So, A8 has 2bn transistors vs 1bn for A7. But CPU is only 25% faster, maybe due to a higher clockspeed (which means same number of xtors for the CPU) and GPU is only 50% faster. If GPU was 50% of the area of A7, then that means another 250mn xtors for the A8 GPU vs A7.
So, question is - what is the use of the other 750mn xtors?? seems a large number of xtors to waste...
And yes, the transistor density seems to higher than the 14nm Core-M from Intel ;-P
One thing that you have to keep in mind is that Intel always publishes their schematic transistor count. The real transistor count is likely quite a bit higher.
The main reason why this claim from Apple doesn't seem right is because if they doubled the amount of transistors and reduced the die area by 25%, this is a lot more than the 1.9X increase in density that was claimed.
Just stop acting like the Intel shill that you are Intel core M had 1.3bn transistors and an area of 82 sqmm. So, 1.6bn xtors per 100sqmm Apple A8 has 2bn xtors and an area of 89 sqmm. So, 2.25bn xtors per 100 sq mm
Those numbers are not even in the same ball park. The xtor density that TSMC 20nm offers is much better than Intel's so called 14nm. Or is that still in doubt because you posted a link to some marketing slide from Intel??
-28nm and 22nm have about the same density -14nm has a 2.2X higher density than 22nm -20nm has a 1.9X higher density than 28nm (those numbers are theoretical limits)
According to your calculation, that would mean that 20nm somehow manages to get a 3.1X increase in density as opposed to the realistic 1.9X, which nicely fits in Moore's Law.
So I wouldn't buy too much into Apple marketing talk.
Actually, you could be right. The reason being that Apple's A8 SoC is optimized for density (most of the SoC doesn't have to run at high frequencies and the CPU is only a small fraction of the die), while Broadwell uses transistors optimized for performance and power, because it has to run a up to 2.6GHz.
So this is not an apples to apples comparison. You'd have to compare *at least* Cherry Trail with A8 to get a fair comparison. Those should be about equal.
Remember Apple's goal is not to win some dick-measuring contest, it's to provide what they consider to be the best balance between - snappy (peak) performance - sustained performance - battery life Going forward their best bet is probably to follow the Intel track as much as possible, meaning they stick with this sort of low frequency but keep providing better and better turbo.
Another possibility (something Apple hasn't done that much yet but could going forward) is to be much more aggressive with binning. We could have something like the 6+ getting 100MHz faster CPU than the 6, and the mythical iPad Pro (or iPad+???) getting the very fastest chips that can be binned. That way Apple can shut up some of the criticism of "slow frequencies" by shipping some devices that are running at 1.8MHz or whatever.
and there was me thinking that apple's goal was to earn the largest profit possible. But it turns out that they are this altruistic entity doing the best they can for their customers....
Core M die is the same of standard Broadwell U 2+2 and these SKUs must clock at well over 3Ghz Turbo. Obviously a fast SKU is less denser than a low/medium perf SOC, at least i hope you know this........
A8 refers to the *SoC*. THAT has twice as many transistors. Where do the extra transistors go?
Probably quite a few went to the h.265 engines. (Those APPEAR to be part of the system though they were not called out in the keynote. They are referred to in the iPhone6 FaceTime sections on apple.com. My theory is that Apple had a grand plan for announcing h.265 support everywhere simultaneous with 4K movie support and retina iMacs and MBAs. The Broadwell delay has sunk those plans, so the h.265 support will be there, but unpublicized for a while.)
Likewise improved ISP.
I also suspect (hope!) that the focus of the A8 CPU redesign was the uncore not the core. This is what I suggested a few weeks ago --- the core is basically unchanged except manufactured in 20nm and so faster [and perhaps various circuit tweaks for power] --- but the uncore (L2, L3 cache, how the GPU and CPU communicate) has been dramatically improved. Remember the L3 cache on the A7 is 150 cycles from the CPU! Hopefully this number has come down to something reasonable like 50 cycles. One likewise hopes for more efficient communication between the two cores and the GPU for maintaining coherency --- stuff that's not sexy but which you need to get right to maintain speed going forward.
