A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
"PRC warns of action after Pompeo says Taiwan not part of China."
Taiwan FM spokeswoman Joanne Ou: “The Republic of China on Taiwan is a sovereign, independent country, and not part of the People's Republic of China. This is a fact and the current situation”
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
Real interdisciplinary companies like Apple, as an example, who are just killing it in fabless silicon?
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
You couldn't resist bringing politics in.
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
You couldn't resist bringing politics in.
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
Huawei brought this politics into this, you always bring Huawei into the conversation, so I merely responded.
Simply, you want a different goalpost for SoC's, that doesn't rely on the CPU and GPU. You have that already. It's called Antutu, a Chinese phone benchmarking tool. Kirin 9000 beat Apple's A14. I prefer Geekbench because it tests the CPU, GPU and Memory subsystem, and it allows comparision with notebook, laptop, and desktop systems.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
You couldn't resist bringing politics in.
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
You couldn't resist bringing politics in.
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
You couldn't resist bringing politics in.
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
Another link to an explanation of the M1;
I fail to see your point here.
That is not a 'mobile' SoC.
It is irrelevant to your claims.
You never will understand. It talks about the architecture of both.
LOL, of course you don't want to have technology explained to you that is better than Huawei.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
You couldn't resist bringing politics in.
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
Another link to an explanation of the M1;
I fail to see your point here.
That is not a 'mobile' SoC.
It is irrelevant to your claims.
You never will understand. It talks about the architecture of both.
LOL, of course you don't want to have technology explained to you that is better than Huawei.
And there you go again, all on your own track.
It's not about being better. It's not about winning. It's about being correct!
And now you are jumping onto something that pretty much hasn't even reached users yet.
Slow down! We aren't talking about Apple Silicon! We're talking about iPhones over the last few years up to now. And I've spelt out why you are wrong. Don't go running off to other things.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
In about a week, those M1 powered Mac's will hit the market, and that microarchitecture, and those cores, which are identical to the A14, will be benchmarked by just about everyone. Then you will see how that microarchitecture, and Apple's Core configurations in an SoC, scale.
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
You couldn't resist bringing politics in.
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
Another link to an explanation of the M1;
I fail to see your point here.
That is not a 'mobile' SoC.
It is irrelevant to your claims.
You never will understand. It talks about the architecture of both.
LOL, of course you don't want to have technology explained to you that is better than Huawei.
And there you go again, all on your own track.
It's not about being better. It's not about winning. It's about being correct!
And now you are jumping onto something that pretty much hasn't even reached users yet.
Slow down! We aren't talking about Apple Silicon! We're talking about iPhones over the last few years up to now. And I've spelt out why you are wrong. Don't go running off to other things.
There are already benchmarks out for the M!, and given that the microarchitecture and cores are the same between the A14 and the M1, it's reasonable to extrapolate performance until those Mac's arrive Friday
You haven't made your case that SoC's shouldn't be measured primarily on the CPU and GPU performance, and as I have stated, all of the current SoC's have Neural and Imaging cores on SoC, amongst other things. The reason that the CPU and GPU cores are most important, is they are always in use on the SoC of the device, and Apple's cores are the most performant, and efficient, in mobile, and quite possibly with the M1, in the desktop space as well.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
Yes, it’s more than the CPU. I’ve been saying that all along. Apple’s SoC still easily beats anything Huawei.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
Yes, it’s more than the CPU. I’ve been saying that all along. Apple’s SoC still easily beats anything Huawei.
'Easily'!
Another ludicrous claim thrown in for good measure.
So, where is that third generation 5nm 5G modem?
Ah! It's not there is it? And when you go looking for it, it's an old second generation off-SoC modem.
Those DSP/ISPs. Last time I checked they were considered best in class. In photography Apple is widely acknowledged to have been lacking in recent years. Those dual ISPs were playing a large role in that.
In house Wi-Fi? No such thing on the Apple SoC. Do you even understand the '+' in Wi-Fi 6+ and how the NPU is involved? Huawei claimed its WiFi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 (which shipped a full year later) because it was using the world's fastest mobile WiFi chipset at the time.
