Rumor: 2018 iPad Pro with Face ID will be powered by 8-core 'A11X' chip

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 38
    lukeilukei Posts: 379member
    Face unlock is unacceptable for security, not because of the effectiveness of the tech, but because of the legal precedent set by fingerprint unlock. Things you know (passwords) are legally protected. Things you have on you (your fingerprint or face) are not.
    Banks who are liable for any loss from fraud disagree with you. 
    netmage
  • Reply 22 of 38
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,319member
    lukei said:
    Face unlock is unacceptable for security, not because of the effectiveness of the tech, but because of the legal precedent set by fingerprint unlock. Things you know (passwords) are legally protected. Things you have on you (your fingerprint or face) are not.
    Banks who are liable for any loss from fraud disagree with you. 
    To them ApplePay is a very big step up in security from a long number and signature they relied on not 10years ago.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 38
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    lukei said:
    Face unlock is unacceptable for security, not because of the effectiveness of the tech, but because of the legal precedent set by fingerprint unlock. Things you know (passwords) are legally protected. Things you have on you (your fingerprint or face) are not.
    Banks who are liable for any loss from fraud disagree with you. 
    I'd argue that you two are talking about different things and that you're both correct. @SpamSandwich is correct that biometrics are inherently less secure than something you memorize, and your correct that financial institutions are fine with Touch ID and Face ID because the alternative might be no PIN on the device. I haven't sen numbers, but I'm certain that the percentage of users that had no passcode on their iDevice dropped considerably once Touch ID was introduced.
  • Reply 24 of 38
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    melgross said:
    I’m still coming to grips with so many hi efficiency cores. So now they will be going to 5? I thought the point to that was to use less processing performance when the device wasn’t doing anything stressful. So reading a book would just use a low power core, or maybe two. The GPU also goes into 30FP/s, or slower mode, until you turn a page.

    so why have so many of them? I get what Apple is apparently doing with them technically, as far as their abilities go, but I can’t help but think that an additional performance core, with fewer efficiency cores would be better. I suppose Apple is doing things with the OS that makes this worthwhile. But it does seem odd that they would raise the performance of the hi performance cores by 30%, and the performance of even more hi efficiency cores by 70%. 
    What people mis here is that iOS is a multitasking system.  Much happens in background, as iOS improves much more will be happening in background.  

    The best example here is the Knowledge Navigator concept that was floated years ago.   To get there Apple will need significantly expanded AI like capabilities and the ability to run many back ground process. 

    At least that is my take.   What ever Apple is doing they have a purpose as revealed by Apples hardware chief recently. 

  • Reply 25 of 38
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    If there is truth in this report i suspect it highlights where Apple is going.   That is iOS and user interaction will be supported by more background processes.   I wouldnt be surprised to see an expansion in their AI processing hardware too. 

    The other thing to realize here is the significant power savings 7 nm offers.    We could see a big boost in clock rate for the high performance cores with no thermal gain.   As much as 30 - 40 percent is possible so it isn't like single thread performance will suffer.   Of course that is possible with the low performance cores too which just makes them more useful.   What is odd here is the lack of leaked info on the rest of the chip here i would expect a significantly better GPU for example.    All in all the next iPad looks like a beast.   
  • Reply 26 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    foggyhill said:
    melgross said:
    I’m still coming to grips with so many hi efficiency cores. So now they will be going to 5? I thought the point to that was to use less processing performance when the device wasn’t doing anything stressful. So reading a book would just use a low power core, or maybe two. The GPU also goes into 30FP/s, or slower mode, until you turn a page.

    so why have so many of them? I get what Apple is apparently doing with them technically, as far as their abilities go, but I can’t help but think that an additional performance core, with fewer efficiency cores would be better. I suppose Apple is doing things with the OS that makes this worthwhile. But it does seem odd that they would raise the performance of the hi performance cores by 30%, and the performance of even more hi efficiency cores by 70%. 
    There is increasingly more co-processing being done, either its done on the main CPU. or a specilized CPU. Background apps in particular waking the main CPU is a big drain on battery, if you could keep it on the high efficiency ones, you''d last a lot longer. Apple since it controls HW/SW can make this happen a lot better than Android.
    That’s true. But 5 efficiency cores? It’s not true that more cores are required for multitasking, just the total of ops per second. Apple now has several specialty chips, some in the SoC now, to do operations without turning the main cores on. I simply can’t think why they need so many of these, and if they do low demand tasks, why make them so much more powerful?
    netmage
  • Reply 27 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    melgross said:
    I’m still coming to grips with so many hi efficiency cores. So now they will be going to 5? I thought the point to that was to use less processing performance when the device wasn’t doing anything stressful. So reading a book would just use a low power core, or maybe two. The GPU also goes into 30FP/s, or slower mode, until you turn a page.