Something else that has not been mentioned. What's the SoC/CPU for the watch? Hypothesis --- it's the A6 substantially trimmed and updated? Is one reason the A8 has limited improvements that the best of the team were working on optimizing the S1?
A higher frequency design also needs transistors. For example if the routing is different or the pipeline has more stages. You are confusing it with overclocking. Which is a completely different story.
And transistors can also be spend on non-performance features like power saving mechanisms. More cache can also lead to significant more transistors.
no about 5% faster in actual real world experience ...kinda strange right ...well ...at least MIPS is taking risks ...and i assume a couple of us will go back and remember just how great MIPS actually is compared to ARMS licensing models.
The iPhone 7 (ie 5s) SHOULD have had 4GB, the 5 (ie 5) SHOULD have had 2. It's utterly inane if this STILL only has 1GB.
I find the new iPhones attractive and tempting...but I've had FOUR Lightning connectors fail on my now, most recently in my 5s, so I've switched to a Windows Phone + iPod combination for the time being.
'inane' means sort of pointlessly stupid. I think you meant 'insane', as in really kinda crazy.
The thing is, more RAM uses more battery. I'm not sure how much, but my 4 GB Surface Pro's RAM will drain 15%-20% of my battery in a night.
Honestly, we need AnandTech to measure this kind of thing. How much is RAM? How much is leakage through the rest of the platform?
Also, 4 GB is about the least you can use, these days. In 2009, 1 GB was the least you would need. In another five years, will people be complaining when laptops only have 16 GB? One of the reasons Apple is keeping low amounts of RAM is that it forces developers to handle their resources better. There's no reason they should even need 1 GB, unless you're dealing with a game that has lots of texture resources.
First of all, the power consumption an extra 1GB of LPDDR3 is quite negligible (Android phones are living proof). In the iPhone's case, it's quite the opposite if you're going from 1GB to a *much needed* 2GB, since the amount of power you'll save when you don't have to reload every app or browser tab is far greater than what that extra GB would consume. That, and the fact that memory management is supposedly more efficient on iOS and thus RAM operations aren't as active as they would be on Android.
Just 20% faster (I think they said that, not 25)...If the RAM isn't doubled, that's hardly worth a SoC name iteration. Seems like that doubling single thread performance every year cadence has finally hit its wall. Quads with 6S I wonder?
The A7 core is probably already as wide as in Intel Core CPUs so getting more single thread performance is very difficult. Well you could make it wider but using it 100% for a single thread would be hard. That's why with Hyper threading in some cases you can inrease one core's performance nearly by 100% as the core has so many unused resources for a single thread alone.
The Broadwell Y thing you buy --- the little tiny PCB with the die on it --- is 500 mm^2. That's not exactly comparable, but is the relevant number in terms of space it will take up in the phone. The number of transistors is 1.3B which sounds like less than A8 (is less than A8!) but remember that's for just the CPU and GPU, whereas for A8 it's also all the other stuff on the chip. It's probably reasonable to peg Broadwell Y at something like 50% more transistors than the equivalent parts of the A8. a
That's why I'm thinking they may cave in and add more cores, as going wider has limitations on performance gains, while raising clock speeds is undesirable for power draw.
Power consumption still takes precedence and more RAM takes more power. Then again, Apple has been aggressive with the L3 cache which enables the memory bus to enter a deep sleep state more often. One would think that that'd mitigate some of the power consumption issues with more memory. Perhaps it is the new iPads this year that will receive additional memory?
I'm actually surprised that they didn't include SMT in this iteration. I can see this being a win in several low power scenarios outside of just performance. (Why wake up the second core when you have SMT during communication bursts?)
Going with the power consumption theme, I don't see Apple going quad in the iPhone 6S. Rather I see either SMT and/or a triple core design. It also wouldn't surprise me to see an A9X chip for iPads if/when this happens. Having the iPad go quad core makes more sense than in a phone.
Refreshing tabs and apps would also take power, the CPU would have to stay awake longer, and NAND would have to be accessed. I wonder if that extra GB of RAM would really take more power than it would save.
I would say this is rather a tock and pretty big one, but on power efficiency, not performance. Like haswell but better. Look you got 25% better CPU 50% better graphics and all of that for supposedly half the power. This thing pulls so little that hey even pulled off an "sustained performance graph"....
