Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Will the iPad Air 2 have a shorter life span due to its one-off tri-core processor?

S

saintforlife

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
1,046
329
This is from Anandtech's iPad Pro review:

First and foremost, the most unexpected news here is that unlike A8X, A9X is not packing a triple-core CPU. Instead A9X drops back down to just a pair of Twister CPU cores. The twist here is that relative to A8X and A9, Apple has cranked up their CPU clockspeeds. Way, way up. Whereas the iPad Air 2 (A8X) shipped at 1.5GHz and the iPhone 6s (A9) at 1.85GHz, the A9X sees Apple push their clockspeed to 2.26GHz. Not counting the architectural changes, this is 22% higher clocked than the A9 and 51% higher than the A8X.

The fact that Apple dropped back down to 2 CPU cores is unexpected given that we don’t expect Apple to ever go backwards in such a fashion, and while we’ll never know the official reason for everything Apple does, in retrospect I’m starting to think that A8X was an anomaly and Apple didn’t really want a tri-core CPU in the first place. A8X came at a time where Apple was bound by TSMC’s 20nm process and couldn’t drive up their clockspeeds without vastly increasing power consumption, so a third core was a far more power effective option.
Click to expand...

Does this mean the iPad Air 2 could have a relatively shorter app/developer support? Going forward could the developers leave out the iPad Air 2 because of its one-off tri-core processor architecture and app incompatibility, or will they just design all apps to work with two cores only leaving the 3rd core unused on the iPad Air 2?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billy95Tech
I would think it would have less of a lifespan because of having less RAM. I'll bet the new standard will be 4GB ram on iOS devices from now on.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billy95Tech
I'm no expert either, but I don't think that it works the way the OP suggests. I don't think that apps have to be specifically made to work with 3 cores or 2.
 
JT2002TJ said:
I would think it would have less of a lifespan because of having less RAM. I'll bet the new standard will be 4GB ram on iOS devices from now on.
Click to expand...

Really? Because the vast majority of iOS devices in the wild don't even have 2GB. The iphone and iPad Mini lines JUST got 2GB two months ago. 4GB won't be the "standard" on iOS for some time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Apple Human, XTheLancerX, Billy95Tech and 2 others
Won't see 4gb RAM in the iPhone till the iPhone 8 (that is, after 7 & 7S). If in doubt, look at history.

Air 2 will likely be very, very long lived, much like the iPad 2. I'd be surprised if the Air 3 had more than 2gb tbh.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billy95Tech and Lancetx
saintforlife said:
This is from Anandtech's iPad Pro review:



Does this mean the iPad Air 2 could have a relatively shorter app/developer support? Going forward could the developers leave out the iPad Air 2 because of its one-off tri-core processor architecture and app incompatibility, or will they just design all apps to work with two cores only leaving the 3rd core unused on the iPad Air 2?
Click to expand...
Apps are either written for a single core or multi core. The amount of cores really dosnt matter.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billy95Tech
yegon said:
Won't see 4gb RAM in the iPhone till the iPhone 8 (that is, after 7 & 7S). If in doubt, look at history.

Air 2 will likely be very, very long lived, much like the iPad 2. I'd be surprised if the Air 3 had more than 2gb tbh.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I think that 4GB of RAM will be a Pro exclusive feature for some time. The rest of the iOS line has only just gotten 2GB, and Apple doesn't typically make frequent leaps in this regard.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billy95Tech
The reason I say about the RAM is, my theory is as apps are developed for the pro, developers will advantage of the RAM, eventually maybe even the iphone 7, they will want access to it. It really isn't a "leap frog" to simply add more RAM... As long as the OS supports it (and we now know it does), it is simply a matter of adding the hardware.
 
joeblow7777 said:
I'm no expert either, but I don't think that it works the way the OP suggests. I don't think that apps have to be specifically made to work with 3 cores or 2.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I was not sure either. Maybe some developers can weigh in with their thoughts on whether core count matters when it comes to app development.
 
Core counts don't really matter for most developers unless they are explicitly trying to load all cores. Otherwise Grand Central Dispatch and other multithreading frameworks work on queues and will automatically load available cores.
 
Deleted in light of Gav2k's post.


saintforlife said:
This is from Anandtech's iPad Pro review:



Does this mean the iPad Air 2 could have a relatively shorter app/developer support? Going forward could the developers leave out the iPad Air 2 because of its one-off tri-core processor architecture and app incompatibility, or will they just design all apps to work with two cores only leaving the 3rd core unused on the iPad Air 2?
Click to expand...
 
