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New iPad Pro's A10X Chip Revealed as First Manufactured Using TSMC's 10nm Process
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Yep, until next year, and we get a near bezel-less iPad, with the home button remove. I see this happening around iOS 12 time next year. The 12.9-inch iPad will probably be around the same size as the 10.5-inch (2017), with the home button remove. Niiice.I think I'm good with my iPP 10.5 for the next 3 years. Yes I say this every year when I upgrade my iPad, but with the ultra smooth 120Hz display and the super fast processor, as well as 256GB storage, there's really nothing left that I would want in my iPad. But of course Apple is quite good at coming up with stuff you didn't know you wanted, such as the 120hz display which was quite a surprise.
The new 10nm process might explain the excellent battery life I'm getting, ~12hrs easily just media consumption. The 9.7 Pro I struggled to get 9-10. I definitely thought battery life was worse than the Air 2 when I got the iPP 9.7 last year.
Yes nothing left wanting. Until next year
Is Samsung using 10 nm chips in their Galaxy phones ? they don't even use their chips in all their phones.
I am sure apple chip design has to change in order to make 10 nm chips.
I did the same exact thing. In the end, I couldn't justify the hefty price tag going from my 9.7 pro to 10.5 (although the 120hz makes it feel SO DAMNED FAST). The 10.5 plus iOS 11 though are really a killer combo.
I'm not sure what is currently being FAB'd by Samsung's 10nm process. Probably their Exynos or RAM modules.
And Design of a CPU does'nt have to change on a node change. Existing designs can be shrunk to fit the new node. They yield better thermals, allowing for increase in clockspeeds, but not much else.
Intel For example did this regularly as part of their "Tick , TocK" model.
The "Tick" would be a move to a new node / fabrication process
the "Tock" would be a new microarchitecture.
just because TMSC is moving to 10nm, doesn't mean the A10x is a new design.
Oh ok. I thought I was enjoying the amazing speed of my new iPad. I guess I was mistaken.
Lotsa space there for Apple to provide their own GPU/neural net processor/throughput engine in the A11 and A11X...
Add that to proper depth processing cameras and you ain't seen nothing yet as far as ARKit goes...
TSMC's design rules for their various processes are somewhat generous, I believe, compared to what somebody would do with their own in-house process. Why? Well, TSMC has to fab for a wide variety of customers. When you have your own fab you can tweak things and be a bit tighter with design rules, optimising the relationship between your process, design rules & how they are catered for in your CAD tools, to pack more devices in to the same area on the die.
Remember also that it's not just how small the transistors are, but also the minimas between metal tracks that connect them can have a big impact. So smaller transistors doesn't necessarily translate to more devices per unit area...
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Yes, AND you don't design at this level without paying very special attention to the process you are fabbing on - a few generations back Apple had TSMC and Samsung manufacture on 14 & 16nm process nodes. Those may have been the same circuit at the RTL/function level, but they were quite different circuits in reality - 2 quite separate layouts in some areas because design rules, electrical rules etc would mean different metal densities for example, resulting in different sizes/shapes for core blocks of logic, and so on and so on...
So Apple would have had to choose to work with TSMC and that 10 nm or 7nm process, it's not as simple as handing over a schematic. TSMC would be doing all they can with their design & electrical rules to make it easier for clients to migrate from one process node to the next, and that's another reason why their 10nm process is barely better in some respects than Intel's 14nm process...
I must say the new iPad Pro's have the best displays I've seen on Apple mobile devices, barring MacBook Pros. The dynamic refresh rate must be experienced in person. I've never had a smoother, more responsive iOS experience and I own an iPhone 7 plus which is damn smooth. They just took it to another level with the A10X and 120 Hz refresh. I was going to just keep using my old iPad Air but I'm seriously considering picking one of these up when I can get one NIB for a 20% discount on Craigslist in a couple of months. They will really shine with iOS 11, the macOS style dock and the new files app. Great product.
Should we be impressed with Apple, or worry about flying in planes with such avionics?
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I think the iPP is already at the limit of bezel width. With the edge of my left thumb touching the screen when held in portrait, occasionally it affects using the four finger gesture to get back to the home screen.
