So we all know that the iPad Air 2 has more RAM and a much faster CPU. However, the early benchmarks also show something else: It has really fast flash storage! http://www.iphonebenchmark.net/diskmark_chart.html
So what does this mean? It means apps will be loaded from disk even fastereven when opening for the first time. But beyond the obvious speed improvements, what else could it mean?
Well, one initial thought is the potential for iOS to get disk caching. For those who aren't in the know, this would enable apps like Safari to store even more idle tabs and quickly resume them when switching back. It would allow apps like Photoshop to cache large files with lots of layers to disk when the machine runs out of RAM. It opens up a lot of possibilities, and makes RAM less of an issue than it was before. RAM is always faster, but caching still helps.
Now I'm not saying that Apple has implemented this. A number of factors come into play here: Is the new flash memory robust enough to handle the more demanding read/write cycles that this type of caching involves? Is it easy to optimize iOS to feature disk caching? A feature like this may very well come in iOS 9. But now that we have a drive that seems to be really fast, it greatly enhances the possibility. Hopefully teardowns will reveal that we now have a proper SSD type controller.
Caveat: This particular testing suite seems to show the iPad lagging behind in graphics, so it clearly isn't optimized for the new hardware. Could it also be showing a false positive for faster drive speed tests?
So what does this mean? It means apps will be loaded from disk even fastereven when opening for the first time. But beyond the obvious speed improvements, what else could it mean?
Well, one initial thought is the potential for iOS to get disk caching. For those who aren't in the know, this would enable apps like Safari to store even more idle tabs and quickly resume them when switching back. It would allow apps like Photoshop to cache large files with lots of layers to disk when the machine runs out of RAM. It opens up a lot of possibilities, and makes RAM less of an issue than it was before. RAM is always faster, but caching still helps.
Now I'm not saying that Apple has implemented this. A number of factors come into play here: Is the new flash memory robust enough to handle the more demanding read/write cycles that this type of caching involves? Is it easy to optimize iOS to feature disk caching? A feature like this may very well come in iOS 9. But now that we have a drive that seems to be really fast, it greatly enhances the possibility. Hopefully teardowns will reveal that we now have a proper SSD type controller.
Caveat: This particular testing suite seems to show the iPad lagging behind in graphics, so it clearly isn't optimized for the new hardware. Could it also be showing a false positive for faster drive speed tests?