@AppleInsider Guys you made a mistake: in fact the A12X has 7 GPU cores, whereas the A12Z has 8.
Not certain but I recollect it might be both have 8 cores, but the eighth in the A12X is not activated. this seems to be about tweaks to the SOC for the new camera. Not for recent iPad Pro purchasers, more for those with several year old versions ,looking for an upgrade.
No, there is no eight core on the A12x. The chip photos dont show an eight core. Stop writing FUD.
Where are there die shots of the A12X? I haven't been able to find any via Google. Anandtech's coverage when the A12X came out specifically notes lack of access to a die shot:
Ok, Techinsights took an x-ray of the chip, but it doesnt show the layout, as they were looking for something else. There is a pic though. I did see it. I don't make these things up. If i can find that, I’ll post it. But people saying that Apple had 8 cores and disabled one is garbage. Where is there any responsible site saying that? It’s just FUD.
but Apple did make a point of talking about a new thermal design for better performance. They never made that point before other than when going to a smaller process, and not stating a new thermal design was done, just the advantage from the die shrink,. So something is going on here. It might not affect the peak, but it could very well affect long term performance. All chips in the mobile world “throttle”, otherwise known, in the Desktop world, as turbo mode. Pretty much the same thing, except its considered to be an advantage. If Apple can pull 10-20% more performance, long term, out of this device, with this new chip, then it’s well worth it. Unfortunately, Geekbench doesn't test long term performance. It’s basically just testing peak, so we need a more thorough test, such as those Anandtech and even Arstechnica does. Maybe Mike will do that here as well. Once we see the results of those tests, we’ll know better. Right now, what we see is meaningless.
They have literally taken cue from the video card makers and given us a new model with nothing of real value added.
You don't have to upgrade from a 2018 iPad Pro. This gives those upgrading from previous models (or even purchasing their first iPad) a model that will probably have a longer useful life for them.
No, there is no eight core on the A12x. The chip photos dont show an eight core. Stop writing FUD.
The A12X is an 8 core processor (4 Tempest, 4 Vortex) with 7 graphics cores.
Have you been following this? We’re talking about the graphics core count. Nobody is questioning what we all know, which is that the A12x has 8 CPU cores.
@AppleInsider Guys you made a mistake: in fact the A12X has 7 GPU cores, whereas the A12Z has 8.
Not certain but I recollect it might be both have 8 cores, but the eighth in the A12X is not activated. this seems to be about tweaks to the SOC for the new camera. Not for recent iPad Pro purchasers, more for those with several year old versions ,looking for an upgrade.
No, there is no eight core on the A12x. The chip photos dont show an eight core. Stop writing FUD.
Not definitive: “not certain but I recollect...”.
Definitive: “No, ... Stop writing FUD” to *potentially* be proven wrong... gotta slow down sometimes.
It’s not the first time Apple has done this, and it doesn’t mean there is any nefarious reason behind it (except for the tinfoil wearing hat crowd). It’s not like they don’t know people get die shots.
IIRC, some 3rd Generation Apple TV’s used re-binned processes with a core (not graphics in that case) disabled.
Well... isn't that just indicative of Apple innovation of late.
I think Apple wants to get LiDAR into people's (developer's) hands sooner rather than later, because: when they release the iPhone 14 later this year, it would help their marketing if there were apps that actually took advantage of it.
They tweaked the SoC a bit, presumably to perform better with the LiDAR.
The RAM speed is curious though. I'd read about it a couple of days back, and thought perhaps the SoC was clocked higher and the stepping resulted in the RAM being clocked slightly lower. But now we see the SoC is the same GHz, so who knows.
There is another reason for this release - they wanted to sell more units - and if you tell people 'the iPad Pro is great, but hasn't been updated in a while' they hold out. Now we have lots of people stuck at home, that are being told 'there is a new model' - most people who were holding out will probably 'rush out' (online) and buy it.
I am still waiting for the newer iPad Pro with an A14X in Oct this year. While we shall have to wait and see if that really happens, I feel like it will (it's a feeling, rather than because I read something somewhere). I was one of those burned by the iPad 3, not happening again.
I have the same feeling. I also bought the iPad 3 and felt burned when they released a newer model later that year. Feels like they will do the same thing again, here, as there is not much new and exciting in this release. I'd also rather have the Mini-LED display as well.
What was the configuration of 2018s iPad? Was it 1TB, or less? When it comes to memory performance, one can guess 4GB can be handled like one unit (4096).. but 6GB, probably, must be controlled as a pair of two units = slower. I believe the memory speed of both 2018 and 2020 models is the same.
Comments
https://sudonull.com/post/1191-Apples-very-strange-A12X-microprocessor-casing
but Apple did make a point of talking about a new thermal design for better performance. They never made that point before other than when going to a smaller process, and not stating a new thermal design was done, just the advantage from the die shrink,. So something is going on here. It might not affect the peak, but it could very well affect long term performance. All chips in the mobile world “throttle”, otherwise known, in the Desktop world, as turbo mode. Pretty much the same thing, except its considered to be an advantage. If Apple can pull 10-20% more performance, long term, out of this device, with this new chip, then it’s well worth it. Unfortunately, Geekbench doesn't test long term performance. It’s basically just testing peak, so we need a more thorough test, such as those Anandtech and even Arstechnica does. Maybe Mike will do that here as well. Once we see the results of those tests, we’ll know better. Right now, what we see is meaningless.
Not everything is for you.
Definitive: “No, ... Stop writing FUD” to *potentially* be proven wrong... gotta slow down sometimes.
https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/26/apples-a12z-bionic-chip-could-be-a-re-binned-a12x
It’s not the first time Apple has done this, and it doesn’t mean there is any nefarious reason behind it (except for the tinfoil wearing hat crowd). It’s not like they don’t know people get die shots.
IIRC, some 3rd Generation Apple TV’s used re-binned processes with a core (not graphics in that case) disabled.
Wrong, one core is disabled on the 2018 model, and enabled on the 2020 model