Alleged 'A10X' benchmarks appear, trounce iPhone 7's A10

AppleInsider

The source that purportedly had the A10 chip benchmarked pre-iPhone 7 release claims to have a device with an "A10X" processor, destined for for a refreshed iPad Pro line.

Enthusiast site Techtastic, citing "reliable sources" claims that the Geekbench 4 tests on the "A10X" device have a single core performance rating of 4236, with a score of 6588 in the multiple core tests.



The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus come in at around 3500 for single-core, and 5600 for multi-core tests. A9X devices, like the original iPad Pro come in at around 3000 single-core, and 5000 multi-core.



The source cited by Techtastic had benchmarks of a chip claimed to be the A10 in August. While benchmark tests are subject to some normal variance, the testing results that were presented were nearly 15 percent too low for the production chip found in the iPhone 7, casting significant doubt on the veracity of the source.



The iPad rumor mill fired back up on Monday, with a new report surfacing claiming that the iPad mini line will see a "Pro" model. The new "iPad Pro 7.9 inch" model will reportedly get the Apple Smart Connector, quad-speaker audio, four microphones, True Tone display with DCI-P3 "Wide Color" support, and a rear 12-megapixel camera.



The same report claimed a slightly larger mid-sized iPad Pro was coming, as well as a refresh to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a True Tone flash, and a Wide Color DCI-P3 display.

fastasleep

Incredible progress, especially when compared to the not nearly as impressive performance gains I'm looking at upgrading from a five year old Intel i7 later this year. 

Herbivore2

The A10X will be a beast of a chip. And the A11 is less than a year away. No one else is competitive with the Apple chips whether a portable Intel i7 or anything from the ARM manufacturers (Samsung and Qualcomm). 

Here's hoping for a 7 nm SoC in the next version of the watch. 

ddawson100

Here I am wanting a new iPad Pro and then fresh rumors of a new release day after day. I'm ready with credit card in hand...

machiavelli92

How about the ARM chips in Macs?

https://www.techtastic.nl/besturingssystemen/overstap-naar-arm-chips-voor-macbooks-komt-dichterbij/

welshdog

PA Semi is absolutely the best acquisition Apple has ever made.  That, and their unique ARM license.

schlack

welshdog said:

PA Semi is absolutely the best acquisition Apple has ever made.  That, and their unique ARM license.

Agreed! But they've also acquired many other chip designers in addition to them.

melgross

These numbers look about right. I'd love to see another 3 core chip in the iPad Pro though. If we could get 9,000 in the multicore results, that would be great. I've got apps that would use those cores to great advantage.

peterhart

Herbivore2 said:

Here's hoping for a 7 nm SoC in the next version of the watch. 

So...over time, the nanometer build process has gotten smaller by number each year. Being unfamiliar with what that is, what happens when the number is down to 1? Is anything smaller?

jfc1138

The larger screens demand extra horsepower I'd expect. Kudos. 

entropys

peterhart said:

Herbivore2 said:

Here's hoping for a 7 nm SoC in the next version of the watch. 

So...over time, the nanometer build process has gotten smaller by number each year. Being unfamiliar with what that is, what happens when the number is down to 1? Is anything smaller?

What happens after that is when the user boots up the iPad they immediately disappear down the nearest rabbit hole and is then able to pass through a keyhole into another world.

Soli

welshdog said:

PA Semi is absolutely the best acquisition Apple has ever made.  That, and their unique ARM license.

I'd say that NeXT is Apple's best acquisition, but I'm giving you a thumbs up on your post because I usually word that as Apple paid Steve Jobs to absorb Apple and change NeXT's name to Apple.

Soli

So we have an A10X that bests the Early-2016 MacBook in both single and multi-core benchmarks, as well as beat my Late-2013 MacBook Pro in single-core, and get more than half the performance score of multi-core with half the cores. I really want to see a budget notebook and desktop from Apple come in at the low end to completely decimate the WinPC market's primary market share the way that the Apple Watch is now killing the most popular and lucrative aspect of the wristwatch market. Those high-cost, low-power Intel processors for customers who have basic computing needs simply isn't helping Apple's bottom line as much it could.

anome

Soli said:

welshdog said:

PA Semi is absolutely the best acquisition Apple has ever made.  That, and their unique ARM license.

I'd say that NeXT is Apple's best acquisition, but I'm giving you a thumbs up on your post because I usually word that as Apple paid Steve Jobs to absorb Apple and change NeXT's name to Apple.

You really took a chance buying a company Steve was running at that time. Something similar happened when Disney bought out Pixar - Steve wound up as the largest individual holder of Disney stock, and only didn't become chairman because he didn't want to piss off the existing board. (Plus, he was already ill, and probably didn't want the hassle on top of what he was trying to do at Apple.)

Buying NeXT saved Apple. Buying PA Semi didn't save them, but if they hadn't, the iPhone might be a different thing to what it is now. Not a failure, not even just another phone, but having their own chip designs has really enabled them to do things they wouldn't have been able to using commodity hardware.

rs1919

peterhart said:

Herbivore2 said:

Here's hoping for a 7 nm SoC in the next version of the watch. 

