small for most users. I have never- not once- heard a friend, family member, or coworker (nearly all of whom use iPhone 4s/5 complain that their apps were crashing. Since I help most of them as their go to tech support guy I imagine if their phones were crashing they would ask me about it.
 
I wonder how the GPU will be, now that it's highly likely it will have a bigger screen.

Probably a minor improvement, after all the same GPU that powers the iPad powers the iPhone 5s.

heres hoping they keep 1gb ram so my ipad air is forced into obsolescence a little slower :p

When apple does finally bump to 2 gigs, it will be interesting to see how quickly devs (and apple as far as features go) drop support for 1gb devices

It'll be a while. Look how many apps still support 512 mb devices- there are millions of them out there. And there are even more 1 GB devices to write for. It'll just be "run apps designed for 1 Gb devices more comfortably".
 
I'm not doing either one. I am getting at Apple's hyperbole about "desktop performance" is really not about "desktop" as a general usage term.

That's incorrect. This is the actual slide:

apple-a7-soc-slide-640x514.jpg


As you can see, it says "“64-bit desktop-class architecture”. It doesn't mean the A7 is as fast as a desktop CPU that has a lot higher power usage. It means the processor architecture is on the level of the processors architecture used for desktops. It's actually not even a hyperbole.
 
There are smartphones with octa-core processor (MTK6592) which cost less than $200 without a contract.

Yes, you heard it right: octa-core! for less than $200. :apple: stopped real innovation after Jobs death :(
 
heres hoping they keep 1gb ram so my ipad air is forced into obsolescence a little slower :p

When apple does finally bump to 2 gigs, it will be interesting to see how quickly devs (and apple as far as features go) drop support for 1gb devices

Seeing as how ios 8 supports devices with half a gig of ram I think you'll be fine for awhile.
 
Precisely the masses are using less computing power. This is great because we will potentially see prices go down for entry-level laptops

So the argument for moving to ARM has switched from "it will be as powerful" to "it doesn't matter if it's less powerful, people don't need that much power anyway". And then after that, it will change to something else.

https://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/0...eculation-on-processor-architecture-advances/

This. A6 was in fact only A5 chip with smaller node, and custom design(macroscalar), and higher clock.

A7 was a way larger chip in terms of registers in the Processor itself.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchitecture-detailed
64 bit architecture, didn't made a big difference in changing the power of the phone.

Here, in A8 we have increasing clock, and smaller technology process. If we add little changes to architecture itself - we end up in doubling the power of the chip. And 5000 points in Geekbench 3.

It does help with benchmarks, though.
 
I agree its not an all encompassing benchmark - but we're comparing two completely different architectures and two different types of software (iOS vs OS X have some very different priorities).

The tool being used is minimizing the architectures and OS. Pushed into the narrow confines of primarily just measuring integer/floating point math operations the architectures aren't particularly going to matter a whole lot (presuming competent implements for each arch). A hefty portion of the numbers are going to boil down just to clock speed and the effectiveness ( large enough aspect) of the cache system. Most of the code/data is pulled into the core and crunched on. That is largely going to boil down to the throughput of cranking through the operations. (some branching but most synthectic benchmarks lower that from general usage. )


What you are measuring to a large extent is a closing gap on a combination of TDP and clockspeed. That says little about desktops or applicability of the OS apps in general.


I never claimed that the entire Mac line would run on ARM chips in the next year. Simply that an A8, if we see the same performance increase we've seen over the last 4 years, will be plenty powerful enough to run the base model MBA and potentially Mac Mini.

Not sure when the Mini was suppose to be dragged backward into the performance space that the MBA has occupied. Apple could go into that direction in the future, but it is a dubious one.

In 4 years ARM chips will run at where laptop and bottom feeding desktops run now. Well gee-whiz. Imagine that? Computers faster in the future. Revolutionary concept. *cough*. The implicit presumption here is that desktop and laptop needs will stand still over these 4 years.

Intel's ULV and Atom lineups are far more so focused that the moment in taking on ARM in TDP , cost (in case of Atom) , and space utilization rather than in general core performance. It isn't really a huge surprise that they are converging a bit on raw general purpose core performance. That really says very little about desktop performance at all unless "desktop" performance becomes equivalent with stagnant desktop workload demands.

The main laptop and desktop line ups have different constraints and grow paths.


The goal would be maximum battery life for the MBA -

If users put an increasing premium on battery life then yeah top end performance will trail off. That makes almost zero sense in the "desktop" space though.... as there are generally no battery life in the equation.


while I don't know enough about Intel chip architecture to know what the benefits of an A8 would be in the Mac Mini (a computer that is always plugged in).

About zero benefits for a Mini or anything else in the individual user desktop class. [ maximum dense pack multiuser servers there is some marginal (and shrinking) benefits ]


Perhaps the ability for an almost pocketable desktop?

Pocketable and desktop are an oxymoronic combination. Either the system is designed for a pocket or a desktop... Neither one of those are the other one.

A Chromecast/HDMI dongle computer would need a new category. It is possible (e.g., complete voice and wireless interaction ), but it is a different genre.



Splitting the Mac product line up makes little to no sense. The 68K -> PPC move was complete. The PPC -> Intel move was complete. There is no huge upside in a partially complete move.

A8 (and future ) solutions being more competitive with bottom end OS X solutions largely will mean more OS X cannibalization ; not fragmented OS X product line up. Apple already has a succesful OS running on top of an ARM platform.
 
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There are smartphones with octa-core processor (MTK6592) which cost less than $200 without a contract.

Yes, you heard it right: octa-core! for less than $200. :apple: stopped real innovation after Jobs death :(

What phone? Also your definition of innovation is crap if you think it means cramming the most specs into something cheap.
 
some crappy mediatek chip in a crappier phone yea

Yeah I just looked it up... No LTE, wifi is b/g. Not even wireless N. Doesn't specify which Bluetooth chip it's running but I would bet it's not BLE. Overall it's a **** phone running old software that will never be updated, with **** hardware. It's only "strong" spec is a octa core processor which I'm certain is horribly inefficient compared to anything an iPhone or high end android phone would use.
 
That's incorrect. This is the actual slide:

Image

As you can see, it says "“64-bit desktop-class architecture”.

Desktop has zero to do with what is listed below that line. All of those appeared in CPUs that existed long before any of that make it to any desktop system. So they they are not representative of desktop. Merely a particular stage of architecture implementation.

. It's actually not even a hyperbole.

Apple is using the "deskstop" exactly to get the effect this thread started off with on the quote of "desktop performance". It is also going to stir the pot on OS X going ARM rumors and the rest. In the sense it is terminology to feed the hype machine .... yes it is quite the hyperbole. Because it surely isn't technologically historically accurate. They are only pointing to the previous occurrence not the origins.
 
No. Geekbench 3 for mobile is only 32 bit. So you don't see in it benefit from using 64 bit architecture.

So from what then? ;)

I was under the impression that geek bench 3 was "optimized for iOS 7 and had full 64-bit processor support".
 
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