"The expansion of the Neural Engine to 16 cores instead of 8 cores brought up the question of why Apple elected to devote transistors there and not budgeted for more GPU or CPU performance, which Millet suggests is down to how Apple views the feature."
Two things.
1. There are a lot of AI features on mobile and this will increase in the future. You offload those AI features to their own chips for the same reason that floating point math was offloaded at one time and graphics and security functions are offloaded now. Separating the specialized functions allows for botth the specialized and generalized functions to run better.
2. The other companies involved in AI - Microsoft, Amazon, Google - are using the cloud for AI. Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware. Apple is going to either aim to provide more AI functionality locally than the competition can provide using the cloud - which should be possible in theory so long as Apple can come up with applications for it - or provide similar AI functionality but with more "speed, security and privacy" than shipping AI queries and results back and forth over a 5G connection.
While it isn't this way on PCs - yet - go ahead and accept that going forward there are going to be 3 main processing units in mobile: CPU, GPU and AI.
Float, in the beginning, wasn’t offloaded. It didn’t exist. Third parties came out with their own float chips to work with x86. After a time, Intel came out with theirs, and then ended the testing crisis to a certain extent by making it part of the chip.
apple could use the cloud for this, just as they first did with Siri. But there’s the security question, and so Apple made a deliberate decision to as much as they could on the chip, which means more powerful chips.
Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware.
No, that's not really true. iCloud has come a long way from Apple's humble cloud beginnings. It now actually has a pretty good reputation. Apple is not a generic cloud provider, but the services area where Apple competes, they do a pretty good job. The real reason Apple does most of the AI on device is for privacy reasons. Apple is ahead of there competitors with on device AI and that's only partly due to hardware advantages. Apple has made a number of acquisitions for small AI companies like Xnor.ai which specialize in this field in order to gain a competitive advantage over Android, etc. As privacy becomes more important, Apple's approach pays off in a big way. In fact, what you see is companies like Google that are trying to catch up to what Apple is doing in terms of on device AI.
I wouldn't put Apple in the same league as the big players at this point in time.
They have a long way to go, especially in infrastructure.
I'm not sure why you think Apple is ahead with on device AI. I haven't seen anything that supports that. The opposite is possibly true.
Huawei has been using on device AI since 2017 and each new generation has just added more uses for it (battery management, voice and depth sensing biometrics and enhancement, image recognition, capture and stabilisation, translation etc.) They now use their own 3D Cube tech with MindSpore and the Ascend line of processors which are designed to scale from earbuds through phones right up to multimillion dollar clusters.
Apple has shown no interest in having a general purpose cloud service. To them, the cloud is just about integrating their own services with their customer’s Apple. Devices.
Apple has been using on device AI at least as long as that. Now, maybe Huawei will be forced to develop its own CPU.
Great read, but not much new stuff. Was hoping to hear more about Mac SoCs.
Speaking of which... Who else thinks that with these upcoming ASi Macs we’re going to lose the ability to customize for performance? Today I can buy an iMac with an i5, i7, or i9, but only because Apple can just buy those from Intel. Will Macs move to a more iOS device type of customization, where performance differences are marked by generation, not variant (expect of course for the AnX/AnZ)?
There are currently 4 Mac categories to design SoCs for: consumer desktop, consumer mobile, pro desktop, pro mobile. So that’s already at least four variants on the same generation SoC. Is Apple going to be able to make multiple SoCs for each category so that there’s a method of choosing more or less performance in CPU/GPU?
Or is it going to be... Here’s an iMac... choose your display size, storage and memory, that’s it!
Another way to look at it is that there are a bunch of performance tiers because Intel charges differing amounts depending on the performance of the chip.
Apple doesn't use all core-i9s because they're expensive and produce a lot of heat and consume lots of power, so they use a bunch of processors at different tiers to adjust the balance between power, expense, and performance.
