iPhone 6s's A9 Processor Racks Up Impressive Benchmarks 213
MojoKid writes: Underneath the hood of Apple's new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models is a new custom designed System-on-Chip (SoC) that Apple has dubbed its A9 processor. It's a 64-bit chip that, according to Apple, is the most advanced ever built for any smartphone, and that's just one of many claims coming out of Cupertino. Apple is also claiming a level of gaming performance on par with dedicated game consoles and with a graphics engine that's 90 percent faster than the previous generation. For compute chores, Apple says the A9 chip improves overall CPU performance by up to 70 percent. These performance promises come without divulging too much about the physical makeup of the A9, though in testing its dual-core SoC does seem to compete well with the likes of Samsung's octal-core Exynos chips found in the Galaxy S6 line. Further, in intial graphics benchmark testing, the A9 also leads the pack in mosts tests, sometimes by a healthy margin, even besting Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 in tests like 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited.
All about the Memory Bandwidth (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, see Anandtech (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, didn't Apple crow about increasing the CPU - RAM bandwidth by a fair bit?
There's a great article [anandtech.com] covering just that.
Just got my new manly rose-gold iPhone 6s (Score:2, Interesting)
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You mean I should be like my brother who doesn't own an iPhone? He lives in a large house that he bought at the height of the real estate market, has an underwater mortgage, pays both the mortgage payment and the loan payment from his wife's 401K for down payment, and can't retire because he can't sell the house. On top of that, he buys $180 designer blue jeans from Macy's and leases a new car every three years. He's living the American Dream — and paying the price for the privilege.
I gave up the Amer
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Under the Sprint iPhone Forever program, the monthly lease is $22 per month for the 16GB iPhone 6s. (The 128GB iPhone 6s+ probably has a higher lease payment.) Since I've been a Sprint customer for 20+ years, I get a loyalty credit that reduces my lease payment to $5 per month until I upgrade to the next iPhone. I also get a 10% discount on my monthly bill for being a AAA member, which cancels out the lease payment entirely. In short, I get the current iPhone for FREE!
http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releas [sprint.com]
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How do people optimise their designs? (Score:2)
I'm struggling to understand how apple get away with not announcing any info about the codes, the cache size, memory bandwidth etc. Surely on a mobile device with limited power, optimisation of applications is a priority. How do people manage this without any idea of the physical architecture of the machine they are developing for?
Maybe i'm just old school, but knowing what hardware you are targeting is almost the first bit of info which informs an efficient use of the resources available.
Re:How do people optimise their designs? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm struggling to understand how apple get away with not announcing any info about the codes, the cache size, memory bandwidth etc. Surely on a mobile device with limited power, optimisation of applications is a priority. How do people manage this without any idea of the physical architecture of the machine they are developing for?
Maybe i'm just old school, but knowing what hardware you are targeting is almost the first bit of info which informs an efficient use of the resources available.
Ah, you must be nearly as old as I!
Nowadays, that stuff is almost always left up to the Optimization "pass" of the Compiler. These young whippersnappers wouldn't know how to code tightly in Assembly if their life depended on it.
And have you ever coded in ARM Assembler?!? Talk about an instruction set that is optimized for Compilers, not humans!!! I did do some stuff in ARMv7 Assembly; but I wouldn't have enjoyed coding a bunch of stuff in it (and I LOVE coding in Assembly Language!).
And as far as "efficient use of resources" goes: Again, that is largely a consideration of the past. These systems have SOOOOO much available, well, everything that, in a lot of use-cases, you can just code as if the sky's the limit. Because it usually is...
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Well, when targeting a machine with large numbers of cores, memory and power, sure - it's a better tradeoff to avoid too much optimisation, and go for maintainability over raw performance. I know that, I do this all the time. As for writing assembler, my assembler days are long gone. The last I did was a bit of 56k maybe 10 years ago for an audio pipeline. The closest I get these days is looking at the output of the compiler ;-)
However, when the user base is continuously worried about battery drain, how do
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I must be old. First assembly I ever coded in was 6502 on a BBC B, 2nd was ARM on my Acorn Archimedes just as I was starting University.
