Anandtech specialists laid out the shelves Soc Apple A8x graphics specifications. Mobile processor progress on the example iPhone comparison with other processors of previous iPhone models
The network leaked the details of the new A8 processor, which is installed in iPhone 6 and new iPad versions.
Android phones are already equipped with four-, or even eight-year processors, but are they needed? Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5 are supplied with eight-cherished processors, but it does not become easier. It is ridiculous to observe as a device equipped with such a powerful hardware, slows down when you want to open contacts or a dialer, it is funny to look at the long-standing gallery.
As can be seen one iron, it is clearly not enough, you still need a well-written software under it, and this is exactly what Apple is famous. Therefore, no one is not surprising that the A8 processor remains two-core. And the frequency of him will be 2 GHz, which looks small on the background of the flagships on Android, which will still not be equal to the smoothness of working with the iPhone.
The new A8 in iPhone 6 is the fastest of all Apple processors. Its performance and graph processing speed is higher than that of the A7 processor, even despite the presence of new functions and the need to display the image on the larger screen. And since A8 more efficiently consumes energy, its performance is even more increasing. In particular, this means that you can play games with difficult graphics and watch more long movies.
iPhone 6 is equipped with an A8 processor, which is based on the 64-bit level of the second level of level desktop computer. This incredible power complements the M8 movement coprocessor. It effectively processes data on the actions obtained from modern sensors, including a completely new barometer. Thanks to this performance and increased battery capacity, iPhone 6 can work longer and more productive. 
The M8 coprocessor constantly processes the data obtained from the accelerometer, compass, gyroscope and the new barometer. This partially frees the A8 processor from the load to improve the efficiency of its work. The functionality of the sensors is expanded, and now they can measure the number of steps, the distance traveled and even the level of the lift.
The processor A8 is 64-bit, like A7, and is made using 20 nm technology. This is a surprisingly miniature, but effective processor in which two billion transistors provide incredible performanceAt the same time up to 50% more efficiently spending energy than A7. The A7 processor in turn has been implemented by technology 28 nm. Manufacturers of processors are Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Cyclone kernel on ArmV8-A architecture and the graphics responds with PowerVR G6430.
For comparison, iPhone 5S operates at a frequency of 1.3 GHz, with the same two nuclei, and iPad Air. It is considered the most powerful, its frequency is 1.4 GHz. We see a significant increase in power. Although there are concerns that new processor It will consume much more energy and even with an increase in the battery, the service life of the device without recharging may still decrease.
By the way, to maximize the possibility of processing the graphics of the A8 and iOS 8 processor, we developed in Apple new technology Metal, which allows developers to create fascinating cantilever games for the iPhone. Metal technology is optimized in such a way that the central and graphics processors can work together on displaying detailed graphics and complex visual effects.
Which was already in the Samsung lineup Galaxy Tab. S. Somehow does not smell innovation. But when the tablet went on sale, and the Master "Microscope and Soldering" got to him from Chipworks., as well as gicks from Anandtech, it turned out that Apple made another revolution in the field of one-chip mobile systems together with and this is a big threat to all competitors, including such chip manufacturers as Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung and NVIDIA. But enough empty words, we turn to the facts.
Interesting thoughts about Apple's actions in the tablet market and mobile processors expressed the chief editor aI Daniel Eran Dilger And I agree with his observations, the essence of which is that Apple is unnoticed for simple consumers just tear competitors and their business in the flap. Intel has already lost billions on confrontation with the company from Cupertino, but this is a separate story that I will write about later. Qualcomm, Samsung and Nvidia, like manufacturers of mobile processors, things are not the best.
But in the past, nothing foreshadowed trouble. The same Intel could earn a huge amount if provided Apple effective for iPad chip four years ago. This company is Steve Jobs Considered as a supplier of mobile processors for branded tablets. That's just when it came to the case, chip Intel Atom. (Then the famous codename name Silverthorne) was, to put it mildly, voracious, and from the strength could be calculated by 2-3 hours of autonomy. Alternatives S. necessary characteristics There was no on the market too. Here is one of the reasons who pushed Apple to develop their own processors, as a result of which A4 was born, which showed himself in all its glory in and in. By the way, he still has very successfully worries with many users.
