All the more reason it's ridiculous that Apple is still selling A5 devices. Non-retina mini should be killed off (Apple shouldn't be selling any non-retina iOS devices at this point). And the iPod touch should either be updated or discontinued. Make a decision on iPods rather than letting them die on the vine.
In my opinion, Apple should not sell anything non-retina. But I guess the production volumes in question still makes this a manufacturing problem.
As long as devs are building with newer versions of Xcode, it will take advantage of optimizations for each CPU type. Xcode will build different versions of the app for each CPU type you tell it to, glue them together, and then dynamically choose the right version based on the device you're running the app on.
That, combined with use of Grand Central Dispatch (which automatically parallelizes based on the number of cores you have), will get apps performance gains without any significant changes.
And Swift has built in parrallelism functionality.
And Swift has built in parrallelism functionality.
Right. Everything uses GCD under the hood, Swift just does it more transparently than Objective-C did (where some things like animation effects would use it intrinsically and other things had to be manually told to use it). Now if only Swift could interoperate with C/C++ as nicely as Obj-C did (for those of us who need to work across many different platforms)...
Finally. They used up over a third of the die on GPU alone, wow.
The GPU is becoming far more relevant to performance than the CPU these days with the high density displays on mobile devices and 4K/5K displays coming to desktops.
Are the people who care about these chip specs competitors and investors, or just fans of chip design?
Competitors already do this sort of analysis. Investors should be interested in the fact that Apple has the expertise to customize chip designs to their needs rather than just blindly use off-the-shelf designs like most of their competitors do. This gives them an edge. Especially when combined the software expertise to ensure iOS and apps are highly optimized for this.
Even if investors don't understand or care about the technical details, they should understand that quality of the customer experience (due to this attention to detail) is a large part of what drives sales and brand loyalty.
All the more reason it's ridiculous that Apple is still selling A5 devices. Non-retina mini should be killed off (Apple shouldn't be selling any non-retina iOS devices at this point). And the iPod touch should either be updated or discontinued. Make a decision on iPods rather than letting them die on the vine.
Agreed. Not only should they stop selling non-retina devices, they should stop selling any devices that are using SoC's older than the A6
That's why Samsung loves to spout all the meaningless numbers as part of their presentation... too many people think big numbers means better results, but it's not how big you make it, it's how you make it big...
The GPU is becoming far more relevant to performance than the CPU these days with the high density displays on mobile devices and 4K/5K displays coming to desktops.
With all this in-house GPU expertise how much longer must MBPs have to suffer the woes of third party GPUs with their notorious failure rate and lackluster performance?
All the more reason it's ridiculous that Apple is still selling A5 devices. Non-retina mini should be killed off (Apple shouldn't be selling any non-retina iOS devices at this point). And the iPod touch should either be updated or discontinued. Make a decision on iPods rather than letting them die on the vine.
Agreed. Not only should they stop selling non-retina devices, they should stop selling any devices that are using SoC's older than the A6
Apple knows what is selling in the millions (and why). They will continue to make what they make as long as there's a hot market for it...
Personally I'm pleased that Apple continues some older products at lower price points to appeal to a broader spectrum if buyers. Using an A8X to play solitary is overkill and if that's the most graphic intensive app a user runs, then an A5 is more then enough.
Apple knows what is selling in the millions (and why). They will continue to make what they make as long as there's a hot market for it...
Personally I'm pleased that Apple continues some older products at lower price points to appeal to a broader spectrum if buyers. Using an A8X to play solitary is overkill and if that's the most graphic intensive app a user runs, then an A5 is more then enough.
Don't agree. Developers shouldn't be required to support A5 anymore. And I think most developers would be happy if they didn't have to. I doubt many non-retina mini's are flying off the shelves. And I wouldn't be surprised if within 6 months it's quietly discontinued.
All the more reason it's ridiculous that Apple is still selling A5 devices. Non-retina mini should be killed off (Apple shouldn't be selling any non-retina iOS devices at this point). And the iPod touch should either be updated or discontinued. Make a decision on iPods rather than letting them die on the vine.
