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https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/th ... -secrets/4

Looking good!

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. Can't wait to get an X s (maybe MAX, haven't decided yet but leaning the baby one).

edit: I just want to say, the ridiculous level of optimization that Apple does by virtue of controlling the whole stack is insane. Just look at the screen color and power efficiency! Quite impressive. (obviously I don't mean Apple makes the screen, but they control the criteria so closely and require what they require (and obviously have the power to do so) to make a really incredible product sometimes)

edit2: I will say something "negative." The camera still needs work. The SmartHDR feature is still a ways behind Google in a lot of areas, foremost being detail. Secondly, everyone go download Halide.

The best thing about the new iPhones is that they're finally named properly: iPhone eXcess!

(This coming from an iPhone owner...)

Much as I loathe the price (and have done so publicly) I'm really tempted by a the iPhone XS Max because I'm old and it's got the biggest screen on the market. If it'll help me dodge bifocals for another year or so, that's really all that's important to me right now.

The 6+ was used by a lot of older people simply to have the same # of pixels with a lower DPI.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Much as I loathe the price (and have done so publicly) I'm really tempted by a the iPhone XS Max because I'm old and it's got the biggest screen on the market. If it'll help me dodge bifocals for another year or so, that's really all that's important to me right now.

lol this is the oddest reasoning for wanting the Max I have seen, by a fair bit. The .1 of an inch is really gonna give you an advantage over the Note9 I'm sure! To be fair, I don't mean "i can't see so i want a big screen" is odd, just the bifocals deferment part. Plus the fact that you can scale DPI on pretty much every decent phone these days and plenty of phones have similarly sized screens.

Just get bifocals dude.

Yeah, it is weird in some ways that the A12 is such a beast but Apple lags in computational photography.

I find these days that photography is the most demanding thing I do with my phone and the primary reason to upgrade (other than wear and tear). It's not that I'm really big into photography, it's just I want to take the best pictures I can with the least effort.

Now more than ever, Apple's CPU efforts seem wasted on a phone.

DancinJack wrote:

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. Can't wait to get an X s (maybe MAX, haven't decided yet but leaning the baby one).

edit: I just want to say, the ridiculous level of optimization that Apple does by virtue of controlling the whole stack is insane. Just look at the screen color and power efficiency! Quite impressive. (obviously I don't mean Apple makes the screen, but they control the criteria so closely and require what they require (and obviously have the power to do so) to make a really incredible product sometimes)

edit2: I will say something "negative." The camera still needs work. The SmartHDR feature is still a ways behind Google in a lot of areas, foremost being detail. Secondly, everyone go download Halide.

blastdoor wrote:

Yeah, it is weird in some ways that the A12 is such a beast but Apple lags in computational photography.

I find these days that photography is the most demanding thing I do with my phone and the primary reason to upgrade (other than wear and tear). It's not that I'm really big into photography, it's just I want to take the best pictures I can with the least effort.

Now more than ever, Apple's CPU efforts seem wasted on a phone.

I think it's really strange, but part of it is their philosophy and where they think the images will be used. Their algorithm clearly thinks most people will see the images ON their iPhones. Punchy colors, less detail are just a couple of the tell-tale signs that they expect most photos to be on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook and viewed on a phone.

They clearly have the talent and hardware resources to do what Google is doing, but they've made some decisions and they're sticking to them for now. Hopefully they keep making some improvements to SmartHDR, because it really needs it.

Even when I get an X s (or Max) I'll probably keep my Pixel 2 XL to take some pictures with just because it's that great. Kinda sad.

The XS Max is the best phone I've ever used. Screen is gorgeous, performance is outstanding - everything seems to happen instantaneously. You know your hardware is fast when you never even have to think about the amount of time it takes to perform any action you can think of.

techguy wrote:

The XS Max is the best phone I've ever used. Screen is gorgeous, performance is outstanding - everything seems to happen instantaneously. You know your hardware is fast when you never even have to think about the amount of time it takes to perform any action you can think of.

It's not just hardware. It's Apple's vertical integration. You could put a Xeon in an Android phone and it wouldn't be as smooth and snappy as iOS on A12. (oh btw posting this from my Pixel 2 XL)

DancinJack wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

Much as I loathe the price (and have done so publicly) I'm really tempted by a the iPhone XS Max because I'm old and it's got the biggest screen on the market. If it'll help me dodge bifocals for another year or so, that's really all that's important to me right now.

lol this is the oddest reasoning for wanting the Max I have seen, by a fair bit. The .1 of an inch is really gonna give you an advantage over the Note9 I'm sure! To be fair, I don't mean "i can't see so i want a big screen" is odd, just the bifocals deferment part. Plus the fact that you can scale DPI on pretty much every decent phone these days and plenty of phones have similarly sized screens.