OH YEAH like really Apple A8 is not only faster than A7 but it's supposed to not throttle at all in a device that measures 6,9 mm in the thickest point (the camera). That means that after few minutes of Heavy CPU load A7 throttles to 0,9 Ghz and at that time A8 would be about 80% faster AND at lower power as well.
The real question is what would keep a sustained CPU load for that long in a normal phone usage scenario? The only thing coming to mind would be gaming.
The GPU is certainly the GX6650, as revealed by the "sustained performance". Imagination Technologies talked about achieving NO THERMAL THROTTLING in that GPU, on their blog.
The full potential of the A8 SoC will obviously be unleashed in the upcoming iPad. The amazing efficiency of the SoC should allow for some hefty over clocking, both for the GPU and CPU.
Don't think they will change the A8 in the iPad that much, they will probably focus on battery life. Like A7 brought iPad graphics performance to the iPhone and rather impressive battery life to the iPad thanks to it being build for a low powered phone. I expect the same to happen this year, but you never know.
If they upgraded to 2GB I don't see why they would remain mum. $600 for a phone with 16GB of NAND and 1GB of RAM in late 2014 seems kind of ridiculous.
I just can't believe they would stay on 1GB, that would be unprecedented, even for Apple. They usually double memory capacity on their non-S generations.
Let's not forget that one of the big drives for Android L is to ditch Dalvik for ART where one of the large benefits will be to reduce Android memory bloat. Try not to get upset that iOS doesn't need 3 Gigs of RAM to function.
It does seem to want 2GB with these 64 bit versions though. It shows because tasks are dropped and tabs fall out of memory rather quickly. That's with iOS 7; iOS 8 adds a pile of new features like extensions that will increase memory pressure further.
This argument makes me want to slam my head into a wall, no offense. iOS takes less RAM, I'm perfectly happy with that. However, they don't magically reduce how much RAM several browser tabs or apps take, and I find myself frustrated by how often both are kicked out of memory and need a reload on 1GB iOS devices.
Agreed. I'm forced to use an iPad Air and iPhone 4 for work. The iPhone 4 kicks tabs and apps out of memory *constantly*, but that would be expected given its age. However, even the iPad Air has the same behavior (if not *quite* as bad). This can only be attributed to the low amount of RAM and/or crappy OS/Safari design.
With Core M benchmarks out, A8 can't hold a candle to Core M cpu performance but on the GPU side it is probably close. Apple will have to use a higher binned A8 for their IPADs surely if MS adopts Core M in their surface tablets to be competitive. MS has a good shot at beating the IPAD pro or an IPAD air if they can adopt Core M for the regular Surface and keep Core i3/i5 U series for the Surface Pro.
Why would Apple _have to_ do anything? And _what_ exactly would Microsoft beat them at? Theoretical CPU performance? Where do you need that in a tablet?
Apple doesn’t have to beat anyone at this point, they just have to stay competitive. Although my guess is that they will still beat—or try to—whomever they compete against directly. Right now those are Android tablets and phones, though.
My guesses for where the xtra 1B xtors were spent -
1. Increase in system cache size from 4 MB to 8-12 MB. 4MB cache =~ 200-250M xtors 2. Extra GPU shader cores 3. Face detection DSP/Computer Vision HW 4. CPU uarch tweaks
The apple way, selling over expensive crap to stupid consumers that like to get robbed.
This has been a disastrous launch in every respect. The iwatch is such an ugly piece of crap, it is truly unbelievable how a company, formerly known for its remarkable design, dares to put out such a crap ton of shit. Some characteristics are glaringly obvious and inherent to it: over expensive, hardly innovative, limited functionality and usability (need of an iPhone to make it work), looks exactly like a toy watch and so on.
There are of course way better smart watches out there, especially form the likes of Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Asus, LG, simply put, there is no need for another piece of over expensive junk.
The iPhone 6 is technologically stuck in pre-2011 times, a base model witch a capacity of 16GB without the possibility to use SD cards isn't even funny anymore. The screen resolution is horrendous, it isn't water proof, shock and dust resistant, it offers nothing innovative, just some incremental updates over its predecessor, both lacking severely behind their competitors at their respective launch dates.
