GG1

GeorgeBMac said:

Translation:   'AT&T didn't invest in 5G and their 5G-E scam fooled no one.   So, who needs it?   who wants it?   Shouldn't we all wait for them to bungle 6G the same way?'

But, I do agree with him that there won't be a mass rush to the iPhone 12's because they have 5G (except possibly in those countries like China who have already rolled it out nationwide).   Instead, mostly it will prevent Apple from LOSING sales from those who simply don't want to invest in yesterday's 4G technology (you know, like AT&T did)

mobird said:

What a terrible name.
My interpretation with the very little information gleaned from the leaks is these might be a very nice and upscale "Apple branded headphones" with a lot of Appleization being applied. Those thinking that they will be "audiophile" grade headphones will be disappointed. I wonder what tech from the HomePod (excluding the rumored speaker grille cloth) can be used, if any.

If and when Neil Young gives the "Apple branded headphones" his approval then I will think about purchasing them. /s

sflocal said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

We're trying to keep everything open, but forum-goer behavior is deteriorating.

Given some of the forum rule-breaking nonsense that's already been posted and deleted, we're pretty close to a shutdown here.

Mods have it tough.  I'm a moderator on Nextdoor and honestly, there are so many a******s out there that have nothing better to do than take a thread about something completely innocent and turn it into their own personal soapbox and start slinging mud at the world.  

It's a thankless job and I certainly sympathize with what you guys have to deal with.  There are many of those same kind of people infesting these threads too.  I know that doing the kind of moderating necessary to remove all the comments can borderline be a full-time job, but at times I really do wish that instead of shutting a thread down, delete all those hateful and rude comments instead to send a message that cleaning house will be the norm, and "free-speech" applies to the governments, not private forums.

I want to know about how the Apple Watch helped this person in his time of need, and zero about the political issues.  There's already enough of that out in the world, I don't want it here.  Sure, I can simply not read the comment, but when there's countless of them, I have zero problem with deleting them if they are not contributing to the subject.  Cry me a river if your political comment gets deleted.

Either way, you mods get my support when you bring the broom out!

melgross said:

tht said:

melgross said:

The latest Nvidia GPUs have over 25 billion transistors, and an energy budget to support that. There is simply no way Apple can even begin to approach that. It takes Nvidia’s highest GPU boards to enable ray tracing in a useful way. Remember we’re talking not about ray trace in static imagery, but in dynamically rendered images at a rate of at least 60fps. That’s real time tracing. It’s in addition to every other graphic demand, such as real time physics, dynamic texture generation, hidden image elimination, etc. these all require very large amounts of graphics RAM additionally.

The A12Z on TSMC N7 has 10 billion transistors on a 120 mm^2 die. This is for a fanless tablet. I definitely see them hitting 20 to 30 billion transistors on TSMC N5 for the Mac SoCs. A notional A14X for an iPad Pro could be 15 billion transistors just based on the new fab alone. A Mac SoC for an iMac can easily be 2x that at around 30 billion.

Transistor budgets of over 25 billion are not that daunting for Apple Silicon. It's the power budgets that are. They just aren't going to run any of their SoCs at over 150 Watts, and I'd bet they want 100 W or lower. That will be self-limiting, so performance probably won't match these 300 W dGPUs or 200 W CPUs on average.

I expect them to be at parity or possibly more performant than dGPUs at each Watt class though. The fab advantage will give them about 30% perf/W advantage. The density advantage is going to be about 100%. They have so many transistors to play with on TSMC N5 that you wonder if they are willing use it all.

melgross said:

but none of us know what Apple’s plans really are. We can speculate, but that’s about it. And Apple has told us the basics during the June conference. In fact, they told us more than I expected. I listened very closely. I looked at their charts. We don’t see a separate GPU. At least not for the recognizable future. I suspect that we’ll se an SoC that competes with Intel very well in the beginning, likely exceeding performance at the level of Apple’s similar machines previously. I don’t expect to see overwhelming GPU performance. I would to see performance of a lower level separate GPU.

‘’anything that exceeds that would thrill me.

Yes. Apple has a chance to do something different than the packaging and designs afforded to them with components from Intel and AMD. It could be a monolithic SoC. It could be chiplets. It could be stacks of chiplets. They could use HBM or GDDR or whatever custom memory solution used commodity DRAM. It's going to be interesting to say the least. 

I just have to disagree. Apple has been pretty clear that these Macs would use less power and, according to the chart they showed, have equal performance. But they didnt say which Macs they were talking about. There is no way Apple is going to make that leap in the next year. Maybe, over time, if they are willing to make a much larger chip, and Nvidia’s chips are very large indeed, they can do it. But then, the efficiency and power draw will be seventy comoromised. And you’re forgetting, I suppose that thatb25 billion transistores is just for the GPU. Apple has to. Contend with an entire SoC. It’s not going to happen.

I really don’t care how efficient ARM instructions are, or how good Apple’s engineering is. There are physical laws that everyone has to follow, and it’s not likely that Apple is special here. Not only is Apple nor go8ng to run over 150 watts, likely they don’t want to run much over 20 watts. There’s only so much they can do.

mike1 said:

80s_Apple_Guy said:

That may be a deal killer. Other flagship devices, and even lower level devices have had this for many months now. For Apple not to is a big blow. For most of us, 5G is worthless. What will be the motivation then? The smaller battery if that rumor is true? Lidar which has little to no use for most people. Better cameras? The ones now are great. 

Hoping for a good iPad or Apple Watch update I guess. 

The vast majority of customers -- outside of our little group of techies that post on forums --  wouldn't even know what a 120Hz refresh rate means. However, the cell companies have been doing a great job of telling the masses that 5G is the next big thing. So, yes, 5G will drive more sales than 120Hz displays ever will. Might not be compelling enough to drive people to upgrade from an 11 Pro, but there are millions and millions of people with iPhone X or earlier for whom it is upgrade time. A better camera array will certainly make many of them happy. So will an improved processor that makes their games run better. Lidar is just waiting for the right app/use case to make it a sought after feature.