In the first year of its existence, iPad "carried out" from the market microsoft Platform Windows Tablet PC (and at the same time and UMPC monsters like SAMSUNG Q1). In 2011, crushed, and several Google-based devices, including. By the way, the processor for iPad 2 turned out to be made with such a reserve that it still works successfully on the first generation.
It is also necessary to remember both, which was more or less successful only thanks to the minimum price for its time. And in fact, the remnants of the PlayBook and purchased for him are so hotly. By the end of 2012, under the pressure of the iPad - did not help Microsoft neither enormous financial injections into the project, nor a loud name nor brand Windows.
From the moment of launching on the sale of Surface tablets, Apple sold on 70 million Tablets per year, effectively collecting almost all revenues with her and created market. Moreover, the company from Cupertino did not simply defeat Samsung, Palm, HP, BlackBerry, Google, Amazon and Microsoft in sales of tablets, but actually climbed into the pocket of each manufacturer, producing chips for failed devices.
Loser Tablet Fight Processors
Intel turned out to be the biggest loser in the whole story, which not only missed the opportunity to become a long-term supplier of processors for the iPad, but also lost the market of netbooks and Tablet PC. You can add here and only the emerging UMPC format. All these devices operated under the control of Intel X86 processors, the sales level of which seriously decreased after the release of the Apple tablet.
One of the predecessors of iPad and bright representatives of UMPC - Samsung Q1
Chips Texas Instruments Omap Another victim of the company's revolution from Cupertino. On their basis, the BlackBerry Playbook tablets, Kindle Fire, Motorola XyBoard and several worked sAMSUNG models Galaxy Tab. Ultimately, Ti generally left the IOS Pressure Mobile Processors.
NVIDIA Every day, Apple recalls with kindly, quiet word, rubbing the tombstones of the whole line of Tegra and preparing the grave even for the newest K1. Although the fate of this platform and so was not easy. It is enough to recall the failures with the player and Kin phones, in which the first generation of Soc Tegra was used.
The second generation went to the bottom together with the Motorola Xoom tablet and the harbinger of modern tablet phones Dell Streak. Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 did not show themselves very well in Surface RT.
Well, a flagship 64-bit processor Tegra K1. (the company calls it 192-nuclear, but on the fact there is 192 computing blocks), which first dismissed in the tablet Nvidia Shieldand now coming in a bit cut in frequencies Google Nexus. 9 , lost the "Arms Race" new Apple. A8X (256 computing blocks) in iPad Air 2. At first, NVIDIA under pressure of competitors left the smartphone market, and now it seems that it is ready to leave and tablet too.
Clichable
It is not easy for I. Qualcomm.. In the past, she had problems with such products as HP TouchPad and, although it was little things against the background of the fact that the American chipmeacher was pushed out by the efforts of the iPad from the market of high-class tablets. Attempt to make money on licensing your technology chinese manufacturers It turned out to be not the most successful due to the specifics of the business in the Middle Kingdom. Not always, Asians report to partners with a real amount of sales of their devices, that is, tritely try to inspire from licensed payments.
Yes, Qualcomm processors are used in a number of 4G-tablets Samsung, but the lion's share of sales from the Korean company falls on Wi-Fi modelAnd they are built on the basis of their own EXYNOS chips.
In addition, Qualcomm supplies modem chips for iPad and iPhone, although this is only a temporary source of income, as sooner or later, Apple will develop their own solutions, as Intel and NVIDIA made, and Samsung has progress in this matter.
With Apple, almost no one is trying to fight the market for premium tablets, because. The same units that have not yet left hopes to capture at least some part of the market, the Qualcomm chips do not use. So in the Intel processors are installed, in Google Nexus 9 - mentioned above NVIDIA Tegra K1, and Samsung uses its EXYNOS chips.
All this was driving Qualcomm to the market budget tabletswhere there is little money, which means little incentive to create high-performance Apple A8x level chips.
Apple no longer finances the development of Samsung chips
In the past exactly sAMSUNG processors Most Apple devices were based on the iPhone 2G, iPod Touch of the first generation and in the iPhone 3G. Starting with the second generation iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch, the American company used the same Koreans created by the same Koreans, but for her to order decisions, which means Samsung's income was lower (she could not use the same chips in their gadgets), money for investment in development New chips are less.
