wizard69

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  • A14X Bionic allegedly benchmarked days before Apple Silicon Mac event

    wizard69wizard69
    jumpingcoco said:
    this result is something that I would never expected early this year when leakers said there's gonna be new Apple Silicon-based Macs, I thought it would be MacBook Air or 13 MBP the most, but looks like they could easily make top-tier 16-inch MBP with this horsepower. Absolutely amazing!
    The top tier requires more cores.    This processor would be great in a Mac Book, Mac Book Air and maybe even a 13" MBP.   However the types of professionals Apple caters to can always use more cores, so I can't see Apple going with this specific processor in the MBP 16" and even the 13 inch is a maybe.    Video production and compression/encoding can almost always use more cores and that is exactly what pros will want in the large Mac Book Pros.    If Apple has any sense at all they will put as many cores in their chips as they can while keeping under the 45 and 35 watt power profiles.

    In any event this is why I can see this particular chip going into a number of laptop Macs but not the high end laptops.   Embarrassing as it is, I have to admit I'm excited about the possibilities with Apple Silicon.   The combination of Neural Engine, high performance cores, high density 5nm chips and far better GPU's, will really lead to a new generation of Macs.    In fact it is the lack of leaks about Neural Engine that have me worried a bit because AI is the wave of the future and Apple really needs that as a default feature  in Mac OS.   A boost over current Neural Engine performance could make these Macs the goto for people doing machine learning.   I'd like to see Apple own this niche like they have owned content creation.


    watto_cobra

  • A14X Bionic allegedly benchmarked days before Apple Silicon Mac event

    wizard69wizard69
    entropys said:
    randy hill said:
    Is there a native version of GeekBench for ARM MacOS? If this is running on an ARM Mac it’s likely running through Rosetta and real benchmarks should be 25%+ higher.
    It’s an A14X so I expect it is iOS, not macos10.11
    A14X will be perfectly fine in a Mac Book replacement and other machines.    The developer platform already runs fine and with a little fore thought into what the A14X is, it could be highly optimized.  
    watto_cobra

  • A14X Bionic allegedly benchmarked days before Apple Silicon Mac event

    wizard69wizard69
    cloudguy said:
    Take a step back a bit. Qualcomm's best laptop chip (used in Windows Surface type devices and soon in Chromebooks) is the 8cx and it has benchmarks comparable to the Intel i5.

    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-s-Snapdragon-8cx-amasses-respectable-score-on-Geekbench-and-closes-in-on-Intel-s-Core-i5-8250U.434104.0.html

    And the 8cx came out in early-mid 2019 on the 7nm process, making it equivalent to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 that is in the Microsoft Surface Duo phone/tablet and last year's flagship Android phones like the Pixel 4 and OnePlus 7. Meaning that the next Qualcomm Snapdragon laptop chip - which will come out this year on a 5nm process and contain the new Cortex X1 super core jointly designed by ARM Holdings and Samsung - will match the Intel Core i7. Early benchmarks from Qualcomm and Samsung chips are in that use the new Cortex X1 design and 5nm process which state that the increase in performance over the 865 - the same basic architecture as the 8cx - is significant. 

    So the ability of smartphone SOCs to surpass AMD and Intel CPUs in clock frequencies and benchmark tests has been no big deal for quite some time. For example, Snapdragon CPUs in Android phones surpassed the 1.1 GHz dual core Intel Core i3 that is in the MacBook Air some time ago. The question is whether these ARM CPUs can have similar or better performance when running a laptop operating system - macOS as opposed to iOS - with equivalent workloads - i.e. true multitasking/multithreading and heavy I/O that Apple doesn't allow on iOS or even an iPad Pro running iPadOS. For example, running a demo full stack application that has the client app, server app and middleware in separate containers ... the sort of thing that college students in web development classes run all the time. 

    THAT is what everyone is waiting to see. The Windows on ARM devices don't give us any indication because the app support is terrible, and the first ChromeOS device on Snapdragon 8cx won't hit until 2021. So next week is when everyone is going to find out how much better Apple Silicon is going to be than i5, i7 and possibly i9 chips on professional workloads.
    This isn’t an issue if Apple properly configured the machine.   If people remember back to the early days of iPad the units barely worked on the web.   That had nothing to do with the processor but rather Apple being stingy wit RAM.   

    In the case of Apple Silicon Macs they will deliver what ever performance the benchmarks suggest.  How well they work with MacOS will be more about external factors.   Sadly we know Apple has a bad history of shipping hardware with far too little RAM and secondary storage so yeah they could screw it up.   On the otherhand they have huge incentive not to gimp the machines.  To be successful they have to demonstrate superior performance.  

    In any event I’m not worried at all about performance, the A series has already demonstrated that it can do the job.   Combine that with the fact that Apple will be producing Mac optimized processors and I’m comfortable.   At least when it comes to performance, I’m truly concerned about other issues that might cause me to reject the machines.    
    bulk001

  • A14X Bionic allegedly benchmarked days before Apple Silicon Mac event

    wizard69wizard69
    aderutter said:
    I too think this could be the new iPad Pro rather than a Mac as the Mac is rumoured to use an A14T ?

    Surely an A14T would be more powerful than an A14X - I’m thinking a Mac will need a better GPU than an iPad?
    I have to agree to an extent.   This really isn't good enough for the high end MBP series.   However in  an iPad, MBA or even the rumored return of the Mac Book it would be outstanding.   Beyond that I don't see Apple giving up on the 5nm advantages to offer a lot more cores in a MBP class processor.   More cores does wonders for key Apple software niches so I can see them wanting to own the market in those niches.

    In any event this would make for a very nice MBA if they don't screw up the rest of the design.
    watto_cobra

  • MacBook Air, 13- and 16-inch MacBook Pro reportedly first Apple Silicon Macs

    wizard69wizard69
    TheObannonFile said:
    If they do this, then the whole MacBook line is transitioning to Apple Silicon all at once. That’s awesome, but not sure about 16-inch being released.

    *fingers crossed*

    Since we are focused on MacBooks right now, these chips are closer to what we’ve seen in iPhones and iPads.

    So, my biggest question is this:

    Is the A14 sufficient for a 12-inch MacBook and 13-inch MacBook Air? Or, does macOS require an A14X at minimum?

    The baseline (A14 or A14X) means that the pros have to be better. A14Z in 13-inch? What does 16-inch get?

    cant wait to see the starting point and then the difference compared to MBP’s.

    Apple has said many times now that they are working on several chips for the Macs.   That is right from the horses mouth guys.

    As for the MBA type machines they will most likely be able to get suitable performance out of an A14X variant if the X variant is a bigger jump than in the past.    For the other machines they will need a lot more ARM cores.   It isn't rocket science really,
    watto_cobra