Dual frequency GPS?
So tell me, what do you actually know about 3D Cube DaVinci?
It is virtually impossible to make the claims you are making with a straight face.
You clearly know though, otherwise you wouldn't be making silly claims.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
Yes, it’s more than the CPU. I’ve been saying that all along. Apple’s SoC still easily beats anything Huawei.
'Easily'!
Another ludicrous claim thrown in for good measure.
So, where is that third generation 5nm 5G modem?
Ah! It's not there is it? And when you go looking for it, it's an old second generation off-SoC modem.
Those DSP/ISPs. Last time I checked they were considered best in class. In photography Apple is widely acknowledged to have been lacking in recent years. Those dual ISPs were playing a large role in that.
In house Wi-Fi? No such thing on the Apple SoC. Do you even understand the '+' in Wi-Fi 6+ and how the NPU is involved? Huawei claimed its WiFi 5 was faster than Aplple's Wi-Fi 6 (which shipped a full year later) because it was using the world's fastest mobile WiFi chipset at the time.
Dual frequency GPS?
So tell me, what do you actually know about 3D Cube DaVinci?
It is virtually impossible to make the claims you are making with a straight face.
You clearly know though, otherwise you wouldn't be making silly claims.
Keep on truckin!
More to the point, there is no Kirin after the 3 to 8 million 9000's are gone. That leaves the Qualcomm 875, very pricey, and the Exynos 1080.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
The SoC that has the faster CPU, and the faster GPU, and is more energy efficient, driven by the more advanced microarchitecture, is the SoC that sets the bar, and Apple sets the bar yet again with the A14, and more so with the M1, and that isn't just my opinion.
That you are still attempting to redefine metrics for SoC's doesn't change that. That's just being a sore loser.
Nobody is talking about the Kirin 9000, because it didn't catch A Series. Worse for Huawei, there is only going to be 3 to 8 million SoC's to work with, then its a choice of Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm.
At this moment, the M1 has sucked all of the air out of the room, and put AMD and Intel on notice.
If you're talking about the CPU, say CPU.
It's as simple as that. A faster CPU doesn't make it a more powerful SoC! It makes it a faster CPU!
As for Apple Silicon and all the air being sucked out of the room - that's crazy.
Perhaps better to wait and see, don't you think.
After all, having a faster phone CPU hasn't sucked all the air out of the Android room, has it?
And I can easily tell you why. On 90% of flagship phones the faster CPU (which you want to give so much importance to) is lost on users!
They don't even know that their devices are slower! This of course applies to iPhones users too.
In the bad old days when things like burning a CD could take ages, speed was a great way to sell new devices. However, when things are virtually instant, the 'problem' goes away.
And with phones that is what is happening.
More to the point, CPU performance has NOT been what has shifted Android phones over the last few years - it's been the cameras, the fast charging, the battery life etc.
People buy Android phones because they’re cheaper. That accounts for over 90% of Android sales. All the flagship Android phone sales are just a fraction of Apple’s sales, even though, worldwide, Android is 85% of the market.
A marketing exercise but completely understandable.
What they are saying is what most vertical manufacturers do (and have been doing for years).
Apple is slowly catching up with photography but the harsh truth of the matter is that phone cameras are great and have been for years now. That won't change any time soon. Where phone cameras have branched out over the last two years is in versatility and Apple missed several opportunities to add that. Strangely so.
Not strange at all, just a result of Apple's business model.
Apple sells enough of the current generation of iPhones each year, that it requires in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions each of a small set of four different cameras. Ramping to those volumes by suppliers is non trivial, hence why Android Os device makers are more than willing to pay premiums for smaller quantities, in the millions to tenss of millions, for their flagships; they need those features to compete with other Android OS device makers, and Apple doesn't.
Apple will be shifting some 170/190 million iPhones 12 this fiscal year, each with the most powerful SOC in the industry, all to enable the most user friendly computational photography in the market. Apple has only "missed several opportunities", in your opinion, because Apple's customer base doesn't buy features, per se, but rather, buys experiences, same as it ever has.