Now the Iphone 6 Plus offers a „Retina HD“ screen, full 1920x1080p, oh wow, where have you been for the past 4 years apple, talk about trailing behind. That’s pathetic. The interesting thing about that is the fact that apple always manages to sell backwards oriented, outdated crap to its user base, all while pretending to be an innovative technology leader. The similarities regarding any form of sectarian cult are striking.
You gotta love how Apple always comes up with new marketing bullshit terms, aka "Retina HD", with the intention to manipulate its users while preventing easy comparisons with its competitors by withholding the actual specs. Apparently it’s not enough to have an 1080p screen, you have to call it "Retina HD" to make those suckers buy it, otherwise someone could look at the 4K Amoled and Oled screens form LG and Samsung devices and get outright disappointed. Same goes for everything else. Every outdated „feature“ needs to get its own marketing label to persuade buyers with crappy „experience“ and „usability“ ads, while covering the truth with marketing gibberish, knowing full well that only a fraction of aforementioned buyers cares to look at the facts and dares to compare them.
Car engines come to mind. For comparisons shake let’s look at a 1.0 liter, turbo charged petrol engine and a V8 compressor. What’s better should be obvious, but by calling the former an „ecobooster“, thus giving it a special marketing label, this joke becomes a „feature“, something positive that can be added tot the list of features of a car.
By doing so a negative aspect is transformed into a positive one, the reality is distorted, non tech savvy buyers are manipulated and comparisons are made more difficult (another layer of marketing bullshit to overcome), well done marketing department. You see , if something is seriously lacking (of course for profit, what else), don’t bother explaining, just give it a nice marketing term, distort reality, make it a feature and call it a day. Fuck that!!
The Apple Iphone 1 and Ipad 1 might have been innovative at their time, but since then, the bitten apple has been continuously rotting from the inside outwards, always swarmed by millions of Iworms which regale themselves with its rotten flesh, not forgetting all other Americans who support apple by means of their tax dollars to finance its bought US Treasury/Government bond interest rates.
Last but not least, every Apple product includes a direct hotlink to the nsa, free of charge, something that might make it a good value, after all.
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ancientarcher - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
So, A8 has 2bn transistors vs 1bn for A7. But CPU is only 25% faster, maybe due to a higher clockspeed (which means same number of xtors for the CPU) and GPU is only 50% faster. If GPU was 50% of the area of A7, then that means another 250mn xtors for the A8 GPU vs A7.So, question is - what is the use of the other 750mn xtors?? seems a large number of xtors to waste...
And yes, the transistor density seems to higher than the 14nm Core-M from Intel ;-P
Achtung_BG - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Apple A7all is 102mm2, 2 core CPU is 17mm2 and GPU is 22mm2.tipoo - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Larger L3/GPU cache?Kevin G - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That would be my bet as well.They also mentioned a new image sensor unit, so that likely accounts for a bit too.
tipoo - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The above post also assumes transistors scale with performance perfectly, it may take a lot more transistors just for that 50% GPU increase.DERSS - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
It could be RAM; now it is 2 GB versus 1 GB in A7.Remember that A8 is multi-layer system on chip, so 2 billion is total count of transistors in it.
anderct - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
still 1GB of RAM and the SOC does not dictate actual program RAM use.witeken - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
It is unlikely that 20nm is more dense than Intel's 14nm process: http://image.ofweek.com/uploadfile/newsimg/b/2014/...One thing that you have to keep in mind is that Intel always publishes their schematic transistor count. The real transistor count is likely quite a bit higher.
The main reason why this claim from Apple doesn't seem right is because if they doubled the amount of transistors and reduced the die area by 25%, this is a lot more than the 1.9X increase in density that was claimed.