As a developer, number of cores only time matters if you're doing something CPU intensive. Then it's s matter of optimizing any slow performance on the older hardware.

But as for actual software instructions? No, there's no difference.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billy95Tech
JT2002TJ said:
The reason I say about the RAM is, my theory is as apps are developed for the pro, developers will advantage of the RAM, eventually maybe even the iphone 7, they will want access to it. It really isn't a "leap frog" to simply add more RAM... As long as the OS supports it (and we now know it does), it is simply a matter of adding the hardware.
Click to expand...

Except, the Pro has a screen that is much larger in terms of pixels. Part of adding more RAM is so that you have somewhere to store the buffers needed for views and the like. So that's some of your memory usage. And if you are going to be multitasking more often on the larger screen, more RAM is useful there.

I suspect that whatever replaces the Air 2 will also have 2GB of RAM for a couple more years.

supersalo said:
As a developer, number of cores only time matters if you're doing something CPU intensive. Then it's s matter of optimizing any slow performance on the older hardware.
Click to expand...

As a developer as well, I'll add that how many cores does matter depending on how well an app can be made multithreaded. When you add cores, you can get speed gains if the work can be spread across them easily. That means you get it done faster, and get the CPU to sleep sooner, saving power. However, if the work cannot be parallelized as nicely, you want fewer, faster cores (like the Pro). And again it's about getting work done faster, so the CPU can go back to sleep sooner. I suspect the design of the Pro with two very fast cores is addressing the reality that the apps they want to run are still mostly single threaded. Even if that single thread is not the main thread (a technique for doing work in serial while still being responsive to events).
 
Krevnik said:
As a developer as well, I'll add that how many cores does matter depending on how well an app can be made multithreaded. When you add cores, you can get speed gains if the work can be spread across them easily. That means you get it done faster, and get the CPU to sleep sooner, saving power. However, if the work cannot be parallelized as nicely, you want fewer, faster cores (like the Pro). And again it's about getting work done faster, so the CPU can go back to sleep sooner. I suspect the design of the Pro with two very fast cores is addressing the reality that the apps they want to run are still mostly single threaded. Even if that single thread is not the main thread (a technique for doing work in serial while still being responsive to events).
Click to expand...

Yeah, the single core speed is the most important stat for real world usage IMO. No one will realistically be using these to build a render farm and the things you will do tend to be very interactive in real time, which is where it's hardest to parallelize. Two cores has consistently proven to be enough in practice for this type of system because you usually just need one core focused on your foreground task and another available to handle background/secondary functions.

To address the OP and the Anandtech article directly: It's an issue of perspective. If you are judging device performance by multicore benchmarks then it's possible the A8X will feel slower than this score would suggest. I would argue that you should really use single core benchmarks to judge CPU speeds, and in that context the A8X will perform exactly as its benchmarks suggest even if developers fail to make good use of all 3 cores. Even if Apple had gone with 2 cores last year, that doesn't mean they could have increased single core speed (they would have if it were realistic).
 
JT2002TJ said:
I'll bet the new standard will be 4GB ram on iOS devices from now on.
Click to expand...

I think so as well it use to be 2GB of RAM but now it is 4GB RAM the new standard on IOS devices especially on the Ipad.

Hopefully the Ipad Air 3 will have 4GB of RAM! :)
 
Billy95Tech said:
I think so as well it use to be 2GB of RAM but now it is 4GB RAM the new standard on IOS devices especially on the Ipad.

Hopefully the Ipad Air 3 will have 4GB of RAM! :)
Click to expand...

As I mentioned above, 4GB of RAM is definitely not the standard for iOS devices. Until 2 months ago, only one iOS device even had 2GB of RAM. The vast majority of iOS devices currently being used are equipped with 1GB of RAM. It will probably still be years before that changes.
 
The ipad mini 4 was just released this year and sports an A8 processor, which has fewer cores and lower clock speeds than the ipad air 2. Any software update which screws the ipad air 2 will affect the ipad mini 4, and Apple is obligated to support the mini 4 much longer (since it is a newer product).

I believe we won't have to worry about the Air 2 for some time. I like to think that it it this year's ipad released a year early. It should remain future-proof for some time to come.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back