The metrics that prove this, are ASP, Margins, and revenues, all of which Apple leads, and frankly, it isn't all that bad at shifting units either.
You missed the point again.
This isn't about quantity (which isn't even an issue). Apple doesn't sell its phones in a day and, as with the Max this year, has always had the option to use more premium, lower yield options on its phones.
As for the world's most powerful SoC, that is again a ludicrous claim. Are you confusing SoC (as a whole) with some of the elements on it? The A14 does not even have a modem on it!
Oh please! Stop with that crap. Huawei’s SoCs are nothing more than standard ARM designs as far as the CPUs go, and the GPUs are nothing great either. They’re about the same as Qualcomm;s, which are way behind Apple’s. And amazingly, Apple manages to easily outperform any Huawei phone without even being turned on.
Nonsense. The latest Huawei designs are not even using the latest ARM cores (which they could if they really thought they'd need it). Speed itself is not something they seem to crave when they have more than enough already. And it's not the first time they've done this.
How about you look beyond that? Try looking at the SoCs as a whole - not the 'CPU'.
The ISPs and DSPs have been incredible over the last few years. They have been untouchable in Wi-Fi. Dual frequency GPS. Integrated modems (now 5G). Amazing NPU architecture. They even managed to squeeze 30% more transistors onto the latest 5nm offering than the A14.
Huawei isn't using their own cores, and if they were using ARM's latest cores, Kirin 9000 would still would come up short against Apple's A and M series. That is due both to Apple microarchitecture and Apple's ability to optimize the OS and silicon.
It isn't even close, and for a fact, the microarchitecture of the A and M series is more performant than either AMD Zen 3 or Intel's latest. Apple's 8 wide decoder design leads AMD and Intel.
I again restate that Apple has an advantage because they own more of the stack.
You fail to understand that even "looking at the SoC's as a whole" isn't going to give you a win.
"Performance against the contemporary Android and Cortex-core powered SoCs looks to be quite lopsided in favour of Apple. The one thing that stands out the most are the memory-intensive, sparse memory characterised workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp where the Apple design features well over twice the performance, even though all the chip is running similar mobile-grade LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory. In our microarchitectural investigations we’ve seen signs of “memory magic” on Apple’s designs, where we might believe they’re using some sort of pointer-chase prefetching mechanism."
Oh, and "squeezing 30% more transistors onto the latest 4nm offering than the A14", isn't a win either. It just increases the cost of the Kirin 9000, same as the M1 with a comparable number of transistors. That Apple can design a processor that is more performant with less transistors, and ultimately ship something on the order of 170 million A14 this fiscal year, is impressive.
Meanwhile, there is only something like 8 million Kirin 9000's, and there won't be anymore. Good luck with that.
Who even mentioned 'winning'?
It isn't about winning. It's about not being incorrect in statements.
You seem to be unaware of what a SoC is and why process mode, transistor count and the different systems on it are important.
It is a technical feat on many levels.
And it's worth noting recent reviews of the Max which put it in the same league as Huawei and Samsung in some cases for photography (even slightly better in some opinions!).
That is Apple catching up and very much due to the improved hardware on that model which, in turn make the comments picked up by the article look more like marketing than ever.
LOL,
So I'm the one that doesn't understand SoC's?
Apple just dominates SoC's, and you can't admit that, so you move the goalposts.
I posted the links to anandtech so that you can get an idea on why Apple is dominating SoC's.
Take advantage of that.
Well, it seems obvious now, seeing as you are persisting in pointing to a link which speaks, almost in its entirety, about the micro architecture and the CPU.
Also, you are jumping on the A14 which has only been on the market for days and the M1 which nobody has at this point.
Now, go back and read what I actually said about SoCs - what is on them and why they are important.
Think about the areas I mentioned.
Those areas that you mentioned are second order. They rely on the performance of the CPU cores. Apple's CPU cores are especially efficient and powerful, due to the microarchitecture. Read the article.