The second important nuance is that almost all profits on the tablet market takes Apple and this profit is not shy to invest in the development of new processors. Do you think that A8X level chips are born by magic? This is the titanic work of high-class specialists who are impressive money. The company from Cupertino has this money, and we see the result. Competitors also have only crumbs from the pans.
Yes, Samsung has enough income in other regions of the market, which it sends to the development of mobile processors, but again, Koreans are connected by hand and legs with standard computing modules and GPUs from ARM, and those less productive and energy efficient than Apple development. To upgrade ARM-kernel, Samsung has no relevant licenses, but Apple has.
The second blow from Cupertino in his main competitor is to the detriment of the Samsung plants. The volume of chip production decreases, which automatically increases the cost of manufacturing processors for the Koreans themselves.
Apple has an alternative to Intel processors
Perhaps someone had a question: " And why invest such a huge amount of money in the development of a heavy duty processor for the tablet, when this category of devices has now actually ended up? ". After all, A8X in its performance reached the level of processors and video cards initial level For PC, while it is much energy efficient. Creating such a chip is really a great work and mighty financial injections.
But take a little bit on the other side. Suddenly, Apple prepares a bridgehead in order to abandon Intel processors in Mac computers? In the past, she once tested such a phint, while moving from the IBM PowerPC RISC chips on the X86 solutions from Intel. In 2010, the story repeated with the second generation, which works on the A4 chip database, the same thing that works in the iPad and iPhone 4. But the first generation of Apple TV, launched in 2007, used Intel processors.
An analogy can be continued using. The company's smart clock is based on its own single-grip system S1, and not a standard component from Intel or any other company. In general, Intel is scheduled for serious problems in the processor market, and not only because of the lack of new niches, where they could be applied. Even old niches are closed. For example, servers manufacturers actively learn the issue of transition to more energy efficient ARM processors.
Samsung, LG and a number of other smaller players produce their own ARM chips for consumer devices, but none of them reaches the same level of sales as apple solutions, plus most products do not belong to the top class, which brings maximum money. The scheme of chips also leaves much to be desired, because everywhere it sits the spirit of economy. Instead of the most powerful mobile GPUs from PowerVr., companies stop their choice on medium solutions ARM Mali.. Thus, the processor business outside the world of Apple offers either inexpensive and low-powerful chips, or more or less productive, but very angry for pocket due to low production.
As a rule, mobile apple devices The last generation occupies far from the latest positions in various benchmarks, and the SOC used in them differ quite high levels of performance both by part of the CPU and part of the GPU. And if you get a fairly complete picture of the performance allow these very benchmarks, then it is understood that it is provided - the task is not the lungs, because for Apple it is not characteristic of dividing detailed technical characteristics.
Without a snapshot of the A8X crystal, reasoning on the topic of the newest SOC characteristics can be compared with fortune tells on the coffee grounds. It was known only that the configuration of this single-chip platform includes three improved Cyclone processor kernels and 2 MB of second-level cache (L2). This information reveals the OS, for which she is thank you very much. A real mystery until recently remained a graphic component A8X. Operating system iOS did not give an answer to the question about the configuration and performance of the GPU, these indicators were part of a complex equation with multiple variables and largely depend on the value of the GPU operating frequency and the number of unified clusters (UNIFIED SHADING CLUSTSES, USC).
Previously journalists Anandtech, relying on their internal test results and provided Apple informationMade an assumption that PowerVR GX6650 is responsible for the processing of graphs in A8x, the most powerful solution from the graphics accelerators of Imagination Technologies. However, as a result of a more detailed analysis of tests and studying a picture of the A8X crystal received from ChipWorks, in Anandtech came to the conclusion that in the new chip Apple. An even more complicated GPU is used with an 8-cluster design.
The other day, Imagination announced the next-generation schedule PowerVR Series7. And although the shipment of new GPUs will not begin next to the next year, it became clear from the announcement that the Series7xt model can scaling up to 16 USC clusters - twice as much more than Series6XT. This is exactly what journalists committed themselves and forced a more detailed analysis. The fact is that Imagination has never released a model with an 8-cluster design and used in A8x theoretically must wear the name GXA6850.
