Nah, you cannot assume that. Input lag is heavily dependent upon the controlling processors as well of course, and A14X is a brand new SoC.
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Kuo: Mini-LED Displays to Debut in Apple's Next iPad Pro
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Seems like the 11” Pro may be doomed, to be replaced by the near identical Air that was just announced.
I can understand the mini-LED being a big deal, but the rest of the iPad Pro, from a performance perspective won’t be a big deal. There is basically nothing available on the iPadOS App Store that pushes the current or previous iPad Pros with A12X/Z processors, and not much pushing more than 6GB of RAM.
Yes, for mini-LED manufacturing. Actual iPad Pros would come out a few months later.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Nice as the Air is, it still falls short of the 11" iPad Pro in several areas. No quad speakers, no 120Hz refresh (ProMotion), less RAM, less processing power, no FaceID, and less storage. Cameras don't seem like a big deal for a lot, but the lack cameras and LiDar may be another selling point. The Air is nice, but it's priced too close to the Pro.
100% EUV processing is just going to cost more. Substantively different ( and more expensive ) equipment and masks.
The per wafer Q3 2018 Q3 at 7m is $9.346 in that chart ( $16,988 for 5nm). The box highlighted in red is what counts. No where near $14K. The capital investment costs more so relates to how much Apple has to front TSMC in advance to keep the 'we come first' priority order. That isn't the wafer costs that users pay. that captial investment number if only going to go up from 5nm over time. Not down. ( the per ASML TwinScan fab node cost is going to be much higher. The facilities costs go up. TSMC has a relatively limited factory at this point. 7nm largely worked with more mature ASML equipment, not bleeding edge ones. TSMC bought more sooner in that rollout. )
The wafer costs are not going to shrink very far. The yields can go up so get more working chip dies per wafer, but unless using smaller dies to amortize higher wafer costs over more dies the cost of dies is going up. Even if 5nm wafer costs fell by $4K without an "exclusion, early access tax", it would still be $3.6K over 7nm prices. Roughly the same size die if get 500 dies per wafer is going to be a $15+ increase ( and $7.2 at reduced $3.6K. ) . The misc packaging and other costs are higher. Apple R&D costs higher.
All need is a $30-50 component costs increase for Apple to throw another $100 price increase on the price because Apple primarily does $x99 pricing (so increments are $100 ).
This is why the number of players at each round is getting smaller. ( e.g., Global Foundries passed on 7nm. ). Back when folks were doing 200nm fabrications there was an order of magnitude more folks to buy from. Now pragmatically down to two (plus eventually "in house" Intel who largely can't buy from).
Apple has stuff that is more competitive with AMD/Intel chips in part because Apple has been throwing more transistors at them. The A-X series isn't too far off in size at what Intel uses for U-laptop series CPU packages. The overall Apple A series package is smaller in part because the I/O off the package is dramatically more limited. but as far as silicon die costs go Apple is spending more money on that over time to help close the gap. .
P.S. It used to be a side effect of Moore's Law lead to cheaper silicon over time. That is pretty much over as push harder into the 5nm and lower zone unless go to much smaller dies. Even then.. can run into issues depending upon what trying to do.
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No. OLED screens don’t last as long and are likely to encounter burn in. Mini led does not encounter this problem.
Is burn in still an issue? Or rather, is burn in still an issue on Apple's OLED's they have Samsung build for them?
Apple uses OLED screens already such as the iPhone 11 Pro models. The life of OLED is similar to LCD/LED backlit. The size of screens would gain contrast improvements needs to somewhat larger to be effective. This is why Apple would only implement it in large iPad, laptop, and desktop designs. You can do a number of technical tricks to prevent OLED burn in. OLED offers the best PQ compared to current LCD/Led back lit solutions. Until we see microLED solutions miniLED is not a solution to phone applications.
It still possible to encounter it, if you don’t heed some guidance.
Don’t disable the pixel shifting (moves image by several pixels often)
Avoid long term static displays such as using the phone with car play for a long time. Try to use the car’s interface instead.
Enable Auto lock, and Auto brightness.
Enable True Tone if your phone offers it.
Simple turn down the brightness manually in control center.
Actually MiniLED was originally rumoured for the 2020 iPad Pro refresh, but it didn’t happen... why???
THIS IS MY THEORY
I believe the miniLED iPP was planned for a late 2020 release alongside the current iP Air (2 years since 2018 release) but sometime during late 2019 they got told the miniLED was delayed pushing the release date into early 2021 (2.5 years since 2018 release... too long for Apple).
At that point they decided instead of releasing what was planned above, they would release a minor spec bump in early 2020 (18 months refresh cycle since 2018 version) with the intention of releasing the miniLED version early 2021 (12 months refresh cycle since 2020 version).
Once this went into production the coronavirus happened... so whether the next iPP has been delayed by the coronavirus or not will determine whether the next gen will come early 2021 or late 2021, but we have to remember most countries are going to suffer more lockdowns over the next few months which is likely going to cause more delays unfortunately.
There were no legit rumours suggesting a 2020 H1 mini-LED release. Any suggestions of that would have just been wishful thinking. The absolute earliest would have been 2020 Q4 (with mini-LED panel production in Q3) but mini-LED production was delayed until 2020 Q4.