Maybe with Apple silicon all models will be top tier models in each SoC catagory - A14 for lowest level, maybe an A14X for iPad/midrange, and others for higher performance (the first Mac SoC is rumored to have 8 Firestorm high performance and 4 Icestorm high efficiency cores). I would expect an incremental cost for higher performance SoCs, both due to silicon real estate and higher cost per wafer because of lower quantity produced, but not like what Intel's charging.
Apple could defray the cost by selling CPUs, but having their own silicon is such a competitive advantage there's no way they're going to do it.
Having your own high performance silicon line that no competitor can buy and compete with you? Priceless.
Remember that one of Intel's problems is getting enough working chips out of a wafer.
Intel's 10th gen chips are 10 nm - except for the 10900s which are 14 nm. The 10900K is Intel's overclockable 10 core 20 thread chip, and though it has a nominal TDP of 125w in the real world it can consume over 300w. They've reached the limits of physics, and actually had to shave the top of the chip to get enough surface area to cool the chip, and even then it requires heat transfer material, heat pipes, radiators, and cooling fans to maintain operation near advertised clock speeds.
Compare that to the A12Z whose normal operating environment is passively cooled in a glass sandwich. In a Mac it would produce more heat, but not to the extent of competitors in the x86 line where discussion of models and performance always devolves into how good the cooling system is.
We'll see, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the highest performing Macs won't be coming out until A15 which is planned to be produced on TSMC's 3nm node - provided they don't run into undue quantum effects. Even Apple silicon will eventually run into Moore's Wall.
It’s expected that Apple’s A15 series will be produced on a refined 5nm node. TSMC won’t have 3nm in 2021. Maybe in 2022 when the A16 will be out. But I’ve been reading that it’s possible we may not see it until 2023.
Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware.
No, that's not really true. iCloud has come a long way from Apple's humble cloud beginnings. It now actually has a pretty good reputation. Apple is not a generic cloud provider, but the services area where Apple competes, they do a pretty good job. The real reason Apple does most of the AI on device is for privacy reasons. Apple is ahead of there competitors with on device AI and that's only partly due to hardware advantages. Apple has made a number of acquisitions for small AI companies like Xnor.ai which specialize in this field in order to gain a competitive advantage over Android, etc. As privacy becomes more important, Apple's approach pays off in a big way. In fact, what you see is companies like Google that are trying to catch up to what Apple is doing in terms of on device AI.
I wouldn't put Apple in the same league as the big players at this point in time.
They have a long way to go, especially in infrastructure.
I'm not sure why you think Apple is ahead with on device AI. I haven't seen anything that supports that. The opposite is possibly true.
Huawei has been using on device AI since 2017 and each new generation has just added more uses for it (battery management, voice and depth sensing biometrics and enhancement, image recognition, capture and stabilisation, translation etc.) They now use their own 3D Cube tech with MindSpore and the Ascend line of processors which are designed to scale from earbuds through phones right up to multimillion dollar clusters.
LOL
I was going to comment, but what's the point?
You'll just get schooled tomorrow when Apple announces the iPhone 12 and interleaves all of the new features with the ML that is integrated with the hardware and software.
Still,
You seem to have been on the losing side of your Huawei Telecom arguments, for quite awhile now, as more countries back away from Huawei, likely because of all of the Authoritarian shit that China has and is pulling.
The only big one left is Germany, and they appear to be putting human rights and security policies ahead of Trade priorities with China. Huawei could end up empty handed in Germany as well.
Except we aren't talking about tomorrow, are we?
Tomorrow has nothing to do with now or the last few years.
Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware.
No, that's not really true. iCloud has come a long way from Apple's humble cloud beginnings. It now actually has a pretty good reputation. Apple is not a generic cloud provider, but the services area where Apple competes, they do a pretty good job. The real reason Apple does most of the AI on device is for privacy reasons. Apple is ahead of there competitors with on device AI and that's only partly due to hardware advantages. Apple has made a number of acquisitions for small AI companies like Xnor.ai which specialize in this field in order to gain a competitive advantage over Android, etc. As privacy becomes more important, Apple's approach pays off in a big way. In fact, what you see is companies like Google that are trying to catch up to what Apple is doing in terms of on device AI.