It's wonderful that Huawei has all of those SoC computing cores (NPU), et al, just as any other SoC, but, again second order.
When the speed of ANY flagship already does everything you want?
That's a predicable, and losing, argument that you have made.
I have yet to see a mobile SoC over serve the smartphone market, hence why Apple is still pushing for improved performance and efficiency.
Sadly, Huawei can't match that, but neither can any other Android OS device maker either, so it's all good!
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
How are you defining overserve?
When Huawei said its Wi-Fi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 and from a chipset from the year earlier, was Apple underserving? When iPhone SatNav precision suffered from not having dual frequency GPS, was Apple underserving? By not having a 5nm 5G modem on the SoC, is Apple underserving? When I bought a phone with the previous year's SoC knowing full well it wasn't the latest and greatest and two years later it is still 'instant' fast for everything I do, am I being over or underserved? A lot of the photography magic (the computational side) in Huawei phones over the last few years was aided by the NPU and the dual ISPs on the SoC. Was Apple underserving again by not even being in the low light photography game? Or with AIIS?
By trying to isolate the SoC from the rest of the phone you aren't seeing the forest for the trees. And on top of that you are still confusing the CPU performance with the SoC (and ignoring everything else on it).
In the same way the 'CPU' is only part of the SoC, the SoC is only part of the phone. People (Apple users included) will gladly skip the latest and greatest because performance on many phones is not considered an issue.
My experience is proof of that and there are millions of users out there who will agree with me.
Your premise is barking up the wrong tree, as it were.
To put it bluntly, if speed or performance were even a minimal issue, people would be moving to iDevices in droves. The truth is that virtually no flagship user even bats an eyelid when it comes to speed.
But that really isn't the point (just like overserving or underserving misses the point). The point is that you are confusing the SoC with one of the elements on it.
First of all, there isn't any question at all that Apple's A14 benchmarks better than the Kirin 9000. Kirin 9000 wins Antutu, but that's a given since the benchmark was never designed, or intended for, Apple's A Series SoC.
Second, no consumer cares, excepting yourself and a few others, about the performance of WiFi, Cellular, or GPS, as long as it checks the right boxes, and Apple does, with Wifi 6, 5G, and a broad range of GPS support.
Third, there isn't a reliable test for Neural Engines, especially cross platform, and I certainly haven't seen any comparison benchmarks between the A14 and the Kirin 9000. I'll call that a wash for now.
Fourth. I agree completely with you that Samsung, Huawei, and other Android OS vendors have more and better spec'd cameras and lenses than Apple. That doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on iPhone sales, but there are certainly some that will switch just for higher resolution, and higher zoom, capability found in Android OS devices. Apple is likely both conservative, and cheap, waiting for the BOM to drop in cost over time. That's a perfect example of watching their margins.
Fifth, Huawei does have an advantage with the integration of the 5G modem, but it isn't an advantage that they can market against the iPhone 12, again, because Apple checks that box. In the future, Apple will have their own modem on SoC.
All that aside, Apple's micro architecture and seamless integration with iOS, iPadOS, and now MacOS, is part and parcel of Apple's A Series, and now M Series, SoC performance advantage. That isn't even debatable.
You recently questioned why the iPhone had superior performance in browsing versus the Mac. I expect that not to be the case any longer, due to the M1 SoC. We will probably have an answer to that in a few weeks, at most.
I stand by my point that Apple has superior vertical and horizontal integration, with the caveat of consumer electronics, compared to Huawei or any other Android OS device maker, and it is actually very easy to see with the advent of the M1 into Apple's ecosystem.
Your previous points about all the other businesses that Huawei is in, most with even lower margins that smartphones, really isn't relevant at all to Apple's business, nor direct competition with Apple, almost entirely due to the lack of a proven OS. Maybe that will change, but not anytime soon, even in China.
That was a very good and well reasoned response and I actually agree with some points.
Clearly we aren't going to agree but I do appreciate it.