Gondalf - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The reason is simple, A7 had >1B transistors, this means likely 1.5B or so but Apple never told us :Pmkozakewich - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
They could also have reduced non-transistor die area.ancientarcher - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Just stop acting like the Intel shill that you areIntel core M had 1.3bn transistors and an area of 82 sqmm. So, 1.6bn xtors per 100sqmm
Apple A8 has 2bn xtors and an area of 89 sqmm. So, 2.25bn xtors per 100 sq mm
Those numbers are not even in the same ball park. The xtor density that TSMC 20nm offers is much better than Intel's so called 14nm. Or is that still in doubt because you posted a link to some marketing slide from Intel??
witeken - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Okay, here are some facts:-28nm and 22nm have about the same density
-14nm has a 2.2X higher density than 22nm
-20nm has a 1.9X higher density than 28nm (those numbers are theoretical limits)
According to your calculation, that would mean that 20nm somehow manages to get a 3.1X increase in density as opposed to the realistic 1.9X, which nicely fits in Moore's Law.
So I wouldn't buy too much into Apple marketing talk.
DERSS - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
A8 is SOC that has 2 GB RAM in it as separate crystal that is layered over CPU-GPU one.witeken - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Actually, you could be right. The reason being that Apple's A8 SoC is optimized for density (most of the SoC doesn't have to run at high frequencies and the CPU is only a small fraction of the die), while Broadwell uses transistors optimized for performance and power, because it has to run a up to 2.6GHz.So this is not an apples to apples comparison. You'd have to compare *at least* Cherry Trail with A8 to get a fair comparison. Those should be about equal.
melgross - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The clock is just about the same. Last year it was 1.3GHz, and now it's 1.4GHz. That's almost nothing.name99 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Where did that 1.4GHz figure come from?Remember Apple's goal is not to win some dick-measuring contest, it's to provide what they consider to be the best balance between
- snappy (peak) performance
- sustained performance
- battery life
Going forward their best bet is probably to follow the Intel track as much as possible, meaning they stick with this sort of low frequency but keep providing better and better turbo.
name99 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Another possibility (something Apple hasn't done that much yet but could going forward) is to be much more aggressive with binning.We could have something like the 6+ getting 100MHz faster CPU than the 6, and the mythical iPad Pro (or iPad+???) getting the very fastest chips that can be binned. That way Apple can shut up some of the criticism of "slow frequencies" by shipping some devices that are running at 1.8MHz or whatever.
Alexey291 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
and there was me thinking that apple's goal was to earn the largest profit possible. But it turns out that they are this altruistic entity doing the best they can for their customers....Gondalf - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Core M die is the same of standard Broadwell U 2+2 and these SKUs must clock at well over 3Ghz Turbo.Obviously a fast SKU is less denser than a low/medium perf SOC, at least i hope you know this........
name99 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
A8 refers to the *SoC*. THAT has twice as many transistors.Where do the extra transistors go?
Probably quite a few went to the h.265 engines. (Those APPEAR to be part of the system though they were not called out in the keynote. They are referred to in the iPhone6 FaceTime sections on apple.com. My theory is that Apple had a grand plan for announcing h.265 support everywhere simultaneous with 4K movie support and retina iMacs and MBAs. The Broadwell delay has sunk those plans, so the h.265 support will be there, but unpublicized for a while.)
Likewise improved ISP.
I also suspect (hope!) that the focus of the A8 CPU redesign was the uncore not the core. This is what I suggested a few weeks ago --- the core is basically unchanged except manufactured in 20nm and so faster [and perhaps various circuit tweaks for power] --- but the uncore (L2, L3 cache, how the GPU and CPU communicate) has been dramatically improved. Remember the L3 cache on the A7 is 150 cycles from the CPU! Hopefully this number has come down to something reasonable like 50 cycles. One likewise hopes for more efficient communication between the two cores and the GPU for maintaining coherency --- stuff that's not sexy but which you need to get right to maintain speed going forward.
Something else that has not been mentioned. What's the SoC/CPU for the watch?
Hypothesis --- it's the A6 substantially trimmed and updated?