On the CHIPWORKS resource provided, the crystal snapshot is clearly visible to all eight GPU clusters and looks like everything as if two GX6450 are located side by side. As noted above, Imagination has no 8-cluster design Series6XT. In other words, Apple took advantage of an extended license and created its own GPU design with 8 GX6450-based clusters. His informal name is GXA6850.
A8x crystal area manufactured according to preliminary data, TSMC on the standards of 20-nm technical process is 125 mm 2 (12.5x10 mm), which is slightly more compared to the 28-nm NVIDIA GK107 chip (118 mm 2), but less square 2-nuclear 22-nm intel processor Haswell 2c + GT2 (130 mm 2). As for the number of transistors and, accordingly, the complexity of the A8X structure, it includes about 3 billion transistors. The number of A8X transistors exceeds not only the two above-mentioned chip, but even the 4-core CPU Intel Haswell 4C + GT3 (1.7 billion transistors), occupying its place between the GPU NVIDIA GK104 (3.5 billion transistors) and GK106 (2, 5 billion transistors). Approximately 30% of the A8x crystal area (38 mm 2) are allocated to the graphics component.
The total number of FP32 ALU blocks in the GPU A8X is 256, or 32 to one cluster. The graphics processor supports OpenGL ES 3.1. In numerical expression, the performance is 512/1024 (FP32 / FP16) FLOPS and 16 texels for the tact in the 8-cluster configuration. For comparison, the performance of the PowerVR GX6650 model (192 of the FP32 ALU) is 384 (in FP32 mode) or 768 (FP16) FLOPS and 12 texels per tact.
According to Anandtech journalists, Apple decided to abandon the 6-cluster design in favor of the 8-cluster not so much to increase productivity, although 30% increase over the iPhone 6 PLUS in terms of graphic power per pixel exposes iPad Air 2 in a more cluster light how much to increase bandwidth Memory tires. A 128-bit width bus requires a lot of contacts that are needed for other SOC components: flash memory, display, sound, USB, Wi-Fi, etc. This could only be achieved by increasing the chip area, so Apple decided to add two additional GPU clusters, which corresponds to about 10 mm 2.
With 256 processor blocks FP32 ALU in SOC A8X apple company Almost close to the possibilities of desktop entry-level video cards. Whatever it was, but the Apple A8X and NVIDIA Tegra K1 platforms currently in terms of graphic performance look quite well compared to the rest of the SOC tablet.
Two models released in September 2014: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus - made a lot of noise. They are equipped with an updated 64-bit single-chip system called A 8. This is a dual-core processor based on Cyclone branded microarchitecture, clock frequency which equals 1.4 GHz. The dimensions of the A8X crystal are only 12.5 mm per 10 mm, that is, 125 mm 2. Both models have one gigabyte random access memory Type LPDDR3, which is integrated into a single case with A8, which additionally saves the inner space.
The advanced A8 processor is equipped with a powerful and highly efficient PowerVR Series6XT GX6650 graphic chip per six cores. Also, 8 is equipped with a M8 motion coprocessor. It allows you to more effectively determine the parameters of all iPhone sensors 6 and 6 Plus: from the barometer - until the time and location of the smartphone. In this case, the M8 processor significantly reduces energy costs to read and process constantly updated data.
For models 6 and 6 PLUS - processor A 8 was produced by the Taiwan company TSMC specializing in the production of modern semiconductor products and microplate. In the future, cooperation is planned with Samsung.
What advantage A 8 allowed to achieve?
Among the indisputable improvements that the iPhone received due to the use of A 8 can be attributed to:
First, the processor A 8 shows higher performance and speed than precursors, as it is made according to modern twentieth centneucer technological process. It makes it possible to use just an incredible number of transistors in chips - about two billion. It is difficult to even imagine, not what to develop and successfully implement!
As you can see by the below benchmarks, the general indicators from the iPhone and iPhone Plus. Not the highest on the market, but you are guaranteed uninterrupted operation of devices in any conditions. And in the process of refinement of iOS 8 - performance will only grow.