I wrote a paper for my 1st year course on microprocessor design comparing the compiled output for a C function from a Sequent x386, a Sinclair XL 68000 and the ARM.
The truly astounding thing was that the ARM compiler took 1/3 of the instructions to complete the same task as the compilers for the old processor architectures.
Which, I'm proud to say, was then quoted in class b
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OS/X on A* CPUs? (Score:2)
I wonder if Apple would ever consider moving OS/X away from Intel and over to ARM, allowing them to use their A series CPUs? If not, why not?
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I strongly suspect OS X already runs on ARM and is doing that as we speak.
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I wonder if Apple would ever consider moving OS/X away from Intel and over to ARM, allowing them to use their A series CPUs? If not, why not?
Other people have asked whether Apple will switch Macs to an ARM processor...
But at this point an iPhone 6s is powerful enough that with a bluetooth keyboard and video output it could be turned into a reasonably powerful desktop computer at minimal cost. Or they could build a laptop shell with keyboard, trackpad and display and a slot to push in your iPhone to power it; no idea how much this could be built for.
Right, so... (Score:3)
"Apple is also claiming a level of gaming performance on par with dedicated game consoles"
Which is just one more reason I can't understand why they didn't put this in the new Apple TV, and instead put in the older A8.
The resolution of the iPhone is basically 1080p, and according to the benches, the A9 can drive it to (as they put it) "console level performance".
The A8 can't. And since that's what's going into the ATV, that means the games on the new ATV will *not* have "console level performance".
WHY?!?!
No, don't say it's production quantities. Apple will sell 20x iPhones and iPads as ATVs (or more), this is a rounding error.
Form factor changed too, so if you needed more room for heat or power, that's not an issue either.
Eh (Score:2)
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Actually, according to Anandtech, there seems to be a significant upgrade to Apple's IO on the 6s and 6s+--it looks like they took the SSD controller from a laptop and crammed it in there: http://anandtech.com/show/9662... [anandtech.com]
"Previous writers on the site have often spoken of Apple’s custom NAND controllers for storage in the iPhone, but I didn’t really understand what this really meant. In the case of the iPhone 6s, it seems that this means Apple has effectively taken their Macbook SSD controller a
I knock Apple... (Score:2, Troll)
I knock Apple because of their rabid fan base and exhorbitant pricing, but they do have good engineers and produce some pretty damned solid hardware. Fair is fair -- they're better than HP was in their heyday!
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Was I modded down by an Apple hater or an HP fan?
Inquiring minds want to know... :P
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
You cherry-picked the first benchmark mentioned, and disregarded the other tests where iPhone 6S out-performed the other phones.
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Funny)
Only because Satan likes iPhones. We all know that iPhones are the work of the Devil, and that hellfire awaits those who buy iPhones. Throw yours away, brother. Don't be sucked into the Devil's evil plot! Buy Android, the smartphone for the Righteous!
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So you think Apple is evil and Google is pure goodness?
Boy, do we have spyware and tracking for you!
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
You cherry-picked the first benchmark mentioned, and disregarded the other tests where iPhone 6S out-performed the other phones.
To be fair, the other benchmarks were:
sunspider
and
graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark. (Where I'd generally expect the same system winning one really should mean winning all.)
Personally, I don't play games on my phone. So 3dmark etc is irrelevant to me. (But I realize many people do, including my own kids... and the iphone 6s looks like the best phone for games right now; at least in terms of hardware performance.)
The fact that I can't load it up with hundlebundle mobile games, emulators, and so forth still counts against it though.
I try to avoid exposing my kids to freemium ad-ridden crap.
Now the sunspider (javascript) win is more interesting to me, but I'm pretty sure it's just showing that a faster core is faster at single threaded operations, and the A9 is a dual core with 2 faster cores vs Samsung which is octocore but the cores are slower.
That's not particularly interesting by itself; although it does hint at valid question -- is fewer faster cores better or worse than more slower cores a better strategy in a smart phone?