    so why have so many of them? I get what Apple is apparently doing with them technically, as far as their abilities go, but I can’t help but think that an additional performance core, with fewer efficiency cores would be better. I suppose Apple is doing things with the OS that makes this worthwhile. But it does seem odd that they would raise the performance of the hi performance cores by 30%, and the performance of even more hi efficiency cores by 70%. 

    If I remember correctly, even the efficiency cores are activated when the CPU/compound benchmarks are run. I also need to add this - I don't have any clue whether they get activated along with high power cores in actual-usage scenarios. Just a random thought/speculation - Is Apple showcasing its capabilities in topping benchmark scores (which Android SoC manufactures were/are doing, without focusing as much on improving the performance of real-world usage scenarios) as well, not just real-world usage which they have been doing from the beginning? A new marketing strategy - show up the Android SoCs where they belong in real world usage AND benchmarks???


    Edit: I don't intend to suggest Apple is cheating in benchmarks like Samsung did in the past or OnePlus is doing even now. What I meant is - Is Apple focusing on topping the benchmarks ALSO, along with improving the performance in real-life scenarios which they have been doing always?

    Yes, Apple is now using them the way Android OEMs have been. It’s not cheating, and no one has suggested it is.

    apple definitely doesn’t give a hoot about winning performance shootouts. I guarantee that they haven’t thought that at all. Apple has been beating them in benchmarks ever since they began designing their own chips.
  • Reply 28 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    melgross said:
    I’m still coming to grips with so many hi efficiency cores. So now they will be going to 5? I thought the point to that was to use less processing performance when the device wasn’t doing anything stressful. So reading a book would just use a low power core, or maybe two. The GPU also goes into 30FP/s, or slower mode, until you turn a page.

    so why have so many of them? I get what Apple is apparently doing with them technically, as far as their abilities go, but I can’t help but think that an additional performance core, with fewer efficiency cores would be better. I suppose Apple is doing things with the OS that makes this worthwhile. But it does seem odd that they would raise the performance of the hi performance cores by 30%, and the performance of even more hi efficiency cores by 70%. 
    But it does seem odd that they would raise the performance of the hi performance cores by 30%, and the performance of even more hi efficiency cores by 70%. - I have a theory for this. It could be that Apple found out that by increasing the performance of hi efficiency cores, there are MANY more tasks which can be accomplished with the efficiency cores themselves, which otherwise would have needed the high performance cores to be activated. That would possibly give a significant battery life boost considering the typical usage patterns for normal users. There would always be exceptions to this based on real-life usage patterns. But my guess is that Apple is trying to cover majority of the real-life usage scenarios with efficiency cores themselves and leave only real-heavy workloads to high power cores.
    Obviously there’s a reason. But by making them so much more powerful, they’re also,making them, you know, less efficient. By making so many, they also use up a lot more power. I’m not saying that there’s no point to it, but I’d like to know what their plan is here.
    netmage
  • Reply 29 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    wizard69 said:
    melgross said:
    I’m still coming to grips with so many hi efficiency cores. So now they will be going to 5? I thought the point to that was to use less processing performance when the device wasn’t doing anything stressful. So reading a book would just use a low power core, or maybe two. The GPU also goes into 30FP/s, or slower mode, until you turn a page.

    so why have so many of them? I get what Apple is apparently doing with them technically, as far as their abilities go, but I can’t help but think that an additional performance core, with fewer efficiency cores would be better. I suppose Apple is doing things with the OS that makes this worthwhile. But it does seem odd that they would raise the performance of the hi performance cores by 30%, and the performance of even more hi efficiency cores by 70%. 
    What people mis here is that iOS is a multitasking system.  Much happens in background, as iOS improves much more will be happening in background.  