Agreed. Not only should they stop selling non-retina devices, they should stop selling any devices that are using SoC's older than the A6
Why?
If people are still buying those devices at Apple's target profit -- why should Apple stop selling them?
There are emerging markets where much of the population cannot afford the latest Apple devices ... but they can afford an older Apple device which offers superior results and satisfaction than the competition's newer devices.
A creative company finds ways to satisfy customer needs and desires!
With all this in-house GPU expertise how much longer must MBPs have to suffer the woes of third party GPUs with their notorious failure rate and lackluster performance?
Well, Apple came into the mobile GPU space at a time when there were relatively few off-the-shelf options. So they really had no choice but to closely work with a partner (Imagination) on designs and gain experience.
As compared with the desktop space where the GPU market was much more mature when they started really leveraging GPUs in OS X. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they had some desktop GPU experience back in the NeXT days (though it was more SGI's thing at that time).
But anyways, with regard to your original point, I can't imagine it would happen until Apple transitions their laptops to the same architecture as their mobile devices (if/when they do that).
With all this in-house GPU expertise how much longer must MBPs have to suffer the woes of third party GPUs with their notorious failure rate and lackluster performance?
Well, Apple came into the mobile GPU space at a time when there were relatively few off-the-shelf options. So they really had no choice but to closely work with a partner (Imagination) on designs and gain experience.
As compared with the desktop space where the GPU market was much more mature when they started really leveraging GPUs in OS X. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they had some desktop GPU experience back in the NeXT days (though it was more SGI's thing at that time).
I read somewhere that Apple might be considering using the MIPS CPU architecture -- which IP, coincidentally, is owned by Imagination:
MIPS processor cores are ideal for products where ultra low-power, compact silicon area and a high level of integration are required
This could be quite easily done with Apple's [porting to multiple CPU] experience and XCode development tools ... And Swift could handle it with a modification to it's compiler SIL Optimizer step:
Wow, talk about full-circle. I was just looking up the history of SGI (and the MIPS architecture) and had no idea Imagination was involved with it now. Makes perfect sense that with the modern mobile incarnation of CPU+GPU on the same die, we'd be revisiting MIPS.
This could be quite easily done with Apple's [porting to multiple CPU] experience and XCode development tools ... And Swift could handle it with a modification to it's compiler SIL Optimizer step:
Don't agree. Developers shouldn't be required to support A5 anymore. And I think most developers would be happy if they didn't have to. I doubt many non-retina mini's are flying off the shelves. And I wouldn't be surprised if within 6 months it's quietly discontinued.
Developers write to the OS not the chip. Which is why OS adoption rates are so important. If an A5 supports the latest OS version, that's all that really matters. The vast majority of apps are not compute bound, nor even GPU bound.
Comments
All the more reason it's ridiculous that Apple is still selling A5 devices. Non-retina mini should be killed off (Apple shouldn't be selling any non-retina iOS devices at this point). And the iPod touch should either be updated or discontinued. Make a decision on iPods rather than letting them die on the vine.
In my opinion, Apple should not sell anything non-retina. But I guess the production volumes in question still makes this a manufacturing problem.
As long as devs are building with newer versions of Xcode, it will take advantage of optimizations for each CPU type. Xcode will build different versions of the app for each CPU type you tell it to, glue them together, and then dynamically choose the right version based on the device you're running the app on.
That, combined with use of Grand Central Dispatch (which automatically parallelizes based on the number of cores you have), will get apps performance gains without any significant changes.
And Swift has built in parrallelism functionality.
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/12/a8x-graphics-8-cores/
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/12/a8x-graphics-8-cores/
Finally. They used up over a third of the die on GPU alone, wow.
And Swift has built in parrallelism functionality.
Right. Everything uses GCD under the hood, Swift just does it more transparently than Objective-C did (where some things like animation effects would use it intrinsically and other things had to be manually told to use it). Now if only Swift could interoperate with C/C++ as nicely as Obj-C did (for those of us who need to work across many different platforms)...