Secondly, energy is much more efficient, and this is despite the fact that the enlarged screen (in the model 6 plus, especially) consumes much more of its number. Those. At first glance, optimization is not very striking, but in fact - it is essential. In dough duration autonomous work with connected by Wi-Fi network They showed some of the best results.
Thirdly, graphic performance has improved significantly. In addition to this, the developers have created Metal technology, which significantly expands the capabilities of the processor A 8 and iOS systems 8 for processing graphics in 3 D. It helps to achieve high realistic and image detail. For lovers of games with complex visual effects - This is an indisputable plus.
Fourth, makes it possible to maintain high-speed work in browsers.
Among the disadvantages, it is still standing out that the apparatus of the device - iOS 8, it does not allow to reveal the entire potential of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to the full potential. But it is corrected - during the development and installation of updates than programmers, in fact, successfully and are engaged.
It is also clearly losing and very modest amounts of RAM. Although the developers were surprisingly possible to achieve good results in performance, it is not inferior to more powerful, in technical terms, analogues from competitors. But still, in this direction there is, where to grow, and perhaps in the new models of RAM will be increased.
Comparison with other processors of previous iPhone models
As you can see from the above comparative tables, the processor A 8 slightly improved the performance of new models, compared with its predecessor A 7. A conducted independent benchmark models issued by Apple over the past few years, showed such a performance dynamics.
As you can see, there is no cardinal separation from the previous device. Although the manufacturer presents its own dynamics of increasing processor indicators of the entire issued model range:
But still an iPhone 5 S is still quite a competitive iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. After all, in essence there is nothing fundamentally new in them - the characteristics of the processor A 7 have improved and the characteristics of the processor A 7, only under large diagonal and the relevant requirements of graphics and energy consumption.
Summing up, we note that, despite not the most advanced individual characteristics, an iPhone, like any other device, will provide you with enviable reliability and stability. All existing problems are mostly software, and therefore easily eliminated by high-quality software. Yes, and no test will adequately appreciate the convenience and coherence of the work of these wonderful gadgets.
On the iPhone presentation 7 in September 2016 years Apple It boasted that for ten years, the performance of processors in the iPhone rose already at 120 times:
I seemed Velikaya's figure, so let's check it out. However, there is one problem - the very first iPhone received support only iPhone OS 3.1.3, whereas, for example, the minimum iOS for iPhone 7 is 10. And so I managed to find only one benchmark, testing processor performance and working on all IOS versions - This is Geekbench 2. Yes, its relevance is already in question - for example, it does not support x64 instructions, but it is enough to evaluate it.
- iPhone 2G (Samsung S3C6400 ARM11 620 MHz, operating at 412 MHz, 65 Nm, 128 MB EDRAM, 2007) - 150 points.
The very first iPhone came out almost 10 years ago, in 2007. Iron now causes a smile - 400 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM even in smart watch Already no one puts. However, at the time of the exit it was quite powerful, and due to the closedness of the iPhone OS, the first iPhone worked fast enough. - iPhone 3G (Samsung S3C6400 ARM11 620 MHz, 212 MHz, 65 Nm, 128 MB EDRAM, 2008) - 150 points
The main technical change in the iPhone 3G was 3G support (from where, in fact, the name). All the rest of the iron remains the same, so the result in the benchmark is the same. - iPhone 3GS (Samsung S5PC100 ARM Cortex A8 833 MHz, working at a frequency of 600 MHz, 65 nm, 256 MB EDRAM, 2009) - 300 points.
Literature S in this iPhone was decrypted as Speed \u200b\u200b- speed, and there is why: the processor switched from the archaic arm11 of the middle of zero to the modern (for the standards) Cortex A8, and somewhat increased the frequency - as a result, it became twice as fast. The double volume of RAM allowed to use multitasking better, and eventually the phone was updated until 2013 - the last OS was IOS 6 for him. - iPhone 4 (Apple A4 ARM Cortex A8 1 GHz, operating at 800 MHz, 45 Nm, 512 MB EDRAM, 2010) - 400 points.