Real world use will answer that... benchmarks not really.
So the upshot... Apple 6s has better graphics performance than a phone released 6 months ago. The new CPU is good... better at single threaded than anything out right now due to faster cores, but it still lags in multithreaded due to only having 2 cores despite them being faster, and I don't know which core strategy ends up being actually better.
How does the battery compare? I was happy with an iphone 3GS years ago, then I was disappointed with my S3 battery, but am quite happy with my current S5. I expect I'd be happy with the battery on an iphone 6s.
And at the end of the day, benchmarks don't matter. Choosing apple vs samsung isn't about benchmarks. Its about ecosystems, and deciding which one you want: apple or android. Myself, I have no intention of ever returning to IOS due to the overly restrictive walls on the garden. But that's just me.
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What, are you some kind of communist?
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No he just doesnt like ad companies, you know like Google
Heheh... don't think i don't see the irony of preferring android, while not liking ads / ad companies.
The reality is the smartphone market is garbage; and any selection is one of tradeoffs and compromises. I've found that Android is the best compromise for me so far.
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I just hate the targeting of kids with the freemium games and other types of social engineering.
If my kid wants to play games, she can use her 3DS. But no, you don't get to put in a credit card number.
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That's not particularly interesting by itself; although it does hint at valid question -- is fewer faster cores better or worse than more slower cores a better strategy in a smart phone? Real world use will answer that... benchmarks not really.
My first question was, is the phone software rigged to identify benchmark code and execute it faster? (E.g., lower precision math, pre-configured answers, etc.) Like the VWs ...? Will the iPhone 6s emit scads of nitrogen oxides in your face while you use it, unless you're running a benchmark on it?
Many years ago, I recall hearing about the GNU C compiler, I think it was, that recognized when it was compiling one of the standard benchmark packages and highly optimized the output because it knew what it was
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So the upshot... Apple 6s has better graphics performance than a phone released 6 months ago. The new CPU is good... better at single threaded than anything out right now due to faster cores, but it still lags in multithreaded due to only having 2 cores despite them being faster, and I don't know which core strategy ends up being actually better.
Past two well-designed CPU cores (which apparently the A9 has), it is largely just a dick-measuring contest.
The reason being that, almost NO mobile software is actually designed to take advantage of "relatively-massive" parallelism. And even with something like Apple's GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) (which I am pretty sure iOS doesn't support) to automagically dole-out threads to multiple CPU cores, the point of diminishing returns with multiple cores happens pretty quickly. So, in most cases, the extra cor
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The reason being that, almost NO mobile software is actually designed to take advantage of "relatively-massive" parallelism.
I'm sure I'm not running anything individually that needs 8 cores. But I'm running a hell of a lot more than 2 threads. I agree the benefit drops off pretty rapidly... but I'm not convinced 2 is really the ideal number either; and I think the best solution is probably some sort of asymmetric solution, where the foreground interactive app is running on a couple fast cores, while the rest of the system lives on lower power cores...and it doesn't have to wake up a fast core just to stay in contact with the cel
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... but I'm not convinced 2 is really the ideal number either; and I think the best solution is probably some sort of asymmetric solution, where the foreground interactive app is running on a couple fast cores, while the rest of the system lives on lower power cores...and it doesn't have to wake up a fast core just to stay in contact with the cellular network, do tower handoffs, and receive SMS messages, email.
Well Apple uses a motion co-processor that handles collecting and processing the sensor data so that the main processor can focus on computing. As of the A9, the M9 has been moved back onto the same die.
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And even with something like Apple's GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) (which I am pretty sure iOS doesn't support)
What's your next guess?
GCD has been on iOS since iOS 4. We're up to iOS 9 now.
Any iOS app that uses AVMedia, the UIKit, Core Animation, and the rest of the standard frameworks benefits from GCD.
-jcr
I stand corrected. Bug that doesn't negate the rest of my points.
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Well what the Android devices are trending towards is many cores, but not all identical - some low powered and some high powered.
A phone is largely idle but it can never shut down entirely so you only need a bit of near constant computing power keeping everything running.