    The best example here is the Knowledge Navigator concept that was floated years ago.   To get there Apple will need significantly expanded AI like capabilities and the ability to run many back ground process. 

    At least that is my take.   What ever Apple is doing they have a purpose as revealed by Apples hardware chief recently. 

    But multitasking doesn’t give a crap about how many cores there are. It just cares about the total number of ops per second, total.  If it’s done in 2 cores, that’s fine. If it’s done in 6, that’s fine too, except that overhead increases more with each extra core. So 6 cores don’t perform arithmatically equal to two cores if each core is the same. That is you won’t see three times the performance from those 6 cores. If the cores are different from each other, the scheduler needs to decide what core gets which work, because not all the cores can do the same work in the same time, or not at all, if the efficiency cores are different.

    the neurotic engine, as I like to think of it as, does most of the AI, so that’s taken care of. The ISP does most of the normal camera processing. The M series, whatever number it’s up to now, does the monitoring of the sensors when the phone is in sleep. So Apple has a lot of processors for specialized work. Because of that, I can’t understand why they have so many efficiency cores.
    edited November 2017 netmage
  • Reply 30 of 38
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,338member
    melgross said:
    wizard69 said:
    melgross said:
    I’m still coming to grips with so many hi efficiency cores. So now they will be going to 5? I thought the point to that was to use less processing performance when the device wasn’t doing anything stressful. So reading a book would just use a low power core, or maybe two. The GPU also goes into 30FP/s, or slower mode, until you turn a page.

    so why have so many of them? I get what Apple is apparently doing with them technically, as far as their abilities go, but I can’t help but think that an additional performance core, with fewer efficiency cores would be better. I suppose Apple is doing things with the OS that makes this worthwhile. But it does seem odd that they would raise the performance of the hi performance cores by 30%, and the performance of even more hi efficiency cores by 70%. 
    What people mis here is that iOS is a multitasking system.  Much happens in background, as iOS improves much more will be happening in background.  

    The best example here is the Knowledge Navigator concept that was floated years ago.   To get there Apple will need significantly expanded AI like capabilities and the ability to run many back ground process. 

    At least that is my take.   What ever Apple is doing they have a purpose as revealed by Apples hardware chief recently. 

    But multitasking doesn’t give a crap about how many cores there are. It just cares about the total number of ops per second, total.  If it’s done in 2 cores, that’s fine. If it’s done in 6, that’s fine too, except that overhead increases more with each extra core. So 6 cores don’t perform arithmatically equal to two cores if each core is the same. That is you won’t see three times the performance from those 6 cores. If the cores are different from each other, the scheduler needs to decide what core gets which work, because not all the cores can do the same work in the same time, or not at all, if the efficiency cores are different.

    the neurotic engine, as I like to think of it as, does most of the AI, so that’s taken care of. The ISP does most of the normal camera processing. The M series, whatever number it’s up to now, does the monitoring of the sensors when the phone is in sleep. So Apple has a lot of processors for specialized work. Because of that, I can’t understand why they have so many efficiency cores.
    Why lose sleep over a rumor?

    Most likely, this is a strategy to increase total ops per second while staying within the TDP, all without the thermal throttling and power inefficiency that comes with sustained use of the Performance cores. I'm thinking that Apple has a shed load of internal data to create a " broad normal" use case, and have simulations that backup this next architecture.