This is the first iPhone, where the processor was partially made Apple, but mostly it was still built on Cortex A8. The optimization of the kernel, the growth of its frequency and the increased twice the volume of RAM made iPhone 4 by 25% faster than 3Gs, however, alas, on the last to him version of iOS. 7 He worked quite slowly. - iPhone 4S (Apple A5 ARM Cortex A9 1 GHz, operating at 800 MHz, 2 kernels, 32 nm, 512 MB LPDDR2, 2011) - 860 points.
The first dual-core processor in the iPhone that uses the new (at that time) the Cortex A9 architecture, but the core frequency remained the same - 800 MHz, so that the result was on average 2 times higher. This is the most popular processor from Apple - it was put in addition to the iPhone 4s also in iPod Touch. 5, iPad 2/3 / mini (in them the frequency was increased to 1 GHz). Alas - the possibilities of the processor are still not limitless, and on iOS 9 the device listed above work quite slowly. - iPhone 5 (Apple A6 SWIFT 1.2 GHz, 2 kernels, 32 Nm, 1 GB LPDDR2, 2012) - 1680 points.
Finally, the processor frequency in the iPhone interposed for 1 GHz. In addition, this is the first processor, mainly built on Apple's own architecture - SWIFT (however, the architecture of Cortex A15 was also partially involved) - it allowed almost twice the processor performance. Along with 1 GB of RAM, the phone works well even on the most modern on this moment iOS 10. - iPhone 5S (Apple A7 Cyclone 1.3 GHz, 2 cores, 28 Nm, 1 GB LPDDR3, 2013) - 2250 points.
This iPhone can be called, perhaps, the most breakthrough technologies - it was the first phone on the X64 processor, built entirely on the Apple's own architecture - Cyclone. Performance inspired Respect - Dual-core A7 with a frequency of 1.3 GHz was at the level of the top-level Snapdragon 800 - 4 core monster with a frequency of up to 2.2 GHz! Perhaps this iPhone can be called relevant - it flies on iOS 10 and supports most applications from the App Store. - iPhone 6 (Apple A8 Cyclone V2 1.4 GHz, 2 cores, 20 Nm, 1 GB LPDDR3, 2014) - 2470 points.
Apple's iPhone 6 has concentrated on design, so the performance has grown slightly. As a result, the processor was much worse than the top-end at that time Snapdragon 805, which, in other matters, did not affect his work due to good IOS optimization. - iPhone 6S (Apple A9 Cyclone V3 1.85 GHz, 2 cores, 14 nm, 2 GB LPDDR4, 2015) - 3170 points.
In 6S Apple focused on productivity - the processor has become 40% faster, and, finally, after three years, the volume of RAM grew up to 2 GB. At the time of release, the processor competed on an equal footing with the most powerful representatives of the Snapdragon and Exynos lines, and now it is not so far behind the tops, by 20-30%. - iPhone 7 (Apple A10 Fusion, 2 cores of 2.34 GHz and 2 to 1.05 GHz, 14 nm, 2/3 GB LPDDR4, 2016) - 3650 points.
5 years after the release of its first dual-core processor, Apple has released a 4-core processor for the iPhone, built using the Big.little technology - for heavy tasks, a cluster of 2 powerful kernels is used, for simple - cluster of 2 weak, at the same time they cannot work. In addition, for the first time between the simple ruler and Plus, a serious difference occurred in the gland - in 7 Plus 3 GB of RAM against 2 in 7, which allows him to use multitasking better. The processor turned out to be so powerful that the iPhone 7+ still holds the top 1 to Antutu.
Summing graph:
As can be seen, there is no stagnation in the mobile segment and close - if the Intel and AMD increases for generation does not exceed 5-10%, then the increase can be two-time. And this is understandable - mobile processors were all the time in the role of catching up, and used the work of desktop processors, therefore they developed so quickly. And what is the most interesting, mobile processors have already become technological as desktop - if Intel "stuck" on 14 nm for three years, and AMD has just released its decisions on this technical process, the new Snapdragon 835 has already been built on the standards of 10 nm technical process, And soon it will appear in the flagships on Android. Yes, and Apple A9X processor in iPad Pr. already at the level of ultrabiary ruler intel Core M, consuming less energy. In addition, ARM processors in laptops are interested in Apple and Microsoft - who knows, possibly architecture x86-x64, at least in the user segment, is it time to rest?
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