Is one reason the A8 has limited improvements that the best of the team were working on optimizing the S1?
lilmoe - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
All of that supposed "power" coupled with 1GB of RAM.... Brilliant.Sorry, had to take a little jab at you for last time :P
gruffi - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
A higher frequency design also needs transistors. For example if the routing is different or the pipeline has more stages. You are confusing it with overclocking. Which is a completely different story.And transistors can also be spend on non-performance features like power saving mechanisms. More cache can also lead to significant more transistors.
anderct - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
no about 5% faster in actual real world experience ...kinda strange right ...well ...at least MIPS is taking risks ...and i assume a couple of us will go back and remember just how great MIPS actually is compared to ARMS licensing models.Laxaa - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I'm guessing it still has only 1GB of RAM. That's at least what the rumors point to.MikeMurphy - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
They have to hold something back for the iPhone 6s.Wolfpup - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The iPhone 7 (ie 5s) SHOULD have had 4GB, the 5 (ie 5) SHOULD have had 2. It's utterly inane if this STILL only has 1GB.I find the new iPhones attractive and tempting...but I've had FOUR Lightning connectors fail on my now, most recently in my 5s, so I've switched to a Windows Phone + iPod combination for the time being.
mkozakewich - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
'inane' means sort of pointlessly stupid. I think you meant 'insane', as in really kinda crazy.The thing is, more RAM uses more battery. I'm not sure how much, but my 4 GB Surface Pro's RAM will drain 15%-20% of my battery in a night.
Honestly, we need AnandTech to measure this kind of thing. How much is RAM? How much is leakage through the rest of the platform?
Also, 4 GB is about the least you can use, these days. In 2009, 1 GB was the least you would need. In another five years, will people be complaining when laptops only have 16 GB? One of the reasons Apple is keeping low amounts of RAM is that it forces developers to handle their resources better. There's no reason they should even need 1 GB, unless you're dealing with a game that has lots of texture resources.
lilmoe - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
"more RAM uses more battery"First of all, the power consumption an extra 1GB of LPDDR3 is quite negligible (Android phones are living proof). In the iPhone's case, it's quite the opposite if you're going from 1GB to a *much needed* 2GB, since the amount of power you'll save when you don't have to reload every app or browser tab is far greater than what that extra GB would consume. That, and the fact that memory management is supposedly more efficient on iOS and thus RAM operations aren't as active as they would be on Android.
tipoo - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Just 20% faster (I think they said that, not 25)...If the RAM isn't doubled, that's hardly worth a SoC name iteration. Seems like that doubling single thread performance every year cadence has finally hit its wall. Quads with 6S I wonder?Infy2 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The A7 core is probably already as wide as in Intel Core CPUs so getting more single thread performance is very difficult. Well you could make it wider but using it 100% for a single thread would be hard. That's why with Hyper threading in some cases you can inrease one core's performance nearly by 100% as the core has so many unused resources for a single thread alone.Morawka - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
intel's die size's are in orders of magnitude bigger than these arm cores, yet they can still a 4.5 watt chip. very impressive intel.melgross - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
No, they're not. They are bigger, but not by orders of magnitude.mkozakewich - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
100-1000 times would be... what? 89 to 890 cm^2. That would be 10-30 cm on each side of a square. 89 mm^2 would be just less than 1 cm on each side.A single order of magnitude larger would be 890mm^2, or 30 mm (3 cm) on one side. Hmm, sure. Intel's chips are one order of magnitude larger, then.
name99 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
They ARE orders of magnitude more expensive! Broadwell Y (the 4.5W part) costs $281.name99 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The Broadwell Y thing you buy --- the little tiny PCB with the die on it --- is 500 mm^2.That's not exactly comparable, but is the relevant number in terms of space it will take up in the phone.
The number of transistors is 1.3B which sounds like less than A8 (is less than A8!) but remember that's for just the CPU and GPU, whereas for A8 it's also all the other stuff on the chip. It's probably reasonable to peg Broadwell Y at something like 50% more transistors than the equivalent parts of the A8. a
tipoo - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That's why I'm thinking they may cave in and add more cores, as going wider has limitations on performance gains, while raising clock speeds is undesirable for power draw.melgross - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
25% CPU, 50% GPU. Their numbers.Kevin G - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Power consumption still takes precedence and more RAM takes more power. Then again, Apple has been aggressive with the L3 cache which enables the memory bus to enter a deep sleep state more often. One would think that that'd mitigate some of the power consumption issues with more memory. Perhaps it is the new iPads this year that will receive additional memory?I'm actually surprised that they didn't include SMT in this iteration. I can see this being a win in several low power scenarios outside of just performance. (Why wake up the second core when you have SMT during communication bursts?)