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Your friendly neighborhood iPad mini post here reminding everyone that an iPad mini would be great with one of these new processors...and that 120Hz display and stereo speakers...and 3D Touch.. !!
Nanometers are so last week. I'm holding out for femtometer processes. Femtometers are fetch.
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NO IPAD MINI FOR YOU! COME BACK ONE YEAR!
Better to produce an over-powered, efficient processor that's more future proof than developing a processor that does just what you need it to do and a little more. One allows you more development time, the other requires constant development to keep up and appease customers.
Good on you for that. I use my iPad as much as I can but it does not work for my line of work. For work, presentations, reports, and spreadsheets are necessary. Sad to say but iOS just underperforms in those categories. For some of my other work, screen real estate key and having 1-2 external displays is highly recommended, even with "multiple desktops".
Still, if Apple keeps catching up with its chip development, the A-series just may beat out Intel on the low end. With a little more work they might catch Intel on the high end, too.
Wow, somebody said this! The welder built the Eiffel tower, the brick maker designed the Colosseum, etc.!
To be explicit, sub 10nm machining technology has existed for more than a decade, nano-tubes are NOT news, and how to use steam is more important than burning wood to boil water!
The logic is simple. More isn't always better, especially when you are not getting more of what you want, but instead being saddled with more issues to contend with. The iPad forces a simplified model of computing upon its users, and for many people, that simplicity was what was desperately missing from the PC era.
Complexity is not the main selling point of the iPad. Simplicity is. And you can't make an iPad more like a Mac without also compromising the essence of what the iPad stands for - computing made simplified for the mass consumer.
Claiming an iPad sucks just because it can't do everything a laptop can is making the classic "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will fail" fallacy again.
First, it (erroneously) assumes that a laptop was already a perfect fit for users in the first place. Prior to the iPad, people had to get a computer to do basic tasks like checking email not because a computer was the best device for the job, but because that was the only option there was. The smartphone and the tablet brought a new experience to the table because it handled a common workflow in a different way. It would be inferior in some aspects, but superior in other aspects, but the strengths would far outweigh the bad.
I think Apple has done a marvellous job of introducing new features to the iPad without compromising its simplicity. That's what I want to see Apple continue doing, and not shoehorn legacy PC features into a modern tablet platform.
GoodWheaties said: Who would of thought 20 years ago we would be carrying a device that weighs just over [U said:
I did. but nobody believed me! They said I watched too much Star Trek
Possibly because you (GoodWheaties) were talking in inches! No scientist, even in the USA, respects the Imperial system.
Calculating 1/64, and 1/128 gets in the way of progressive thinking, whether you are a 9 year old, or a 11th grade physics student, all the way up to the Hubble telescope.
Why are we so fluent in micro, nano, pico to femto, and, mega, giga, tera and still resist meter, gram and litre?
This is why we import East and South Asian brains while our children are happy with social studies, literature and marketing!
Hmm, I'm often curious about the specifics of statements like these.
What Mac features do you NOT want to see on an iPad?
What iOS features (not omissions) do you NOT want on the Mac?
Since "Back to the Mac" OS X Lion days, iOS and the Mac have been on a path towards convergence.
"iOS is OS X" -Steve Jobs
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I don't think iOS is innovating at all, just catching up with features that are LONG overdue.
That said, I don't think iOS needs to "run like a Mac". It just needs power features, not shoehorning a mouse-based OS into a touch-based one.
iOS is, and always has been, Mac OS "Touch".
The problem lies in its crippled, locked-down, Apple-centric and Apple-controlled software design.
Thus the Mac offers freedom that we can only hope iOS devices will get.
Google and Microsoft have already shown that touch and mouse can co-exist in the same device quite effectively, letting us choose which one we want to use based on the particular situation and OUR preference.
There's no reason why iOS, aside perhaps from unknown-to-me-code-related ones, or Apple greed, laziness, lack of vision, or stubbornness, cannot have mouse support too.
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One of the best features of MacRumors is the ability to "ignore" users who are just here to troll. Initially I was routinely "ignoring" 5-10 trolls/day. Now the number is one or two/week, and there are still way more than enough posts to read.