So...over time, the nanometer build process has gotten smaller by number each year. Being unfamiliar with what that is, what happens when the number is down to 1? Is anything smaller?

When you hear the nanometer build process, it's defining how precisely a chip is manufactured and how small it is.  A nanometer is 1X10^-9 meters or .0000000001 meters.  To help give some perspective, a single hydrogen atom is about .1 nanometer and an electron is roughly 1x10^-16 or .1 femtometer.   Essentially, the smaller the architecture of the chips, the less power and better performance it'll achieve.  To be grossly over-simplistic, this is because the electrons don't need to travel as far and are more tightly packed when going through the transistors.  

ppietra

The scores don’t make sense. It gives a very low multicore processing efficiency compared with previous and current dual core processors from Apple. It would also mean a very high clock speed (2.8GHz) if Apple were to keep using the strategy of using the same cores in both iPad and iPhone SoC.

iaeen2

peterhart said:

Herbivore2 said:

Here's hoping for a 7 nm SoC in the next version of the watch. 

So...over time, the nanometer build process has gotten smaller by number each year. Being unfamiliar with what that is, what happens when the number is down to 1? Is anything smaller?

Transistors, like any switch, are made up of two conducting sides divided by a non-cunducting medium when the switch is off. To turn the switch on, you close the gap or otherwise cause the non-conducting part to conduct electrons from one end to the other.

The nanometer measurement in this case is how far apart the two conducting sides are in each transistor. Making that gap smaller allows you to cram more into the same amount of space which allows you to have a more sophisticated chip design. It also allows for a higher clock rate, but we hit the practical limits of that for other reasons a while ago.

Unfortunately, we will never reach 1nm. When the transistor gap becomes small enough, quantum tunneling starts happening. Basically, quantum tunneling allows electrons (and other particles) to jump small gaps even if that shouldn't be possible according to the potential energy field. It's been a while since I've taken a class on quantum mechanics, so I don't exactly remember why tunneling happens, but nonetheless it will start to become a problem very soon. When quantum effects start to take over, there is no longer a discernible difference between an open transistor and a closed one, so computational logic becomes impossible. At that point, we will have reached the limits of transistor based chip design, and we will have to change the fundamental way in which computers work in order to see more advancement.

baconstang

fastasleep said:

Incredible progress, especially when compared to the not nearly as impressive performance gains I'm looking at upgrading from a five year old Intel i7 later this year. 

I just downloaded the recent GB 4.01 and ran it on my 2015 iMac with an i7.
Results improved with this version to 5180/16098 @ 64bit.

slprescott

iPad Mini Pro + Pencil = potential great gift for kids (drawing, education software, movie viewer)

jbdragon

peterhart said:

Herbivore2 said:

Here's hoping for a 7 nm SoC in the next version of the watch. 

So...over time, the nanometer build process has gotten smaller by number each year. Being unfamiliar with what that is, what happens when the number is down to 1? Is anything smaller?

A nanometer is extremely small. It'a one billionth of a meter. It is one millionth of a millimeter. A millimeter is about the size of the lead in a wood pencil. Divide that by a million, and now maybe you can kind of picture how small that is? A Human hair is around 75,000nm. There's no way they'll get to 1nm and 0 is nothing, so that'll NEVER happen. It's really amazing how small they are at now and that the current is going where it's suppose to go without jumping. It's really amazing is how short of time we went from a computer the side of a large room that only could do a fraction of what we now hold in our hands. Something that costs millions to something that cost hundreds. When you think about it, it's crazy how far we've advanced is such a short time frame. They will hit the impossible wall in shrinkage. Now your working with atoms. So they'll have to go in other directions to go ever faster. More cores is one way. Quantum Computers is another.

Herbivore2

Thank you jbdragon, iaeen2, and rs1919 for explaining how size matters in the function of the transistors in a CPU with respect to power consumption and performance. 

I myself am amazed at the progress that has been made. So much in so short time that the designers and engineers are running into trouble with the laws of physics. 

That being said, TSMC is ahead of all others in chip fabrication. As Intel and Samsung catch up as they will because the transistors are hitting the limit in terms of size and shrinkage, TSMC will be able to continue to "tweak" their facilities for greater yields and lower cost. Apple will have ongoing access to TSMC's most advanced developments and should be able to stay ahead of everyone else. They have essentially passed Intel. 

I do see 12 nm FDSOI making a big splash as the power consumption is much lower than the latest FinFet designs with very good performance. The Chinese are betting big on the technology and companies that rely on software only are going to be in for a rude awakening as the Chinese leverage a hardware edge to take over the market. It is very likely the reason that Google is so keen to get into hardware. They better assemble a chip design team fast, because a day is coming when Huawei and Xiaomi sell phones that do not come with Google Play. 

Apple will still be in a good spot and could always take advantage of Global Foundries 12 nm FDSOI process for the S series SIP in the watch. 

In any case, Apple's mobile processors are the best in the business. No one else is even close.