Going with the power consumption theme, I don't see Apple going quad in the iPhone 6S. Rather I see either SMT and/or a triple core design. It also wouldn't surprise me to see an A9X chip for iPads if/when this happens. Having the iPad go quad core makes more sense than in a phone.
tipoo - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Refreshing tabs and apps would also take power, the CPU would have to stay awake longer, and NAND would have to be accessed. I wonder if that extra GB of RAM would really take more power than it would save.megakilo - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
So this is pretty much a tick. Shrink the die to save power + cost and also bump up freq a little bit.GC2:CS - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I would say this is rather a tock and pretty big one, but on power efficiency, not performance. Like haswell but better. Look you got 25% better CPU 50% better graphics and all of that for supposedly half the power. This thing pulls so little that hey even pulled off an "sustained performance graph"....OH YEAH like really Apple A8 is not only faster than A7 but it's supposed to not throttle at all in a device that measures 6,9 mm in the thickest point (the camera). That means that after few minutes of Heavy CPU load A7 throttles to 0,9 Ghz and at that time A8 would be about 80% faster AND at lower power as well.
saliti - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
LOL...........GC2:CS - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Ok ok... Get a bit too excited there... But what's wrong ?Kevin G - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The real question is what would keep a sustained CPU load for that long in a normal phone usage scenario? The only thing coming to mind would be gaming.jjj - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
"25% smaller than the A7"should be 13% smaller - that's what they said and how we all got to 89mm2.
PICman - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
When somebody shows you a graph for which not all of the axes are labeled, look out - they're lying.darkich - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The GPU is certainly the GX6650, as revealed by the "sustained performance".Imagination Technologies talked about achieving NO THERMAL THROTTLING in that GPU, on their blog.
The full potential of the A8 SoC will obviously be unleashed in the upcoming iPad.
The amazing efficiency of the SoC should allow for some hefty over clocking, both for the GPU and CPU.
Really looking forward to see that one.
GC2:CS - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Don't think they will change the A8 in the iPad that much, they will probably focus on battery life. Like A7 brought iPad graphics performance to the iPhone and rather impressive battery life to the iPad thanks to it being build for a low powered phone. I expect the same to happen this year, but you never know.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Ryan, has there been any word on memory capacity yet?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Nothing we can confirm.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Thanks, if they do stay on 1GB, that would be truly disappointing... and perplexing.Stochastic - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
If they upgraded to 2GB I don't see why they would remain mum. $600 for a phone with 16GB of NAND and 1GB of RAM in late 2014 seems kind of ridiculous.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I just can't believe they would stay on 1GB, that would be unprecedented, even for Apple. They usually double memory capacity on their non-S generations.QuantumKot - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Apparently A8 supports H.265 for FaceTime (and maybe not only). Is it the first phone with the advance codec?Lezmaka - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Is there anyone on staff there that will be able to do the kinds of things Anand used to do with investigating the architecture of the A8, etc.?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Yes (that would be me).hypopraxia - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That honestly cracked me up for a good 30 secs.tipoo - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
We need instruction widths and pipeline depths, damn it!:P
BillBear - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Let's not forget that one of the big drives for Android L is to ditch Dalvik for ART where one of the large benefits will be to reduce Android memory bloat. Try not to get upset that iOS doesn't need 3 Gigs of RAM to function.frostyfiredude - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
It does seem to want 2GB with these 64 bit versions though. It shows because tasks are dropped and tabs fall out of memory rather quickly. That's with iOS 7; iOS 8 adds a pile of new features like extensions that will increase memory pressure further.tipoo - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
This argument makes me want to slam my head into a wall, no offense. iOS takes less RAM, I'm perfectly happy with that. However, they don't magically reduce how much RAM several browser tabs or apps take, and I find myself frustrated by how often both are kicked out of memory and need a reload on 1GB iOS devices.kyuu - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Agreed. I'm forced to use an iPad Air and iPhone 4 for work. The iPhone 4 kicks tabs and apps out of memory *constantly*, but that would be expected given its age. However, even the iPad Air has the same behavior (if not *quite* as bad). This can only be attributed to the low amount of RAM and/or crappy OS/Safari design.arkhamasylum87 - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
With Core M benchmarks out, A8 can't hold a candle to Core M cpu performance but on the GPU side it is probably close. Apple will have to use a higher binned A8 for their IPADs surely if MS adopts Core M in their surface tablets to be competitive. MS has a good shot at beating the IPAD pro or an IPAD air if they can adopt Core M for the regular Surface and keep Core i3/i5 U series for the Surface Pro.xype - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
Why would Apple _have to_ do anything? And _what_ exactly would Microsoft beat them at? Theoretical CPU performance? Where do you need that in a tablet?Apple doesn’t have to beat anyone at this point, they just have to stay competitive. Although my guess is that they will still beat—or try to—whomever they compete against directly. Right now those are Android tablets and phones, though.