The low powered cores can handle that just fine.
And when you start using it actively then the high powered cores kick in seamlessly to take over.
The iPhone misses out on that advantage because whenever it needs to do something like ping a m
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Benchmarks are completely pointless for phones. High end phones are all fast enough. Things like battery life and cost matter. Unless you really want the latest and greatest it seems like you might as well just get the older and cheaper iPhone 6, or pay 1/3rd as much for something like a OnePlus or Motorola. Or wait until tomorrow and get a new and much cheaper Nexus.
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
>In Geekbench, the iPhone 6s Plus performed second only to Samsung's newest Galaxy models
So it came in second! Yay!
I'm not sure where you got your figures (since there is no citation, Yay!); but this article [bgr.com] claims that the iPhone 6s "Obliterates" the competition. And the GeekBench 3 scores in that article would tend to support that claim.
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>In Geekbench, the iPhone 6s Plus performed second only to Samsung's newest Galaxy models
So it came in second! Yay!
I'm not sure where you got your figures (since there is no citation, Yay!); but this article [bgr.com] claims that the iPhone 6s "Obliterates" the competition. And the GeekBench 3 scores in that article would tend to support that claim.
I got my figures from the article. I see a headline proclaiming product A to be the best and I scroll down and the first figures I find are of product B being better.
4996, 4952, 4824 and 4799 are all bigger numbers than 4379, yet they put the 4379 first in the chart, whereas all the other entries in that chart are ranked by geekbench score. This was not an objective exposition of the data. Tufte would been spinning in his grave if he was dead.
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
The single-core figure is listed in first place because it's the most relevant predictor of phone performance. Very few applications are written to be parallel--they're mostly games with physics simulations and the like. Even then, you have to remember that Samsung packs 8 cores into those phones and the A9 only has two and is clocked lower. That means that not only is the A9 more efficient per tick, it's also significantly more efficient per core. That means better output for less power draw.
So yes, the multi-core scores are lower, there's no doubt. The only thing that means is that in that one artificial benchmark, the bar is shorter for the A9 than for the other phones. In nearly every other benchmark--and most importantly, in benchmarks meant to simulate real-world situations--it outperforms the other CPUs by a wide margin.
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And yet they fiddled the rank sorting. That's a VW move.
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They did no such thing. The single core score is right there--there are two bars per device--and it's almost twice as big as the next device. Just add up the numbers for an aggregate score, and it's trivially obvious that the phones are in the right order.
iPhone 6s+: 6885 ...
Samsung S6: 6449
S6 Edge: 6446
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I didn't hold the geekbench. I was pointing out what the article said.
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Is that a euphemism for masturbation?
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There's no decrease in battery life from the old 6 to the new one (from multiple reports and my own personal experience verifies).
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As far as the article is telling me, a dual core cpu is keeping up with a 8 core cpu.
That's pretty damn impressive, but only if this doesn't come at a price (decrease in battery life).
This is normal. The rationale for 8 slow cores is you can turn off the other 7 when you aren't using them. The aim is to win on power consumption. The world has not declared a winner yet.
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Honestly many of these benchmarks probably don't come close to using the 8 cores on Samsung phones.
But 8 cores on a phone is probably stupid to begin with.
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I have an idea for a phone, how about making it so that the back of the phone, not the screen, is where the mic and speaker are? If not that, how about one of the two long edges?
Back of the phone: Stupid. That's the face that is in contact with your desktop when the phone is out of your pocket, sitting on your desk, and the side that is 50-50 chance of facing your chest with the phone in a shirt pocket.
Long sides: Stupid. Where are you going to hold the phone?
He might be on to something... (Score:2)
Long sides: Stupid. Where are you going to hold the phone?
The return of Side Talking [sidetalkin.com]!
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Wouldn't there be a problem of accidentally touching the LCD screen?
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Or we could accept that tiny microphones and speakers don't work well in flat phones. Get rid of them and require the phone to be used with a headset.
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The tiny microphones and speakers in my flat phone sound as good as any handset that I've ever used. You can use your headset with your phone, but don't expect anybody else to think that a phone that can't be used as a phone without a headset is a good idea.
