Given the common practices at other chip manufacturers, I would guess yes. You'll have to see the schematic to know for sure, however.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad Air 2 Benchmark Points to A8X Chip With Triple-Core 1.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Given the common practices at other chip manufacturers, I would guess yes. You'll have to see the schematic to know for sure, however.
With all this talk about the A8X, I'm really excited to see what the nexus 9 will have to offer. Ive been holding out on getting one, but with the way things are going, i might end up getting the air 2 instead.
well you guys got all what you wanted for the new ipad air 2 this year
2GB ram
touch id
and its lighter then last years ipad
its still $499 i find it odd with all the new stuff that apple has put in too this year ipad the price has not jump from $499 too $599 for the 16GB model but this will be a really big upgrade from last year and year past ipads
2GB ram
touch id
and its lighter then last years ipad
its still $499 i find it odd with all the new stuff that apple has put in too this year ipad the price has not jump from $499 too $599 for the 16GB model but this will be a really big upgrade from last year and year past ipads
I don't actually think the A8X's cores are anywhere near an i5 core in performance. It's just geekbench numbers with 2 different architectures. That wouldn't make any sense, it isn't as if intel is 10 years behind Apple/ARM in CPU tech which would be the only way to justify that.
Well, well, well. I wasn't going to upgrade from my iPad 3 unless it was going to be worth it. I definitely miss the snappiness that it had before upgrading to iOS 8. Sounds like the Air 2 is closer to becoming a definite buy. Will probably go ahead and get the 128GB version.
That's an easy claim to make. If it ever comes to pass we'll hear the real situation from developers.
"Recompiling for a new CPU is rarely a big deal, like it used to be."
It has come to pass. Apple has already required developers to do it at least twice for the Mac (from 68k to PPC Classic, and from PPC Cocoa to x86-64), and twice for iOS devices (from armv6 to armv7(s) to arm64, required for next year).
The first switch (68k to PPC) was not easy, but the last architecture recompile took less than a couple days for some minor fixes. It should be even easier for new apps written in Swift.
It has come to pass. Apple has already required developers to do it at least twice for the Mac (from 68k to PPC Classic, and from PPC Cocoa to x86-64), and twice for iOS devices (from armv6 to armv7(s) to arm64, required for next year).
The first switch (68k to PPC) was not easy, but the last architecture recompile took less than a couple days for some minor fixes. It should be even easier for new apps written in Swift.
We don't know yet whether Windows X will run on ARM.
I disagree, I think the vast majority of developers would be happy to recompile, and I would expect the relevant versions of Mac OS and XCode to make it reasonably pain free.
These benchmarks are truly incredible. iPad Air 2 is a no brainer upgrade for everyone regardless of what iPad currently owned. The performance is just mind blowing and there's not another tablet on the market that can compete with this.
I wouldn't make any assumptions about the ease of x86 based on changes between different versions of ARM. And suspect developers would rather speak for themselves than have people assume that new tasks for them would be really easy. Also let's not forget that many mac apps also run on windows, with devs using cross platform development tools that may or may not translate cleanly. Devs are pissed enough about things like changes to app signing and sandboxed plugins, it's hard to imagine that something like a whole new CPU couldn't add any extra work on their end. If nothing else, it's a lot more testing to make sure everything works properly.
It crushes your 2010 MacBook Pro without a fan, and using a chip likely fabricated in a low-power semiconductor process.
Imagine what Apple R&D could do if they tweaked the A8X circuit design and layout for a performance-oriented fab process, wider memory bus, bigger heat sink, and thus greater power envelope. They seem to be hiring enough engineers to do just that if Intel can't ship the processors that Apple wants on a timely basis.
Arm64 is nearly as different from armv7 as is ARM from x86-32. Modern OS X tools and coding practices make those transitions much less painful than in the past.
And Apple is never about making things easy for developers who want to live in the past. Apple has no problems "pissing off" developers to make things better or more secure for Apple's customers. They've done so plenty of times in their history, and developers follow or leave.
Not true at all. There are literally millions of users that wouldn't gain much from and upgrade due to their use cases. Even a well cared for ipad 2 still does the job for lots of people. The ipad 4 and Air are great tablets as is.
It's quite far away from a no brainer update. Not even close.
Good point. I suspect we'll find out in the coming months. I'll look forward to having that info.
Maybe... But in real world uses it just won't stack up to your machine as a "computer". Macs are just way more productive.
Those i5 scores you got from dividing by 4 the total multi-core score isn't correct for this estimate. The intel i5 and i7 in the 2014 models are actually just dual core units, each core capable of doing simultaneous multi-treading (SMT) at 2 threads per core. The single core scores are typically nearly twice what you calculated, since all the execution resources are available for 1 thread.
So, if you took the 2012 scores and divided by 4, you'd have ~2800. The new minis per core are at ~3200 as per your graph. The front page of MacRumors' original article links to the Geekbench scores, and this is the link:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/1043003 where it reads the single core score is 3087 for the new 2014 Mini with the i5 at 2.8 Ghz.
----------
PCs in the non-OSX world are typically not benched using Geekbench, so I have no idea how this would translate to performance biases and differences between architectures. Typically a review site like Anandtech would use quite a few benchmarks to compare architectures, although usually none of them is Geekbench.
Nice! Love how 46% (900+mb is free and chilling)
I've been interested in getting my first iPad since the third gen, but I was then waiting for a HD front FaceTime Camera. After that came in the 4th gen, I had a "feeling" the full size was going to go through a redesign to look like a bigger mini, which happened. Then when the Air 1 came out I was waiting for Touch ID and 2gigs of RAM. The new anti-reflective screen is icing on the cake. Def. going to purchase this iPad in 64 gigs.
Planning on holding off until Black Friday 2014 to get a major deal on this- last year I think Apple included a $75 Apple Store gift card with the iPad Air 1 for BlackFriday 2013.
Anyone know if last year for BlackFriday they allow a Education Student discount with the Black Friday promotion? I don't think they offered a Education Student store discount on iPads last year, but if anyone knows if they did this on the Mac I'd appreciate knowing.
Hello! Have you ever heard of Windows RT? But other than that, are you seriously assuming that most Mac customers are buying Macs in order to run Windows on them???
If Adobe CC and other creative software ran on ARM architecture, nothing would hold me back to get an ARM based Mac. And I believe this is the sinister plan, that Apple is pursuing in the near future...