Clearly, you need to read the anandtech article.
He claims he read it. Either he’s lying, or didn’t understand it.
Of course I read it.
It focuses on A14 CPU virtually exclusively and then speculates on this week's news.
It makes no attempt (and makes that clear) to look at the A14 as a whole (much less Apple's previous offerings, save for a brief comparison to the A13) and the focus is on the CPU and microarchitecture.
That's fine but the CPU alone isn't the SoC. Trying to claim otherwise is misrepresenting things.
It also compares it to the Kirin 9000 tests that they ran.
Did you miss that too?
The bottom line is that both the Kirin 9000, the A14, and the M1 are all on the 5nm node, but the Kirin 9000 is less performant, and that is primarily due to Apple's microarchitecture and Apple's software stack. There isn't any reason to visit the features of the Kirin 9000, nor the A14, since that isn't what the article is about, nor is the "buzz" surrounding the M1 about features. It's just about performance and efficiency, and the Kirin comes in behind both the A14, and the M1.
You've moved the goalposts so that you can give Huawei an unearned "win".
Excepting the modem, the A14, and the M1, have all of the capabilities of the Kirin 9000, so there isn't any reason in the article to compare those features. I'm sure someone else will at some point, but in the meantime, Kirin trails both A Series and M1.
Erm. Re-read what I wrote.
Re-read what I have written every single time this absurd claim pops up. It hasn't changed in the slightest. No goalposts have ever been moved.
A SoC is not a CPU (core or whatever you wish to call it). A SoC contains a CPU with a lot of other elements.
If you are talking about a CPU, say so. Don't try to push it as the SoC.
If you are talking about a SoC it is the system on a chip. The whole thing. The CPU included BUT with everything else.
It really is that simple.
Ok, I'll play,
The CPU of the A14 SoC, and the CPU of the M1, are considerably more powerful than the CPU in the Kirin 9000. I already stated multiple times why.
As for the rest, knock yourself out. Every SoC has most of the same elements that the Kirin 9000 has, ie, the Kirin isn't special for that, just slower in comparison to the A14 and M1.
Buh Bye!
Fine. So at least you are adapting your claim of the A14 being the most powerful SoC in the industry and leaving it as the most powerful CPU.
Essentially, you're down to "but, but, real world tests show that the Kirin 9000 is superbitchin", after all the goal post moving you had to do on microarchitecture, Apple's technology stack advantages, and benchmarks.
Huawei only has 3 to 8 million relatively expensive Kirin 9000's to work with anyway, whereas Apple will have some 170 million less expensive A14's for FY2021. The Kirin 9000 just isn't relevant to market. Truth be told, the Exynos 1080 benchmarks almost identically to the Kirin 9000 since both use the same configuration of ARM provided core designs.
The whole point of all of all of my posts was Apple's undeniable advantage in custom ARM IP, as shown with the A14, and now the M1. Somehow you still can't, or won't, accept that.
I'm not 'down to' anything. My posture or reasoning hasn't changed at all.
No goalposts have been moved either.
What I'm saying now is exactly the same as yesterday, six months ago, or two years ago.
Exactly the same.
And exactly wrong.
Nope. Why not take a look at the SoC diagrams in the links posted right here.
A SoC is more than the CPU.
The CPU is the CPU The GPU is the GPU The NPU is the NPU The ISP/DSP is the ISP/DSP The modem is the modem. The GPS is the GPS The wireless chip is the wireless chip ...
Can you see where I'm going?
It isn't that hard to understand. If you refuse to accept reality, that's your call.
So when people talk about an on-SoC or off-SoC modem, you should know what they are talking about (and of course it has nothing to do with the CPU).
Yes, it’s more than the CPU. I’ve been saying that all along. Apple’s SoC still easily beats anything Huawei.
'Easily'!
Another ludicrous claim thrown in for good measure.
So, where is that third generation 5nm 5G modem?
Ah! It's not there is it? And when you go looking for it, it's an old second generation off-SoC modem.