I wouldn't put Apple in the same league as the big players at this point in time.
They have a long way to go, especially in infrastructure.
I'm not sure why you think Apple is ahead with on device AI. I haven't seen anything that supports that. The opposite is possibly true.
Huawei has been using on device AI since 2017 and each new generation has just added more uses for it (battery management, voice and depth sensing biometrics and enhancement, image recognition, capture and stabilisation, translation etc.) They now use their own 3D Cube tech with MindSpore and the Ascend line of processors which are designed to scale from earbuds through phones right up to multimillion dollar clusters.
Apple has shown no interest in having a general purpose cloud service. To them, the cloud is just about integrating their own services with their customer’s Apple. Devices.
Apple has been using on device AI at least as long as that. Now, maybe Huawei will be forced to develop its own CPU.
Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware.
No, that's not really true. iCloud has come a long way from Apple's humble cloud beginnings. It now actually has a pretty good reputation. Apple is not a generic cloud provider, but the services area where Apple competes, they do a pretty good job. The real reason Apple does most of the AI on device is for privacy reasons. Apple is ahead of there competitors with on device AI and that's only partly due to hardware advantages. Apple has made a number of acquisitions for small AI companies like Xnor.ai which specialize in this field in order to gain a competitive advantage over Android, etc. As privacy becomes more important, Apple's approach pays off in a big way. In fact, what you see is companies like Google that are trying to catch up to what Apple is doing in terms of on device AI.
I wouldn't put Apple in the same league as the big players at this point in time.
They have a long way to go, especially in infrastructure.
I'm not sure why you think Apple is ahead with on device AI. I haven't seen anything that supports that. The opposite is possibly true.
Huawei has been using on device AI since 2017 and each new generation has just added more uses for it (battery management, voice and depth sensing biometrics and enhancement, image recognition, capture and stabilisation, translation etc.) They now use their own 3D Cube tech with MindSpore and the Ascend line of processors which are designed to scale from earbuds through phones right up to multimillion dollar clusters.
LOL
I was going to comment, but what's the point?
You'll just get schooled tomorrow when Apple announces the iPhone 12 and interleaves all of the new features with the ML that is integrated with the hardware and software.
Still,
You seem to have been on the losing side of your Huawei Telecom arguments, for quite awhile now, as more countries back away from Huawei, likely because of all of the Authoritarian shit that China has and is pulling.
The only big one left is Germany, and they appear to be putting human rights and security policies ahead of Trade priorities with China. Huawei could end up empty handed in Germany as well.
Except we aren't talking about tomorrow, are we?
Tomorrow has nothing to do with now or the last few years.
And what does telecoms have to do with this?
Actually, we will be taking about this tomorrow, which is what this post is about. Maybe you would do well to actually watch these events.
Apple will surely be talking about the A14 SOC, and all of the silicon features of it, and the massive amount of silicon devoted to the Neural Engine. Then Apple will discuss all of the ML interwoven into each of the new and upgraded iPhone.
Apple is certainly a leader in edge computing, over Huawei even, as Apple owns more of the stack, even given all of that AI that Huawei owns that is primarily focussed on surveillance. Hence why Apple is so adept at providing so many polished customer focussed features, rather than a smorgasbord of features poorly integrated with each other, which is more typical of the competition.
As for my posts on Huawei telecom, it is just to let you know that Huawei specifically, and China in general, are facing growing headwinds in the West.
Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware.
No, that's not really true. iCloud has come a long way from Apple's humble cloud beginnings. It now actually has a pretty good reputation. Apple is not a generic cloud provider, but the services area where Apple competes, they do a pretty good job. The real reason Apple does most of the AI on device is for privacy reasons. Apple is ahead of there competitors with on device AI and that's only partly due to hardware advantages. Apple has made a number of acquisitions for small AI companies like Xnor.ai which specialize in this field in order to gain a competitive advantage over Android, etc. As privacy becomes more important, Apple's approach pays off in a big way. In fact, what you see is companies like Google that are trying to catch up to what Apple is doing in terms of on device AI.