Just get bifocals dude.

I was hoping the would indicate I wasn't serious. But I am seriously thinking about a big-screened phone. I kind of regret going with the smaller Pixel, but the Pixel 2 display and its associated issues was just a non-starter. I do use a slightly larger-than-default font and it's kind of painful how much text wraps and how little is on the screen. Part of it, no doubt, is because I stepped down in size from the 6S Plus.

derFunkenstein wrote:

I was hoping the would indicate I wasn't serious. But I am seriously thinking about a big-screened phone. I kind of regret going with the smaller Pixel, but the Pixel 2 display and its associated issues was just a non-starter. I do use a slightly larger-than-default font and it's kind of painful how much text wraps and how little is on the screen. Part of it, no doubt, is because I stepped down in size from the 6S Plus.

It seems it wasn't that much in jest!

I get it though, I'm in the same boat. I want the space but I want certain things to scale so I can see them better. It's a tough battle I've been living my whole life. It's part of the reason I don't want a 4K or higher resolution screen for my PC.

I ordered my P2XL knowing I might have return it numerous times if the screen wasn't at least up to MY personal par, but I got pretty lucky and got a decent one on first shot. It has a bit of blue-shift but other than that it's "fine." I'm still glad I got the bigger one. I've messed around with the Max, but I haven't touched the X s so I'll have to wait a bit before I make a final decision. Not sure I can go back at this point.

I wasn't TOTALLY serious, because I don't need bifocals, but tiny print does bug me more than it used to. Seems like on my MBP every text editor I use (sans browsers or Word) needs to default bumped a step or two when the display is set to the default "like 1680x1050" setting. I don't change display scaling because I don't need jumbo stoplight buttons, window titles, or menus. I just need 14-point font in Brackets (where I do all my stupid, stupid Cordova projects) instead of 12.

On the iPhone 6s Plus I liked the "scaled" version of the interface with bigger, more tightly-spaced icons on the home screen and slightly bigger text all around, which is basically what I have on the Pixel 2, too. I've ALWAYS used bigger fonts when possible on my phones, though, so it's not aging or bifocals.

That's like, way off topic, though. The A12 looks damn fast for a phone CPU. I look forward to the day where I get to drop the qualifiers, though I imagine we're starting to get close to a point where Apple's CPU optimizations are no longer bigger double-digit gains and TSMC will hit the same transistor-density wall Intel seems to have. It's disappointing that Anandtech went with the hyperbole of "reaching desktop performance levels" without actually including a desktop CPU, but whatever. I mean, sure, it's "desktop" performance but it's not catching the i7-6700K, let alone current-gen CPUs with more power draw, more cores, more hertz, etc: https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/re ... -37700.pdf

Some of those scores are awfully close, though.

In terms of IPC, though, they seem to basically be there.

I’d love a more in depth analysis of A12 relative to a modern x86 cpu that really looks at the differences. For example, on the face of it, the A12 seems massively wide at the front end. But are the back end execution resources less beefy than Skylake?

derFunkenstein wrote:

I wasn't TOTALLY serious, because I don't need bifocals, but tiny print does bug me more than it used to. Seems like on my MBP every text editor I use (sans browsers or Word) needs to default bumped a step or two when the display is set to the default "like 1680x1050" setting. I don't change display scaling because I don't need jumbo stoplight buttons, window titles, or menus. I just need 14-point font in Brackets (where I do all my stupid, stupid Cordova projects) instead of 12.

On the iPhone 6s Plus I liked the "scaled" version of the interface with bigger, more tightly-spaced icons on the home screen and slightly bigger text all around, which is basically what I have on the Pixel 2, too. I've ALWAYS used bigger fonts when possible on my phones, though, so it's not aging or bifocals.

That's like, way off topic, though. The A12 looks damn fast for a phone CPU. I look forward to the day where I get to drop the qualifiers, though I imagine we're starting to get close to a point where Apple's CPU optimizations are no longer bigger double-digit gains and TSMC will hit the same transistor-density wall Intel seems to have. It's disappointing that Anandtech went with the hyperbole of "reaching desktop performance levels" without actually including a desktop CPU, but whatever. I mean, sure, it's "desktop" performance but it's not catching the i7-6700K, let alone current-gen CPUs with more power draw, more cores, more hertz, etc: https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/re ... -37700.pdf

Some of those scores are awfully close, though.