Finally. They used up over a third of the die on GPU alone, wow.
The GPU is becoming far more relevant to performance than the CPU these days with the high density displays on mobile devices and 4K/5K displays coming to desktops.
Extremely well said!
All the more reason it's ridiculous that Apple is still selling A5 devices. Non-retina mini should be killed off (Apple shouldn't be selling any non-retina iOS devices at this point). And the iPod touch should either be updated or discontinued. Make a decision on iPods rather than letting them die on the vine.
Agreed. Not only should they stop selling non-retina devices, they should stop selling any devices that are using SoC's older than the A6
That's why Samsung loves to spout all the meaningless numbers as part of their presentation... too many people think big numbers means better results, but it's not how big you make it, it's how you make it big...
With all this in-house GPU expertise how much longer must MBPs have to suffer the woes of third party GPUs with their notorious failure rate and lackluster performance?
Apple knows what is selling in the millions (and why). They will continue to make what they make as long as there's a hot market for it...
Personally I'm pleased that Apple continues some older products at lower price points to appeal to a broader spectrum if buyers. Using an A8X to play solitary is overkill and if that's the most graphic intensive app a user runs, then an A5 is more then enough.
Don't agree. Developers shouldn't be required to support A5 anymore. And I think most developers would be happy if they didn't have to. I doubt many non-retina mini's are flying off the shelves. And I wouldn't be surprised if within 6 months it's quietly discontinued.
Why?
If people are still buying those devices at Apple's target profit -- why should Apple stop selling them?
There are emerging markets where much of the population cannot afford the latest Apple devices ... but they can afford an older Apple device which offers superior results and satisfaction than the competition's newer devices.
A creative company finds ways to satisfy customer needs and desires!
With all this in-house GPU expertise how much longer must MBPs have to suffer the woes of third party GPUs with their notorious failure rate and lackluster performance?
Well, Apple came into the mobile GPU space at a time when there were relatively few off-the-shelf options. So they really had no choice but to closely work with a partner (Imagination) on designs and gain experience.
As compared with the desktop space where the GPU market was much more mature when they started really leveraging GPUs in OS X. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they had some desktop GPU experience back in the NeXT days (though it was more SGI's thing at that time).
But anyways, with regard to your original point, I can't imagine it would happen until Apple transitions their laptops to the same architecture as their mobile devices (if/when they do that).
I read somewhere that Apple might be considering using the MIPS CPU architecture -- which IP, coincidentally, is owned by Imagination:
http://www.imgtec.com/mips/
This could be quite easily done with Apple's [porting to multiple CPU] experience and XCode development tools ... And Swift could handle it with a modification to it's compiler SIL Optimizer step:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/22/
I suspect that this is already being tested in the labs!
Metal - alias "AGK" - Android Graphics Killer
I read somewhere that Apple might be considering using the MIPS CPU architecture -- which IP, coincidentally, is owned by Imagination:
http://www.imgtec.com/mips/
Wow, talk about full-circle. I was just looking up the history of SGI (and the MIPS architecture) and had no idea Imagination was involved with it now. Makes perfect sense that with the modern mobile incarnation of CPU+GPU on the same die, we'd be revisiting MIPS.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/22/
I suspect that this is already being tested in the labs!
Very interesting indeed. Thanks for the info.
Don't agree. Developers shouldn't be required to support A5 anymore. And I think most developers would be happy if they didn't have to. I doubt many non-retina mini's are flying off the shelves. And I wouldn't be surprised if within 6 months it's quietly discontinued.
Developers write to the OS not the chip. Which is why OS adoption rates are so important. If an A5 supports the latest OS version, that's all that really matters. The vast majority of apps are not compute bound, nor even GPU bound.
This doesn't mean much to the average users.
"Average users" aren't Anandtech's intended audience. With articles like this one (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6777/understanding-camera-optics-smartphone-camera-trends), It's pitched more toward readers interested in inner workings of technology.