I wouldn't put Apple in the same league as the big players at this point in time.
They have a long way to go, especially in infrastructure.
I'm not sure why you think Apple is ahead with on device AI. I haven't seen anything that supports that. The opposite is possibly true.
Huawei has been using on device AI since 2017 and each new generation has just added more uses for it (battery management, voice and depth sensing biometrics and enhancement, image recognition, capture and stabilisation, translation etc.) They now use their own 3D Cube tech with MindSpore and the Ascend line of processors which are designed to scale from earbuds through phones right up to multimillion dollar clusters.
LOL
I was going to comment, but what's the point?
You'll just get schooled tomorrow when Apple announces the iPhone 12 and interleaves all of the new features with the ML that is integrated with the hardware and software.
Still,
You seem to have been on the losing side of your Huawei Telecom arguments, for quite awhile now, as more countries back away from Huawei, likely because of all of the Authoritarian shit that China has and is pulling.
The only big one left is Germany, and they appear to be putting human rights and security policies ahead of Trade priorities with China. Huawei could end up empty handed in Germany as well.
Except we aren't talking about tomorrow, are we?
Tomorrow has nothing to do with now or the last few years.
And what does telecoms have to do with this?
Actually, we will be taking about this tomorrow, which is what this post is about. Maybe you would do well to actually watch these events.
Apple will surely be talking about the A14 SOC, and all of the silicon features of it, and the massive amount of silicon devoted to the Neural Engine. Then Apple will discuss all of the ML interwoven into each of the new and upgraded iPhone.
Apple is certainly a leader in edge computing, over Huawei even, as Apple owns more of the stack, even given all of that AI that Huawei owns that is primarily focussed on surveillance. Hence why Apple is so adept at providing so many polished customer focussed features, rather than a smorgasbord of features poorly integrated with each other, which is more typical of the competition.
As for my posts on Huawei telecom, it is just to let you know that Huawei specifically, and China in general, are facing growing headwinds in the West.
Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware.
No, that's not really true. iCloud has come a long way from Apple's humble cloud beginnings. It now actually has a pretty good reputation. Apple is not a generic cloud provider, but the services area where Apple competes, they do a pretty good job. The real reason Apple does most of the AI on device is for privacy reasons. Apple is ahead of there competitors with on device AI and that's only partly due to hardware advantages. Apple has made a number of acquisitions for small AI companies like Xnor.ai which specialize in this field in order to gain a competitive advantage over Android, etc. As privacy becomes more important, Apple's approach pays off in a big way. In fact, what you see is companies like Google that are trying to catch up to what Apple is doing in terms of on device AI.
I wouldn't put Apple in the same league as the big players at this point in time.
They have a long way to go, especially in infrastructure.
I'm not sure why you think Apple is ahead with on device AI. I haven't seen anything that supports that. The opposite is possibly true.
Huawei has been using on device AI since 2017 and each new generation has just added more uses for it (battery management, voice and depth sensing biometrics and enhancement, image recognition, capture and stabilisation, translation etc.) They now use their own 3D Cube tech with MindSpore and the Ascend line of processors which are designed to scale from earbuds through phones right up to multimillion dollar clusters.
Apple has shown no interest in having a general purpose cloud service. To them, the cloud is just about integrating their own services with their customer’s Apple. Devices.
Apple has been using on device AI at least as long as that. Now, maybe Huawei will be forced to develop its own CPU.
Apple lacks their cloud prowess and infrastructure so they are trying to compete using hardware.
No, that's not really true. iCloud has come a long way from Apple's humble cloud beginnings. It now actually has a pretty good reputation. Apple is not a generic cloud provider, but the services area where Apple competes, they do a pretty good job. The real reason Apple does most of the AI on device is for privacy reasons. Apple is ahead of there competitors with on device AI and that's only partly due to hardware advantages. Apple has made a number of acquisitions for small AI companies like Xnor.ai which specialize in this field in order to gain a competitive advantage over Android, etc. As privacy becomes more important, Apple's approach pays off in a big way. In fact, what you see is companies like Google that are trying to catch up to what Apple is doing in terms of on device AI.