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Honestly, there was only a 100 year period where synchronous direct speech audio communication was the norm. In 1900 with a population of almost 80 million, only a few million had a telephone. By the year 2000, we already say a generation that was reverting back to the way humans had communicated through much of history, writing and sending asynchronously, such as one does with texting and email. The paradigm shift, so to speak, that made the smart phone a success, was the realization th
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"Furthermore, he rise of the answering machine tells us that the phone as a critical mode of communication is not all it was cracked up to be."
Sure. If you suffer from Aspergers. The rest of us however quite enjoy "synchronous direct speech" and I'd far sooner lose SMS and email than the actual phone functionality. If all I wanted was a computer I'd just carry around a wifi tablet.
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If we're going to go down that route, give me a damn smartwatch that actually works on its own. Then I'll add a bluetooth headset and use the watch as the phone, and use a tablet as the screen-based device.
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You must be wonderful to sit next to in the office.
I have a private office with real walls and a door. Nobody sits next to me.
When other people speak on a phone, I find it more annoying when I only hear half the conversation. It would bother me less if they just put it on speaker.
Re:And continues... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a private office with real walls and a door. Nobody sits next to me.
There's a guy down the hall with a private office with real walls and a door. We can all tell when he's on a call using his speakerphone because we hear him all the way down the hall.
It would bother me less if they just put it on speaker.
And it would bother more people even less if they heard neither side of the call.
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Now, if only their UI designers would get some sense in their heads and kill this white and harsh blue, ultra skinny fonts, overly animated everything and go back AT LEAST A LITTLE to the iOS 5 and iOS 6 realism.
That UI was SO much easier to understand and less visually hideous to look at.
Re:Go ninja, go ninja, go! (Score:5, Informative)
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Why is this modded troll? I use PCs with every interface possible, Linux, BSD, OSX, Windows, OS/2 (yup!) and have used Blackberry and iPhones since they were launched, now have iPhone, Android (nice dual-SIM Chinese generic) and a Nokia Windows phone (not bad, not great)
So I guess pretty neutral here, and maybe slightly experienced..agree with OP that iPhone interface is going backwards...and as others more loquacious than I have noted, same seems to be true of various desktops and browsers.
Different =/= b
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Re:Bloatware? (Score:5, Informative)
Was this before or after the carrier bloatware was added?
Um, in case you didn't know, on the iPhone, the Carriers aren't allowed to add ANY bloatware whatsoever.
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Apple's 'bloatware' is most irritating for the screen space that it takes up more than anything else. It's otherwise generally useful software if you don't already have a favourite app to do that thing. The Podcasts app on the iPhone is, apparently, basically the most used podcast listening app there is. The power of defaults is really strong, and a lot of those applications get used more than you'd expect. In terms of space, it takes up around 100MB, last I checked, which is a pretty trivial amount, even o
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Re:Lame... Seriously. (Score:4, Insightful)
To the 3party developer house that made this for apple.. congrats.. I know there must be a 3rd party entity somewhere.. Because the product seems to work..
Sorry. Apple did the R&D on this themselves.
I also find it interesting how those surface with the "shiny look in their eyes" Ohh New Apple product "pretty, pretty, pretty" without truly understanding the premise of what they are getting into..
What in the Hell are you even blathering-on about? is your Apple Hatred so strong that you can't speak; or are you just incapable of composing a sentence?
Much like the Lisa, the Newton, and the i-ball, this too will pass. "like a wet fart in an elevator"
The Lisa was a wonderfully-engineered machine, built (and priced) for business; with an integrated Office suite, Suspend/Resume for all open Applications and Documents, the first consumer-ready GUI, and much more; the Newton was a game-changer; but suffered from bad management at Apple at the time; WTF is the "i-ball"?
Congrats Apple on your new adventures..
I also find it funny that up-untill recently, Samsung made the apple chips.. Now that they are out of the loop.. lets see what happens..
thanks
Samsung NEVER Designed Apple's CPUs; they were (and are now again) Apple's "Fab House" for CPUs. BIG Difference.
