Apple A10 Fusion is ** Quad-core big.LITTLE **

[defferoo]

BTW, there are now 4 different iPhone 7 models listed there at Geekbench.

iPhone9,1 (2 GB): 5592 / 3382
iPhone9,2 (3 GB): 5552 / 3418
iPhone9,3 (2 GB): 5495 / 3379
iPhone9,4 (3 GB): 5363 / 3233

Legit or not I don't know. If not, then they're some pretty reasonable fakes.

The number of models could be because we now have Intel vs Qualcomm baseband chips. 9,1 and 9,2 could be Intel and 9,3 and 9,4 could be Qualcomm or vice versa?

 

[dark zero]

The number of models could be because we now have Intel vs Qualcomm baseband chips. 9,1 and 9,2 could be Intel and 9,3 and 9,4 could be Qualcomm or vice versa?

Maybe is:

- 9,1 and 9,2- Europe and Japan, USA, China and Korea
- 9,3 and 9,4 - India, LATAM and Africa - People are only moved by name. They are not smart in that aspect.

 

[HiroThreading]

The A10 Fusion is looking mighty -- only a matter of time for it to find its way into an updated iPad Air.

Heck, I'm awfully tempted to pick up the iPhone 7 in jet black. It looks amazing, and it reminds me of my black iPhone 4 (still my favourite smartphone design). But, I have to keep telling myself that my 6S will probably last me for the next 2-3 years no problem.

The old "make people pay more for what should be standard" line in the guise of "offering options". Apple should have damn well been at 32gb for a few years now but we both know they would have lost some 64gb sales.

And yes your next counter is probably something along the lines of "Capitalism, maximizing profits etc"... You can save that. My response was to the guy claiming everything should be included in a "flagship" phone in the first place.

...you mean like how EVERY smartphone manufacturer operates their business model? Or how about Intel disabling certain features (hyper threading), cores and cache, as well as adjusting clock speeds, in their CPU lineup? Damn it, every Intel CPU should come with all 8MB of cache, VT-d, hyper threading and four cores enabled!!

Honestly, having to constantly listen to the Apple haters is the only negative of buying an Apple product.

 

[Eug]

The A10 Fusion is looking mighty -- only a matter of time for it to find its way into an updated iPad Air.

I don't buy it. I don't think it will happen this year or even next year.

And even if it did, I wouldn't buy such a machine any time soon.

I already weathered the OS 9 --> OS X transition (with my iBook G3 600, which was dual bootable with Mac OS X 10.1 and Mac OS 9, but shipped with OS 9 as the default), and the PowerPC --> Intel transition, and that's enough for me. I don't want to weather another transition.

At the next transition (if it happens), I will let other people deal with it, and if it is successful, then I'll buy. And by successful I mean MS Office and other 3rd party software have been ported over already.

If anything I would expect to see the MacBook Air just discontinued completely, leaving just the MacBook and MacBook Pro... both still on Intel for the near future.

Heck, I'm awfully tempted to pick up the iPhone 7 in jet black. It looks amazing, and it reminds me of my black iPhone 4 (still my favourite smartphone design). But, I have to keep telling myself that my 6S will probably last me for the next 2-3 years no problem.

The reviewers say the Jet Black looks great... for just a few seconds until it gets covered in fingerprints. And Apple itself in the fine print on their website warns that Jet Black is prone to microabrasions. It has no such warning for any of the other 4 colours.

The number of models could be because we now have Intel vs Qualcomm baseband chips. 9,1 and 9,2 could be Intel and 9,3 and 9,4 could be Qualcomm or vice versa?

Seems like a reasonable guess. Intel is here on Apple smartphones now... not in the SoC but as the modem, but they still need some Qualcomm versions, hence four models.

 

[HiroThreading]

I don't buy it. I don't think it will happen this year or even next year.

And even if it did, I wouldn't buy such a machine any time soon.

I already weathered the OS 9 --> OS X transition (with my iBook G3 600, which was dual bootable with Mac OS X 10.1 and Mac OS 9, but shipped with OS 9 as the default), and the PowerPC --> Intel transition, and that's enough for me. I don't want to weather another transition.

At the next transition (if it happens), I will let other people deal with it, and if it is successful, then I'll buy. And by successful I mean MS Office and other 3rd party software have been ported over already.

If anything I would expect to see the MacBook Air just discontinued completely, leaving just the MacBook and MacBook Pro... both still on Intel for the near future.

I said iPad Air not MacBook Air.