I wouldn't put Apple in the same league as the big players at this point in time.
They have a long way to go, especially in infrastructure.
I'm not sure why you think Apple is ahead with on device AI. I haven't seen anything that supports that. The opposite is possibly true.
Huawei has been using on device AI since 2017 and each new generation has just added more uses for it (battery management, voice and depth sensing biometrics and enhancement, image recognition, capture and stabilisation, translation etc.) They now use their own 3D Cube tech with MindSpore and the Ascend line of processors which are designed to scale from earbuds through phones right up to multimillion dollar clusters.
LOL
I was going to comment, but what's the point?
You'll just get schooled tomorrow when Apple announces the iPhone 12 and interleaves all of the new features with the ML that is integrated with the hardware and software.
Still,
You seem to have been on the losing side of your Huawei Telecom arguments, for quite awhile now, as more countries back away from Huawei, likely because of all of the Authoritarian shit that China has and is pulling.
The only big one left is Germany, and they appear to be putting human rights and security policies ahead of Trade priorities with China. Huawei could end up empty handed in Germany as well.
Except we aren't talking about tomorrow, are we?
Tomorrow has nothing to do with now or the last few years.
And what does telecoms have to do with this?
Actually, we will be taking about this tomorrow, which is what this post is about. Maybe you would do well to actually watch these events.
Apple will surely be talking about the A14 SOC, and all of the silicon features of it, and the massive amount of silicon devoted to the Neural Engine. Then Apple will discuss all of the ML interwoven into each of the new and upgraded iPhone.
Apple is certainly a leader in edge computing, over Huawei even, as Apple owns more of the stack, even given all of that AI that Huawei owns that is primarily focussed on surveillance. Hence why Apple is so adept at providing so many polished customer focussed features, rather than a smorgasbord of features poorly integrated with each other, which is more typical of the competition.
As for my posts on Huawei telecom, it is just to let you know that Huawei specifically, and China in general, are facing growing headwinds in the West.
Comments
Float, in the beginning, wasn’t offloaded. It didn’t exist. Third parties came out with their own float chips to work with x86. After a time, Intel came out with theirs, and then ended the testing crisis to a certain extent by making it part of the chip.
apple could use the cloud for this, just as they first did with Siri. But there’s the security question, and so Apple made a deliberate decision to as much as they could on the chip, which means more powerful chips.
Apple has shown no interest in having a general purpose cloud service. To them, the cloud is just about integrating their own services with their customer’s Apple. Devices.
Apple has been using on device AI at least as long as that. Now, maybe Huawei will be forced to develop its own CPU.
It’s expected that Apple’s A15 series will be produced on a refined 5nm node. TSMC won’t have 3nm in 2021. Maybe in 2022 when the A16 will be out. But I’ve been reading that it’s possible we may not see it until 2023.
Tomorrow has nothing to do with now or the last few years.
And what does telecoms have to do with this?
Apple will surely be talking about the A14 SOC, and all of the silicon features of it, and the massive amount of silicon devoted to the Neural Engine. Then Apple will discuss all of the ML interwoven into each of the new and upgraded iPhone.
Apple is certainly a leader in edge computing, over Huawei even, as Apple owns more of the stack, even given all of that AI that Huawei owns that is primarily focussed on surveillance. Hence why Apple is so adept at providing so many polished customer focussed features, rather than a smorgasbord of features poorly integrated with each other, which is more typical of the competition.
As for my posts on Huawei telecom, it is just to let you know that Huawei specifically, and China in general, are facing growing headwinds in the West.
Like this one;
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-ai-surveillance/614197/
Great for a police state, and Huawei is part and parcel of that, but do we really want to adopt the surveillance state in the West?
And Huawei's AI is NOT mostly used for surveillance and also Apple is not ahead in stack terms either.
Apple does not even operate in virtually ANY of the fields where Huawei is pushing its developments!
It’s China. That’s the most surveilled country in the world. Is Huawei part of that? Most likely.