TSMC was briefly the Fab House for the A8 SoC; but Apple went back to Samsung after that experiment. Actually, I think that Samsung was even listed as a "Second Source" Fab for the A8, and I'll bet that TSMC is listed as the "Second Source" on the A9.
Such is the way when it comes to custom IC manufacturing.
Re:Lame... Seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple designed it. The same way I design a meal if I go to the buffet and load up my tray.
Like Qualcomm designs Snapdragon (custom core and custom GPU, manufactured by Samsung or TSMC or whoever, etc). Like NVidia designs Tegra (stock core, custom GPU, manufactured by Samsung or TSMC) . Compared to A9 (custom core, stock GPU, manufactured by TSMC or Samsung). Which of these facts would you like to deny?
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Spoken like a true apple shill. Apple use ARM CPUs, an open CPU design.
While the ARM CPU architecture itself is essentially "Open", Apple, like Qualcomm and Samsung (and VERY few others) are actually licensed to "roll their own" ARM Designs, IIRC.
And, BTW, do you know who has more years of ARM design and development knowledge than pretty much everyone besides the Acorn Group?
They've been using other to design and fab them for most of their iThing history, only changing after they bought an entire fucking corporation company that did it. So spare us your zealot bullshit.
Are you talking about PA Semi? They bought that Fabless Design Company for its designs that Apple hoped would get them to a Mobile PowerPC chip, not for its ARM expertise. PA Semi never could have done a
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Are you talking about PA Semi? They bought that Fabless Design Company for its designs that Apple hoped would get them to a Mobile PowerPC chip, not for its ARM expertise.
I'm not sure I agree with you on this point. Apple has switched over to Intel by 2006 and bought PA Semi in 2008. The purchase of PA Semi wouldn't be for PowerPC as it seems they abandoned it by then, but, at the time, there was wide speculation as to why Apple bought them. According to Jobs at WWDC 2008 [wikipedia.org], PA Semi was bought to help design mobile chips for iPhone, iPod, and iPad.
In 11 June 2008, during the annual Worldwide Developer's Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the acquisition was meant to add the talent of P. A. Semi's engineers to Apple's workforce and help them build custom chips for the iPod, iPhone, and other future mobile devices such as the iPad
This was one case where Apple bought a company for the personnel and expertise and not the technology.
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Are you talking about PA Semi? They bought that Fabless Design Company for its designs that Apple hoped would get them to a Mobile PowerPC chip, not for its ARM expertise.
I'm not sure I agree with you on this point. Apple has switched over to Intel by 2006 and bought PA Semi in 2008. The purchase of PA Semi wouldn't be for PowerPC as it seems they abandoned it by then, but, at the time, there was wide speculation as to why Apple bought them. According to Jobs at WWDC 2008 [wikipedia.org], PA Semi was bought to help design mobile chips for iPhone, iPod, and iPad.
In 11 June 2008, during the annual Worldwide Developer's Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the acquisition was meant to add the talent of P. A. Semi's engineers to Apple's workforce and help them build custom chips for the iPod, iPhone, and other future mobile devices such as the iPad
This was one case where Apple bought a company for the personnel and expertise and not the technology.
I stand corrected. I thought the acquisition of PA Semi was earlier than that. Wonder what I was thinking of?
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So by your logic, Lenovo doesn't make PCs, and Google doesn't make Android or smartphones? Apple has never fabbed their own chips, and they still don't. They design them in-house. Yeah, they bought companies to get the resources to do that, in 2008 (P.A. Semi) and 2010 (Intrinsity). I think that 5 to 7 years is enough time that you can now consider Apple SoCs to be "in-house".
They started out by using off-the-shelf designs (licensed ARM cores) in their own SOCs (the A4 and A5) to build experience, and then
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Such hate...
FYI, I know a former Lisa owner. She still raves about it.
A couple of Newton owners, and they still rave about it.
You stumped me with iBall. I'm sure it was a very shitty product though.
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FYI, I know a former Lisa owner. She still raves about it.