But I completely agree. I don't think Apple will move away from x86 just yet on their Mac lineup. There just isn't enough power their replace their MacBook Pro and Mac Pro line up -- unless Apple does intend on dropping the pro market, which to me seems silly due to its high margins.

The reviewers say the Jet Black looks great... for just a few seconds until it gets covered in fingerprints. And Apple itself in the fine print on their website warns that Jet Black is prone to microabrasions. It has no such warning for any of the other 4 colours.

Repeat this some more so I'm incentivised to stick to my 6s.

 

[Eug]

I said iPad Air not MacBook Air.

Doh! Oops.

BTW, they just updated the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4 with new storage amounts, so it looks like we'll probably have that A8X iPad and that A8 iPad for many more months at least.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Repeat this some more so I'm incentivised to stick to my 6s.

The regular black is gorgeous, though. Get that one

 

[punkyDD]

This is not a big.LITTLE design and it would not directly have been affected by the jack. Apple's design appears to use a unified cache between all four cores and they added a fast hardware switch to allocate a thread to the appropriate core. It just might be that all four cores can run simultaneously. With threads that don't contain any conditional branching or complex floating point operations going to the more efficient cores. That makes a lot more sense to me.

I've confirmed with an Apple engineer that only the two high powered cores or the two low powered cores can be on at once, the other two are power gated.

 

[Eug]

I've confirmed with an Apple engineer that only the two high powered cores or the two low powered cores can be on at once, the other two are power gated.

Thanks man. Nice first post!

 

[lopri]

So that is essentially a cluster migration big.LITTLE.

 

[asendra]

Would the 3gb of RAM in the 7+ be enough to run SPEC06 on it? I know 2gb wasn't for all the tests, and they only did it fully with the 4gb of ram of the iPad Pro, but maybe with 2 they could.

I would love to see if that 40% improvement translates well to SPEC06, because then, imagine what an iPad Pro 2 with 40% more performance would mean given last years SPEC06 results from the anandtech review.

 

[thunng8]

Only because it isn't designed for it.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8515/quick-look-at-core-m-5y70-and-llama-mountain

Llama Mountain, 7.2mm thick (BDW-Y).
iPhone 7, 7.1mm thick.

That's not a good comparison at all. Did you see the heat sink on that tablet? Also the back of the tablet acts as a huge heat sink as it directly contacts the cpu heat sink.

The heatsink alone and aluminium back required for the tablet would weigh much more than am iPhone

http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-core-m-5y70-broadwell-y-benchmark-numbers-run-at-idf-2014_150217

 

[swilli89]

Apple is there now, at 32GB base. Does this make it more likely that you're going to buy the next iPhone, or were you never a potential Apple customer anyway?

My first smartphone was an Iphone 4 but as soon as superior android handsets came out I switched, in 2012 an HTC One X absolutely murdered the iphone 4s. Could access my files directly, could install custom EQ software to drive headphones in the correct way, screen was MILES better, more memory, better keyboard etc.

But yes, I purchased 3 iphones this year (two 6s and a 6s+) for family members. And guess what I had to do? Eat a 300$ upcharge because 16gb is a joke after an OS is installed. So I'm sorry, I hope that means I can participate in this thread in your eyes?

Are you a potential customer for the Radeon 480? Zen CPU? Yet you seem to participate heavily in those threads all the same.

 

[Phynaz]

My first smartphone was an Iphone 4 but as soon as superior android handsets came out I switched, in 2012 an HTC One X absolutely murdered the iphone 4s. Could access my files directly, could install custom EQ software to drive headphones in the correct way, screen was MILES better, more memory, better keyboard etc.

But yes, I purchased 3 iphones this year (two 6s and a 6s+) for family members. And guess what I had to do? Eat a 300$ upcharge because 16gb is a joke after an OS is installed. So I'm sorry, I hope that means I can participate in this thread in your eyes?

Are you a potential customer for the Radeon 480? Zen CPU? Yet you seem to participate heavily in those threads all the same.

I believe he's already bought a 480 or two, and I'll bet he'll be one of the first people on this forum to buy a Zen CPU.

You're barking up the wrong tree.

 

[Arachnotronic]

My first smartphone was an Iphone 4 but as soon as superior android handsets came out I switched, in 2012 an HTC One X absolutely murdered the iphone 4s. Could access my files directly, could install custom EQ software to drive headphones in the correct way, screen was MILES better, more memory, better keyboard etc.