IPC certainly must be closer than Intel would like. I would like to see more than just SPEC, Geekbench, and some browser benchmarks to be sure, though. Not that you'd run Blender or Handbrake on your phone, but you would on the mythical ARM-based MBP. Someone needs to start porting that stuff to iOS.

derFunkenstein wrote:

but you would on the mythical ARM-based MBP.

Exactly.

I no longer care about CPU/GPU performance under iOS as performance has increased way beyond what I need day to day.

Bump up the power usage and throw in double the cores and you have the makings of a fantastic laptop solution running macOS for ARM. Release a desktop class ARM SoC and Apple can then fully transition from Intel to ARM within a year.

Maybe. That's why I want more real-world testing outside of the browser.

I didn't even look at the benchmarks until now. The fact that a single-digit TDP, 2.5GHz CPU designed for smartphones is outperforming a 165W, $8700, 28-core, up to 3.8GHz Xeon in some of these single-threaded workloads is just astonishing. I've said this for a long time now, Apple has the best CPU design team in the industry. When they purchased P.A. Semi all those years ago I predicted this would happen.

This paves the road for Apple-powered Macs. If they even care to bother. But just imagine the performance of an 8-core ~4GHz desktop CPU with this level of IPC. If there was enough software support for such a product, it would be a day one purchase for me.

techguy wrote:

I didn't even look at the benchmarks until now. The fact that a single-digit TDP, 2.5GHz CPU designed for smartphones is outperforming a 165W, $8700, 28-core, up to 3.8GHz Xeon in some of these single-threaded workloads is just astonishing. I've said this for a long time now, Apple has the best CPU design team in the industry. When they purchased P.A. Semi all those years ago I predicted this would happen.

This paves the road for Apple-powered Macs. If they even care to bother. But just imagine the performance of an 8-core ~4GHz desktop CPU with this level of IPC. If there was enough software support for such a product, it would be a day one purchase for me.

Ugh. No. You can't just compare those two apples to apples.

I have no objections in that Apple CPUs are really great, and their team is doing an incredible job. But you can't just say the A12 is outperforming a 28 core Xeon with just one benchmark, performed on different a different OS, different RAM, different everything!

Apple very well may be able to make a great desktop CPU, but until they do, all the "desktop performance!" and "outperforming a Xeon" crap is just hyperbole without anything real to back it up (unless you count a single benchmark with zero control points). Please stop doing this.

I was merrily reading along, and up pops the desktop comparison. At home, next to my desktop PC, I have a NUC7i7BNH, the Kaby Lake -U highest end NUC, with Iris Plus and thus the eDRAM (extended testing we’ll call it). 3.5 GHz, 3.9 all core boost, 4.0 turbo. 2C/4T. In the garage, I have an inherited i7-920 Bloomfield 2.67 overclocked to 3.8 GHz. When Folding with CPU (not something I normally do) the NUC running 2 threads of F@H gets about 20,000 ppd. The Bloomfield gets the same but with 6 threads. One has a 240mm AIO CLC and one has a tiny but screaming fan. The amount of power drawn and the amount of cooling needed has gone down in 8 years, dramatically, but these things cannot operate passively. Apple’s phone CPU can, so there is just no way it’s reaching acceptable levels of desktop performance. That NUC is surprisingly potent for a 28W SOC, but I wouldn’t want to go much less “desktop” than that. Phone CPUs , while amazing, aren’t going to be replacing desktop/ultra book CPUs (yet). If they were suitable, I don’t think we would even have x86 NUCs. Soon? Maybe. Not yet though. Also need the OSes to run them.

But, but, but ARM is magic!!!!

[/sarc]

Captain Ned wrote:

But, but, but ARM is magic!!!!

[/sarc]

Post noted for future “told you so” replies.

DancinJack wrote:

Apple very well may be able to make a great desktop CPU, but until they do, all the "desktop performance!" and "outperforming a Xeon" crap is just hyperbole without anything real to back it up (unless you count a single benchmark with zero control points). Please stop doing this.

As far as desktop performance goes Microsoft has already proven that Windows performs very well on the Snapdragon 835. The writing is on the wall.