I was a former Lisa owner. She was great. Not as good as the Marcia I owned prior to her, but almost as good as the Charon I owned afterwards.
A couple of Newton owners, and they still rave about it.
I owned one of them, too, but he was too uppity and sat around under apple trees all day. He was great at keeping the financial records, though.
And then the damn government stepped in and told me I had to let them all go. Curse you, Mr. Lincoln!
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Do not taunt Happy Fun iBall.
Because everyone knows if you cross Happy Fun iBall they may stay that way. Mom was right.
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I also find it funny that up-untill recently, Samsung made the apple chips..
With Samsung being a chip manufacturer, how is that "funny"? That's like saying it's funny if Samsung made nVidia's Tegra or if Samsung made Qualcomm's Snapdragon. Up until the A4, Samsung designed Apple's chips with more input from Apple until they came out with their own designs. But that was in 2010.
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I could go on and On, but that would just sink me deeper and deeper down to that level, I have been there enough in this little speech, no reason to ramble..
Nothing's stopping you, so far.
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Does the truth really sting that much? (like holy water)
WTF "Truth" would THAT be, ANONYMOUS HATER?
Re:Two major problem with phone benchmarks (Score:5, Informative)
1. Javascript benchmarks are a real-world test, since these phones are constantly executing javascript when you use the browser. What you say is true, though--Apple has an advantage because it has both the best processor and best engine for executing javascript, so it's not showing exactly how powerful the CPU is. But that's what the synthetic benchmark is for.
2. The display on the iPhone isn't 'low res', it's just a lower resolution than the one on other phones. But that's a relevant trade-off, because it means that Apple can push those pixels faster, for less battery cost than other phones. It's a calculated trade-off, because nearly nobody can tell the difference. The games on the iPhone will look just as good or better. Don't blame Apple for not throwing pixels at a problem that doesn't exist.
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But it's clearly the way the industry is going. It's already a fairly large percentage of new TV sales, and growing.
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While this article is targeted as a chip review, I can't really get behind the idea of outlawing 3d game benchmarks on phones based on pixel resolution. In any case like a desktop where the screen wasn't a big part of the device, I can get behind what you're saying, but with phones its not like you can simply swap out the screen. I think it should be tested because no matter how good the processor is, it doesn't matter if you don't scale the phone performance demand properly. If your processor is pushing
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You are forgetting that the phone with a higher-res display could easily render the game in a lower resolution. Especially now with QHD phones, as they have 4x the pixels of 1280x720, a resolution which games must support.
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1. Javascript benchmarks. They should be outlawed, period. They test the software (browser) more than the CPU. Also they are probably single threaded or close to be.
2. On-screen 3D game benchmarks. Because they favor phones with low-res display such as iPhones.
None of the benchmarks in TFA even consider RAM size and flash memory speed, which both have real-world benefits.
I'm [pcmag.com] sure [youtube.com] that [tekrevue.com] ALL [redmondpie.com] of these [google.com] benchmarks [wccftech.com] are [ibtimes.com] done [daringfireball.net] by [gsmarena.com] Apple [reddit.com] shills [hothardware.com].
Right.
Oh, and whiner, I found this [anandtech.com] and this [iclarified.com] about the memory subsystem in the iPhone 6s. Glad you asked!
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What are you trolling about? Did I say Apple cheated? That the benchmark results of TFA were false? Or that the A9 was slow? I understand that with a name such as Mac4all, you feel personally attacked when someone attacks Apple, but that wasn't the case here.
And yes, I've seen the Anandtech review about Flash performance and it is interesting. Still nothing about the impact of RAM size, however. This was leading many people to think that 1GB RAM was enough, since more RAM didn't help getting a higher score
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Did you use the A9 processor?
LOL! Good one!
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So where is the data on the claimed gaming performance on par with dedicated game consoles?
I can give you one performance metric. In order to enjoy the same immersion as a PC screen 3 feet away or a gaming console on a big screen TV 10 feet away, I have to hold the phone 7 inches from my face. But that is true of all phones, not just the new iPhone.