Apple A14 in 'iPhone 12' said to be as fast as the iPad Pro

AppleInsider

Geekbench scores that may be for the next iPhone processor, the "A14," have surfaced online, and show massive jumps in multi-core performance and speed.

The iPad Pro has an A12X chipset with improved graphics performance and more cores

Apple improves on their A-series processors every year for each new iPhone release, so a successor to the current iPhone 11 A13 chipset is expected in the fall of 2020. Each year as the iPhone flagship release approaches, benchmark scores for said to be from the new processor in the device start to populate popular benchmark tools, like Geekbench.

The A12X (left) vs the supposed "A14" (right)

It is expected that the "iPhone 12" will have improved performance, and these scores show massive gains year-over-year. Apple has been seeing huge gains in their chipsets despite the rest of the industry hitting a bit of a performance wall.

New Geekbench testing, discovered by AppleInsider purporting to be from the A14 processor shows the first A-series processor to cross the 3.0 GHz mark.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro has an A12X chipset with 8 cores and scores 1110 on a single core, and 4568 on the multi-core. The scores for the alleged A14 go beyond even that.

Single core performance of the device shows a 1658 score, with a 4612 multi-core score. This indicates a huge gain in its overall performance and will make multitasking and navigating apps smoother than ever.

Apple is also rumored to be developing an ARM Mac that could debut as early as this winter. A chip derived from the A14 would make for a good base laptop processor as well, but performance this high would also be beneficial for complex tasks like AR rendering or better image processing in a phone.

rob53

What about GPU performance? Is it good enough for an ARM Mac?

tht

rob53 said:

What about GPU performance? Is it good enough for an ARM Mac?

They won't be using the phone SoC in a Mac. They might use an iPad Pro SoC in a Mac. If this follows the typical pattern of AX processors in iPad Pros relative to A processors in iPhones, you can multiply the single core score by 1.1x, the multi-core score by 1.5x, and the GPU compute score by 2x.

That is more than good enough for Macs, with the necessary modifications. It needs to support 16 GB to 128 GB RAM, 4 to 8 TB of storage, and have 24 lanes of PCIe 3 or 16 lanes of PCIe 4. The CPU performance is more than good enough for all Apple laptops and desktops. Look at the single core score. That's i9-9900K territory in a phone. Give it 4 to 16 CPU cores, it can be used in the entire Mac desktop lineup, except for the Mac Pro, in which case, there needs to be a 32 core model and 1 TB memory support. The higher end laptops and desktops will use discrete GPUs, hence the need for PCIe, just like it is today.

If the single core score is true, that is the single core performance of Intel and AMD top end desktop processors in a phone. If it is true.

esummers

rob53 said:

What about GPU performance? Is it good enough for an ARM Mac?

An ARM Mac would probably have its own processor since a MacBook Pro has much different I/O requirements.  If it did share a processor, it would be with the iPad since GPU requirements are similar.  I would expect it would be good compared to Intel graphics, but it would have different performance characteristics since it is a tile based processor.  It is possible Apple might still pair it with a discrete GPU from AMD on some models if it turns out the differences matter enough for pro apps.

edited March 2020

rob53

I keep seeing people complaining about the single core speed because “most apps only use a single core” so is there any way Apple could come up with a 4-5Ghz  CPU? 

How much does it cost Apple to add more cores? Could they add a second CPU chip to do this? How difficult or easy will it be to add PCIe and various I/O to their ARM bus? How close is the A-series architecture to what Apple would need for an ARM Mac?

edited March 2020

beats

I thought the "X" series were just a souped up version of the number next to it, sitting the A12X between the A12 and A13.

tht

rob53 said:

I keep seeing people complaining about the single core speed because “most apps only use a single core” so is there any way Apple could come up with a 4-5Ghz  CPU? 

You mean "comparing" not complaining?

Yes, Apple can design a 5 GHz processor. Whether it is the "same" processor would be up for debate. Apple would have to increase execution pipeline stages to 12 to 16 stages, around there, increase resources for branch prediction and out of order execution, and power would increase to something like 5 to 10 W per core, or a 100 Watts for 10 to 20 cores.

The A14 is a 5 W sustained processor, maybe 8 to 10 W for a minute or two.

fatman

Very cool that it ranks on par with iPad Pro, but a more relevant comparison would be to the current iPhone generation A13 processor. Irregardless that single core score is incredible, and should not be understated.

fatman

Looking through Geekbench, the scores are equivalent to an Intel i7 8th generation 4core system with the ‘A14’ still having higher single core scores in most cases. Very impressive. Most laptops use an i5 4core - so this processor could easily power a laptop. Where it falls off is in multicore scores vs Intel’s 6, 8 core processors. There is certainly no reason why Apple wouldn’t add more cores to a chip designed for an ARM-based Mac computer or higher end laptop, the same way they juice the A series for larger display (but also larger battery capacity) iPads.

rob53

tht said:

rob53 said:

I keep seeing people complaining about the single core speed because “most apps only use a single core” so is there any way Apple could come up with a 4-5Ghz  CPU? 

You mean "comparing" not complaining?

No, I meant complaining. “They” say multi core isn’t as important as single core speed. 

cheesefreeze

Probably the true surprise will be Apple working on discrete GPUs for desktop and high-end mobile in secret. They have become really good at CPUs and there’s no reason for them to rely on Nvidia, ATI or Qualcomm for GPUs.

tht

rob53 said:

tht said:

rob53 said:

I keep seeing people complaining about the single core speed because “most apps only use a single core” so is there any way Apple could come up with a 4-5Ghz  CPU? 