Furthermore, 5G was delayed because Intel choked hard, and Apple had to crawl back to Qualcomm at the last minute with $4.5 billion to secure the 5G chips for the iPhone and iPad Pro, with iPhones getting priority.
At the same time, 5 nm wouldn’t be going into high volume mass production until 2020 Q3 anyway, again with priority given to the iPhones with A14, and A14X delayed until Q4.
That’s my theory.
Both offer the same gamut coverage. Gamut has nothing to do with LEDs. It depends on the materials used inside the light source. Wide gamut light sources have been around for decades.
Although a row of function keys would be nice.
Agreed, but I'm sure the engineers/product guys at Apple probably argued about this for several years prior to release.
WHAT? NO MY NEW IPAD PRO THAT IS LITERALLY A MONTH OLD WILL BE OUTDATED *facepalm*
Following his report earlier this week indicating that Apple will be accelerating adoption of mini-LED displays in its iPad and Mac notebook lineups thanks to better than expected development from potential secondary supplier Sanan Optoelectronics, analyst Ming-Chi has released a new report today sharing a bit more perspective on the mini-LED display market as it relates to Apple.
Kuo says that Epistar remains Apple's initial partner for mini-LED chips, but that Sanan and others should be able to quickly join Apple's supply chain as existing patents are not expected to serve as significant barriers to entry. As a result, mini-LED efforts by Apple and its suppliers have effectively moved from the "technology development" stage to the "economies of scale/cost" stage.
While Sanan has seen rapid development of its mini-LED capabilities that could allow it ship large quantities of the chips to Apple in the first half of 2021, Kuo says that Epistar has experienced some yield issues that have led Kuo to reduce his fourth-quarter 2020 display shipment estimates by 50% to between 300,000 and 400,000.
Kuo has said that Apple has at least six iPad and Mac products with mini-LED displays in its pipeline for launch by the end of 2021, but he indicates that the initial batch of displays coming through the end of 2020 will be for an iPad Pro.Kuo has long predicted that a high-end 12.9-inch iPad Pro would likely be Apple's first mini-LED product.
As indicated in his earlier report, Kuo sees fierce price competition among Apple's mini-LED suppliers in 2021, predicting that Apple's costs for the mini-LED dies will drop by 50% in 2021 and a further 35% in 2022.
Mini-LED displays, which use on the order of 1,000 to 10,000 individual LEDs, can offer deeper, darker blacks, brighter brights, richer colors, and better contrast compared to traditional LED-based displays, though the technology comes at a significant increase in cost for the time being.
Article Link: Kuo: Mini-LED Displays to Debut in Apple's Next iPad Pro
The iPad Pro from 2020, or even 2018 won’t be dated for quite some time. They have the latest form factor, FaceID, ProMotion displays, massive performance.
Apple will not be comfortable enough to give so much of the Pro to the Air unless they have something in the pipeline that will blow us away. The 10.5 iPad Pro was a good product until the basic iPad got updated with pencil support. Then they launched the new design, which is the current FaceID Pros.
I can’t wait for the next iPP...
But I hope Mini-LED is stable and there aren’t too many bugs or issues. I imagine ProMotion will maybe get even better. Add that snd the A14X chip, 6GB of RAM, and a ton more... is pretty cool sounding. ✌️
But I hope Mini-LED is stable and there aren’t too many bugs or issues. I imagine ProMotion will maybe get even better. Add that snd the A14X chip, 6GB of RAM, and a ton more... is pretty cool sounding. ✌️
With the current iPP not meeting supply/demand, I can’t imagine Apple releasing a new version until the current version slows in sales.
March 2021 isn’t that long away, and to me I think it will be too soon for a refresh, we have to remember that the only thing which is (sort of) better in the air is the chip, other than that everything about the iPP is better.
Personally if a refresh of the iPP comes in March 2021 I don’t think it will be a direct replacement of the current 11” and 12.9” I think it would likely run alongside... with the new version named iPad Pro (miniLED) 12.9” which has an extra $200-$300 on the price for a better screen and the A14X/U1 chips inside.
This has happened before with the MacBook line when retina first came about, standard screen MacBooks and retina MacBooks got sold side by side initially with the retina’s costing an additional $200-$300.
I can imagine this happening through 2021 until the cost of the miniLED displays comes down, with the LCD display iPad Pro getting phased out in 2022.
March 2021 isn’t that long away, and to me I think it will be too soon for a refresh, we have to remember that the only thing which is (sort of) better in the air is the chip, other than that everything about the iPP is better.
Personally if a refresh of the iPP comes in March 2021 I don’t think it will be a direct replacement of the current 11” and 12.9” I think it would likely run alongside... with the new version named iPad Pro (miniLED) 12.9” which has an extra $200-$300 on the price for a better screen and the A14X/U1 chips inside.
This has happened before with the MacBook line when retina first came about, standard screen MacBooks and retina MacBooks got sold side by side initially with the retina’s costing an additional $200-$300.
I can imagine this happening through 2021 until the cost of the miniLED displays comes down, with the LCD display iPad Pro getting phased out in 2022.
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No but I could see it with Pencil, max storage, Magic Keyboard, and AppleCare coming in around $2500. Still very expensive.