    Of course, the iPad Pro is intended to be a bespoke multitasking device, so perhaps that in itself is one of the drivers for added and improved efficiency cores.
  • Reply 31 of 38
    Given last August partial security breach in the Secure Enclave component of the A7 in an iPhone 5s (by @xerub), considering that the A11 chip in iPhone 8/X was already in production in August, then the A11X chip would be the first A chip to have possibly "learned" from such hack and its design be modified to prevent any consequence from it.
  • Reply 32 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    dinoone said:
    Given last August partial security breach in the Secure Enclave component of the A7 in an iPhone 5s (by @xerub), considering that the A11 chip in iPhone 8/X was already in production in August, then the A11X chip would be the first A chip to have possibly "learned" from such hack and its design be modified to prevent any consequence from it.
    It wasn’t a real breach. What they did has nothing to do with the security of the enclave.
    netmage
  • Reply 33 of 38
    It waant a breach period. It could possibly, potentially lead to a breach if researchers discover an error in the API between the SEP and the AP but there has been no evidence of that, and if one was found, Apple could correct it in a new iOS release, there wouldn't need to be hardware changes. 
  • Reply 34 of 38
    I hope this rumor is true. As a developer I have nothing but nice things to say about Apple's A series CPUs. I have been watching them get closer to Intel CPU performance every year for the past decade. Everyone thought the notion of an ARM CPU exceeding the performance of a flagship Intel desktop computer CPU to be ridiculous. Now it seems inevitable. With bitcode compilation, the instructions the CPU runs makes no difference. No one but driver or OS kernel developers write assembly code any more. My only concern with this story is that I would want a lot more high performance CPU cores than just three in a MacBook Pro. Four would be a minimum and eight is a better target. Really I would like to see an A series CPU with 32 high performance cores at some point in the near future and not a repurposed tablet CPU.
  • Reply 35 of 38
    Finally, SOC that has all the cores actived!  And down to 7 nanometer thickness.  Just hope for a 401 pixel per inch screen!  Mini Pro would be ideal screen size for me.  I pay $1,500 for a Mini Pro that has this A11X inside with 6GB RAM!
    edited November 2017
  • Reply 36 of 38
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,727member
    I mention this in the possibility there is convergence slowly occurring between macOS and iOS as iOS devices gain power.  I could be mistaken but I'd always thought all iOS apps had their preferences set in the Settings App.  I noticed my iPhone's  timer stopped making any sound after the last update and ruined a few steaks on the grill when no alarm went off.  Upon digging deeper I discovered the prefs were now in the app itself and I was able to reset a sound for the timer alarm.  Maybe this always was there but I could have sworn it used to be in Settings.  If I am right then this is more Mac like to have preferences in the apps themselves.  I will await those more familiar with iOS two enlighten me, I am a macOS person not that really into iOS.
    edited November 2017
  • Reply 37 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Finally, SOC that has all the cores actived!  And down to 7 nanometer thickness.  Just hope for a 401 pixel per inch screen!  Mini Pro would be ideal screen size for me.  I pay $1,500 for a Mini Pro that has this A11X inside with 6GB RAM!
    That would be a terrible deal. If you’re expecting to run macOS on that, forget it. It would be a dog. Apple could have a native OS, and some native apps, but seriously, how many other third party developers would have an interest in developing for yet another Apple platform? Not that many. So you’d get some small developers doing it, but not the main ones. Without Adobe and Microsoft, the platform would drag to a halt.

    and remember that while the A series can compare against the low and medium line of ultra low power mobile x86 chips, at least fairly well, that’s about as far as they go.

    lets not idolize these things. They’re very good mobile chips that aren’t x86 compatible. If Apple is REALLY interested, in a few years, there are some things that Apple could do, if they wanted to, with no evidence that they do, that could make these chip competitive, and compatible, on the lower end, to x86, but there’s no way to know if Apple is interested.
  • Reply 38 of 38
    melgross said:
    Finally, SOC that has all the cores actived!  And down to 7 nanometer thickness.  Just hope for a 401 pixel per inch screen!  Mini Pro would be ideal screen size for me.  I pay $1,500 for a Mini Pro that has this A11X inside with 6GB RAM!
    That would be a terrible deal. If you’re expecting to run macOS on that, forget it. It would be a dog. Apple could have a native OS, and some native apps, but seriously, how many other third party developers would have an interest in developing for yet another Apple platform? Not that many. So you’d get some small developers doing it, but not the main ones. Without Adobe and Microsoft, the platform would drag to a halt.

    and remember that while the A series can compare against the low and medium line of ultra low power mobile x86 chips, at least fairly well, that’s about as far as they go.

    lets not idolize these things. They’re very good mobile chips that aren’t x86 compatible. If Apple is REALLY interested, in a few years, there are some things that Apple could do, if they wanted to, with no evidence that they do, that could make these chip competitive, and compatible, on the lower end, to x86, but there’s no way to know if Apple is interested.
    iPhone X is $1,149 with 256GB!  
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