MOSFET wrote:

I was merrily reading along, and up pops the desktop comparison. At home, next to my desktop PC, I have a NUC7i7BNH, the Kaby Lake -U highest end NUC, with Iris Plus and thus the eDRAM (extended testing we’ll call it). 3.5 GHz, 3.9 all core boost, 4.0 turbo. 2C/4T. In the garage, I have an inherited i7-920 Bloomfield 2.67 overclocked to 3.8 GHz. When Folding with CPU (not something I normally do) the NUC running 2 threads of F@H gets about 20,000 ppd. The Bloomfield gets the same but with 6 threads. One has a 240mm AIO CLC and one has a tiny but screaming fan. The amount of power drawn and the amount of cooling needed has gone down in 8 years, dramatically, but these things cannot operate passively. Apple’s phone CPU can, so there is just no way it’s reaching acceptable levels of desktop performance. That NUC is surprisingly potent for a 28W SOC, but I wouldn’t want to go much less “desktop” than that. Phone CPUs , while amazing, aren’t going to be replacing desktop/ultra book CPUs (yet). If they were suitable, I don’t think we would even have x86 NUCs. Soon? Maybe. Not yet though. Also need the OSes to run them.

And yet, the 7nm A12, handily beats the 7-7567U in Geekbench. Not only that, Windows runs perfectly fine on a Snapdragon 835. Something is definitely in the air.

I have no doubt that Apple has macOS running on A series silicon in their labs. The transition to ARM will take less than one year.

End User wrote:

I have no doubt that Apple has macOS running on A series silicon in their labs. The transition to ARM will take less than one year.

The timing will be dictated by how long it takes the software vendors to get on-board. I'm looking at Adobe, etc.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

End User wrote:

I have no doubt that Apple has macOS running on A series silicon in their labs. The transition to ARM will take less than one year.

The timing will be dictated by how long it takes the software vendors to get on-board. I'm looking at Adobe, etc.

Apple has already done this so let history be our guide:

”Apple's Intel transition was the process of changing the central processing unit (CPU) of Macintosh computers from PowerPC processors to Intel x86 processors. The transition became public knowledge at the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), when Apple's CEO Steve Jobs made the announcement that the company would make a transition from the use of PowerPC microprocessors supplied by Freescale (formerly Motorola) and IBM in its Macintosh computers, to processors designed and manufactured by Intel, a chief supplier for most of Apple's competitors.[1]

The transition marked the Macintosh platform's second migration to a new CPU architecture. The first was the switch from the Motorola 68000 ("68k") series architecture (used since the original Macintosh 128K) to the PowerPC architecture.

Apple's initial press release indicated the transition would begin by June 2006, and finish by the end of 2007, but it actually proceeded much more quickly. The first generation Intel-based Macintoshes were released in January 2006 with Mac OS X 10.4.4 Tiger, and Steve Jobs announced the last models to switch in August 2006, with the Mac Pro available immediately and with the Intel Xserve available by October 2006.[2] The Xserve servers were available in December 2006.”

DancinJack wrote:

techguy wrote:

I didn't even look at the benchmarks until now. The fact that a single-digit TDP, 2.5GHz CPU designed for smartphones is outperforming a 165W, $8700, 28-core, up to 3.8GHz Xeon in some of these single-threaded workloads is just astonishing. I've said this for a long time now, Apple has the best CPU design team in the industry. When they purchased P.A. Semi all those years ago I predicted this would happen.

This paves the road for Apple-powered Macs. If they even care to bother. But just imagine the performance of an 8-core ~4GHz desktop CPU with this level of IPC. If there was enough software support for such a product, it would be a day one purchase for me.

Ugh. No. You can't just compare those two apples to apples.

I have no objections in that Apple CPUs are really great, and their team is doing an incredible job. But you can't just say the A12 is outperforming a 28 core Xeon with just one benchmark, performed on different a different OS, different RAM, different everything!

Apple very well may be able to make a great desktop CPU, but until they do, all the "desktop performance!" and "outperforming a Xeon" crap is just hyperbole without anything real to back it up (unless you count a single benchmark with zero control points). Please stop doing this.

The point of SPEC is to compare different microarchitectures. It's literally been the industry standard for cross-platform server CPU comparisons for decades.

If you read what I said again carefully this time, notice that I did not say "A12 faster than Xeon across the board, Apple = magic and Intel is teh garbage!!111one1"

End User wrote:

And yet, the 7nm A12, handily beats the 7-7567U in Geekbench.

Yeah, cross-architecture and cross-OS Geekbench. DancinJack, have at it. Oh never mind, it’s EU. Save your words.

MOSFET wrote:

End User wrote:

And yet, the 7nm A12, handily beats the 7-7567U in Geekbench.

Yeah, cross-architecture and cross-OS Geekbench. DancinJack, have at it. Oh never mind, it’s EU. Save your words.

Oh, I know. I know.

"Apple’s CPU have gotten so performant now, that we’re just margins off the best desktop CPUs; it will be interesting to see how the coming years evolve, and what this means for Apple’s non-mobile products."

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/th ... secrets/13