Those DSP/ISPs. Last time I checked they were considered best in class. In photography Apple is widely acknowledged to have been lacking in recent years. Those dual ISPs were playing a large role in that.
In house Wi-Fi? No such thing on the Apple SoC. Do you even understand the '+' in Wi-Fi 6+ and how the NPU is involved? Huawei claimed its WiFi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 (which shipped a full year later) because it was using the world's fastest mobile WiFi chipset at the time.
Dual frequency GPS?
So tell me, what do you actually know about 3D Cube DaVinci?
It is virtually impossible to make the claims you are making with a straight face.
You clearly know though, otherwise you wouldn't be making silly claims.
Comments
Of course, you'll complain about that too.
EDIT:
Your pal Ren being full of shit;
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4051803
"Huawei CEO claims China is world's No. 1 chip manufacturer thanks to Taiwan"
Taiwan does not consider itself part of The People's Republic of China, and it won't ever be, unless the PRC invades Taiwan.
"PRC warns of action after Pompeo says Taiwan not part of China."
""Another issue is talent," Ren added. "Students have been trained in college for a single specialty, but our American rival values interdisciplinary studies, which enables greater innovation and breakthroughs." Ren thus called for the cooperation of higher education in tackling the deficiencies of the country's semiconductor industry."
Real interdisciplinary companies like Apple, as an example, who are just killing it in fabless silicon?
'Taiwan' cannot consider itself anything and depending on which side of the fence you choose to sit on, you will swing one way or another. Leave people to their own opinions and politics out. There's no point in dragging that into this.
Keep it simple. I made it as simple as I could. If you can't grasp the idea, re-read what I said.
Simply, you want a different goalpost for SoC's, that doesn't rely on the CPU and GPU. You have that already. It's called Antutu, a Chinese phone benchmarking tool. Kirin 9000 beat Apple's A14. I prefer Geekbench because it tests the CPU, GPU and Memory subsystem, and it allows comparision with notebook, laptop, and desktop systems.
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/317304-benchmark-results-show-apple-m1-beating-every-intel-powered-macbook-pro
We'll see a broader range of M1 Benchmarks once the new Macs are in customer hands, next Friday.
That is not a 'mobile' SoC.
It is irrelevant to your claims.
LOL, of course you don't want to have technology explained to you that is better than Huawei.
It's not about being better. It's not about winning. It's about being correct!
And now you are jumping onto something that pretty much hasn't even reached users yet.
Slow down! We aren't talking about Apple Silicon! We're talking about iPhones over the last few years up to now. And I've spelt out why you are wrong. Don't go running off to other things.
You haven't made your case that SoC's shouldn't be measured primarily on the CPU and GPU performance, and as I have stated, all of the current SoC's have Neural and Imaging cores on SoC, amongst other things. The reason that the CPU and GPU cores are most important, is they are always in use on the SoC of the device, and Apple's cores are the most performant, and efficient, in mobile, and quite possibly with the M1, in the desktop space as well.
Another ludicrous claim thrown in for good measure.
So, where is that third generation 5nm 5G modem?
Ah! It's not there is it? And when you go looking for it, it's an old second generation off-SoC modem.
Those DSP/ISPs. Last time I checked they were considered best in class. In photography Apple is widely acknowledged to have been lacking in recent years. Those dual ISPs were playing a large role in that.
In house Wi-Fi? No such thing on the Apple SoC. Do you even understand the '+' in Wi-Fi 6+ and how the NPU is involved? Huawei claimed its WiFi 5 was faster than Apple's Wi-Fi 6 (which shipped a full year later) because it was using the world's fastest mobile WiFi chipset at the time.
Dual frequency GPS?
So tell me, what do you actually know about 3D Cube DaVinci?
It is virtually impossible to make the claims you are making with a straight face.
You clearly know though, otherwise you wouldn't be making silly claims.
More to the point, there is no Kirin after the 3 to 8 million 9000's are gone. That leaves the Qualcomm 875, very pricey, and the Exynos 1080.
What's Huawei going to choose?