You mean "comparing" not complaining?

No, I meant complaining. “They” say multi core isn’t as important as single core speed. 

Oh, people complaining that they want more single core performance. Yeah, single core performance has basically stood frozen, advancing at about 5% per Intel generation, if that, for the prior 3 years or so. The biggest reason for the standstill is because Intel has been fabbing processors on its 14nm fab for about 5 years now. You can't really improve performance significantly without advances in fab technology.

Apple, and now AMD, has a huge leg up on that because TSMC has been marching forward with it's fab tech and has overtaken Intel. This was all paid for by the mass market adoption of smartphones. I have zero doubts that Apple can have the fastest single core performance chip because TSMC has the most advanced semiconductor fab in the world. That used to be Intel for 30 to 40 years.

ednl

Multicore less than 1% better despite much higher clock, and Metal score lower. I wouldn't call this huge gains.

mattinoz

rob53 said:

What about GPU performance? Is it good enough for an ARM Mac?

No not with single-core score like that.

mattinoz

rob53 said:

I keep seeing people complaining about the single core speed because “most apps only use a single core” so is there any way Apple could come up with a 4-5Ghz  CPU? 

How much does it cost Apple to add more cores? Could they add a second CPU chip to do this? How difficult or easy will it be to add PCIe and various I/O to their ARM bus? How close is the A-series architecture to what Apple would need for an ARM Mac?

That would be a hybrid and while to me seems the most sensible way for Apple to push many people think it would be bad not to rip the band aid off and make people suffer the transition.

Such a hybrid would work with everything Apple has already in shipping product. It's basically "sidecar" but in front and over a faster bus.

ericthehalfbee

ednl said:

Multicore less than 1% better despite much higher clock, and Metal score lower. I wouldn't call this huge gains.

A12X has 8 cores (4 large cores). To have a 6 core processor (2 large cores) score about the same is pretty good.

A12X is the fastest ARM mobile processor on the planet, by a significant amount. To get the same performance from a phone SoC (not a tablet SoC that has higher power/thermals) is pretty impressive.

Compared to the A13, the A14 results shown here are 25-35% faster in single, multi and metal. Apples lead over Samsung, Qualcomm, Huawei and ARM has been expanded even further.

tommikele

tht said:

rob53 said:

What about GPU performance? Is it good enough for an ARM Mac?

They won't be using the phone SoC in a Mac. They might use an iPad Pro SoC in a Mac. If this follows the typical pattern of AX processors in iPad Pros relative to A processors in iPhones, you can multiply the single core score by 1.1x, the multi-core score by 1.5x, and the GPU compute score by 2x.

That is more than good enough for Macs, with the necessary modifications. It needs to support 16 GB to 128 GB RAM, 4 to 8 TB of storage, and have 24 lanes of PCIe 3 or 16 lanes of PCIe 4. The CPU performance is more than good enough for all Apple laptops and desktops. Look at the single core score. That's i9-9900K territory in a phone. Give it 4 to 16 CPU cores, it can be used in the entire Mac desktop lineup, except for the Mac Pro, in which case, there needs to be a 32 core model and 1 TB memory support. The higher end laptops and desktops will use discrete GPUs, hence the need for PCIe, just like it is today.

If the single core score is true, that is the single core performance of Intel and AMD top end desktop processors in a phone. If it is true.

Good explanation for someone like me who doesn't really know too much about the design and engineering of GPUs. You made it understandable for me!

sirozha

Fatman said:

Looking through Geekbench, the scores are equivalent to an Intel i7 8th generation 4core system with the ‘A14’ still having higher single core scores in most cases. Very impressive. Most laptops use an i5 4core - so this processor could easily power a laptop. Where it falls off is in multicore scores vs Intel’s 6, 8 core processors. There is certainly no reason why Apple wouldn’t add more cores to a chip designed for an ARM-based Mac computer or higher end laptop, the same way they juice the A series for larger display (but also larger battery capacity) iPads.

The current generations of MacBook Air are dual-core CPUs. So, a Intel i-7 quad-core equivalent for a MacBook Air would be AWESOME. Unless you are doing some heavy computational tasks, you don't need anything beyond quad-core i7 power. 95% of people would never need six-core or eight-core laptops. 

seanismorris

sirozha said:

Fatman said:

Looking through Geekbench, the scores are equivalent to an Intel i7 8th generation 4core system with the ‘A14’ still having higher single core scores in most cases. Very impressive. Most laptops use an i5 4core - so this processor could easily power a laptop. Where it falls off is in multicore scores vs Intel’s 6, 8 core processors. There is certainly no reason why Apple wouldn’t add more cores to a chip designed for an ARM-based Mac computer or higher end laptop, the same way they juice the A series for larger display (but also larger battery capacity) iPads.

The current generations of MacBook Air are dual-core CPUs. So, a Intel i-7 quad-core equivalent for a MacBook Air would be AWESOME. Unless you are doing some heavy computational tasks, you don't need anything beyond quad-core i7 power. 95% of people would never need six-core or eight-core laptops. 

Never say never.

apple ][

I wonder what the A14X will be like. The next iPad Pros should be beasts!

apple ][

sirozha said:

The current generations of MacBook Air are dual-core CPUs. So, a Intel i-7 quad-core equivalent for a MacBook Air would be AWESOME. Unless you are doing some heavy computational tasks, you don't need anything beyond quad-core i7 power. 95% of people would never need six-core or eight-core laptops. 

I'm one of the 5% then, because I like to make music and that takes more power than a rocket scientist needs.