memorydude - Sunday, September 14, 2014 - link
My guesses for where the xtra 1B xtors were spent -1. Increase in system cache size from 4 MB to 8-12 MB. 4MB cache =~ 200-250M xtors
2. Extra GPU shader cores
3. Face detection DSP/Computer Vision HW
4. CPU uarch tweaks
AppleCrappleHater2 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
Worship the holy apple.The apple way, selling over expensive crap to stupid consumers that like to
get robbed.
This has been a disastrous launch in every respect. The iwatch is such an
ugly piece of crap, it is truly unbelievable how a company, formerly known for
its remarkable design, dares to put out such a crap ton of shit. Some
characteristics are glaringly obvious and inherent to it: over expensive,
hardly innovative, limited functionality and usability (need of an iPhone to
make it work), looks exactly like a toy watch and so on.
There are of course way better smart watches out there, especially form the
likes of Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Asus, LG, simply put, there is no need for
another piece of over expensive junk.
The iPhone 6 is technologically stuck in pre-2011 times, a base model witch
a capacity of 16GB without the possibility to use SD cards isn't even funny
anymore. The screen resolution is horrendous, it isn't water proof, shock and
dust resistant, it offers nothing innovative, just some incremental
updates over its predecessor, both lacking severely behind their competitors at
their respective launch dates.
Now the Iphone 6 Plus offers a „Retina HD“ screen, full 1920x1080p, oh wow,
where have you been for the past 4 years apple, talk about trailing behind.
That’s pathetic. The interesting thing about that is the fact that apple
always manages to sell backwards oriented, outdated crap to its user base, all
while pretending to be an innovative technology leader. The similarities
regarding any form of sectarian cult are striking.
You gotta love how Apple always comes up with new marketing bullshit terms,
aka "Retina HD", with the intention to manipulate its users while preventing easy
comparisons with its competitors by withholding the actual specs. Apparently it’s
not enough to have an 1080p screen, you have to call it "Retina HD" to make those
suckers buy it, otherwise someone could look at the 4K Amoled and Oled screens
form LG and Samsung devices and get outright disappointed. Same goes for
everything else. Every outdated „feature“ needs to get its own marketing label
to persuade buyers with crappy „experience“ and „usability“ ads, while covering
the truth with marketing gibberish, knowing full well that only a fraction of
aforementioned buyers cares to look at the facts and dares to compare them.
Car engines come to mind. For comparisons shake let’s look at a 1.0 liter, turbo
charged petrol engine and a V8 compressor. What’s better should be obvious, but
by calling the former an „ecobooster“, thus giving it a special marketing label,
this joke becomes a „feature“, something positive that can be added tot the list
of features of a car.
By doing so a negative aspect is transformed into a positive one, the
reality is distorted, non tech savvy buyers are manipulated and comparisons are
made more difficult (another layer of marketing bullshit to overcome), well done
marketing department. You see , if something is seriously lacking (of course for
profit, what else), don’t bother explaining, just give it a nice marketing term, distort
reality, make it a feature and call it a day. Fuck that!!
The Apple Iphone 1 and Ipad 1 might have been innovative at their time,
but since then, the bitten apple has been continuously rotting from the inside
outwards, always swarmed by millions of Iworms which regale themselves with its
rotten flesh, not forgetting all other Americans who support apple by means of
their tax dollars to finance its bought US Treasury/Government bond interest rates.
Last but not least, every Apple product includes a direct hotlink to the nsa,
free of charge, something that might make it a good value, after all.
Ceterum censeo Applem esse delendam.