But yes, I purchased 3 iphones this year (two 6s and a 6s+) for family members. And guess what I had to do? Eat a 300$ upcharge because 16gb is a joke after an OS is installed. So I'm sorry, I hope that means I can participate in this thread in your eyes?

Are you a potential customer for the Radeon 480? Zen CPU? Yet you seem to participate heavily in those threads all the same.

I bought an RX 480 on Day 1. I will also buy a Zen CPU for testing purposes on day 1 as well.

 

[ksec]

Woah, when Apple makes 4W high-end chip, it gets lauded as the highest engineering achievement of mankind.
When Intel makes 4W high-end chip with 50% higher peak performance and performance per watt than A10, no one gives a [censored].

Fanboyism much (also looking at those 3 likes).

Like? The Macbook uses m3-6Y54, and the latest Kaby Lake is m3-7Y30.
Both are 4.5W TDP. And of course it will have better Peak performance in a Tablet / Laptop when you have better way to distribute heat, Fanless or not.

Last year the test done by Anandtech shows Apple A9 isn't far off. And we left wondering if we could get A9 to run in higher frequency. A10 proves they can. An A10X, 4C4T, given more TDP headroom should finally rival Intel in CPU performance.

If we even assume Apple could get another 10% increase in IPC, and 10% increase in peak clock speed in the next three years. Along side with node improvement from 16nm to 10nm and 7nm by 2018. There is little reason left to use x86 processors on Mac other then software compatibility.
May be the Mac Pro will continue to be x86 for legacy reason. But for majority of consumers, An Ax SoC Mac means more BOM can be devoted to screen, SSD etc.

 

[NTMBK]

Woah, when Apple makes 4W high-end chip, it gets lauded as the highest engineering achievement of mankind.
When Intel makes 4W high-end chip with 50% higher peak performance and performance per watt than A10, no one gives a [censored].

Fanboyism much (also looking at those 3 likes).

Accusations of fanboyism from the person with an Intel logo for an avatar? Hilarious.

Try putting that "4W" chip in a phone, and see what happens.

Edit: For reference, that Intel tablet used the entire back of the tablet as a colossal aluminium heatsink:

That isn't the cooling solution for a phone-capable chip.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Accusations of fanboyism from the person with an Intel logo for an avatar? Hilarious.

Try putting that "4W" chip in a phone, and see what happens.

Edit: For reference, that Intel tablet used the entire back of the tablet as a colossal aluminium heatsink:

That isn't the cooling solution for a phone-capable chip.

Looks like a tray that I can make some brownies in. Yum yum...

 

[Arachnotronic]

Accusations of fanboyism from the person with an Intel logo for an avatar? Hilarious.

I'm a fanboy of excellent products, and the A10 Fusion is an excellent product. So does that make me an A10 Fusion fanboy? I guess.

 

[witeken]

A10 Fusion is an excellent product.

There isn't even a review of the A10 yet. Fanboys are people who blindly follow a brand, which this clearly is. And calling it "Fusion" won't change things.

BTW, if this is just A9 at higher clock speed, then it's just an A9X, right?

Edit: I'm surprised to find out you don't own shares of AAPL instead of INTC.

 

[NTMBK]

There isn't even a review of the A10 yet. Fanboys are people who blindly follow a brand, which this clearly is. And calling it "Fusion" won't change things.

BTW, if this is just A9 at higher clock speed, then it's just an A9X, right?

A10 Fusion is the name, blame Apple *shrug* It's not like using the name i7 from 4.5W dual core up to 140W octacore makes a great deal of sense either. Tech names tend to be bad

 

[jpiniero]

BTW, if this is just A9 at higher clock speed, then it's just an A9X, right?

No, but the big cores CPU design hasn't changed much seemingly. Besides the big.LITTLE, the A9X has a 12 cluster GPU whereas the 7 still has the same 6 cluster GPU that the 6 had.

In other words, the 7's improvement over the 6 is basically a CPU and GPU clock speed boost and the addition of the Little cores.

 

[DeathReborn]

A10 Fusion is the name, blame Apple *shrug* It's not like using the name i7 from 4.5W dual core up to 140W octacore makes a great deal of sense either. Tech names tend to be bad

AMD tried Fusion before going to APU, I agree it's not great naming and I can't think of any tech company hitting a home run on naming schemes.

 

[FIVR]

As usual, very impressive performance here from A10. AAPL headed to 120 within 12m , you heard it here first. Heck if Samsung keeps installing IEDs in their new phones you may see 130.


I wonder if TSMC 10nm will allow them to do something even more impressive with A11 or A10X

 

[Eug]

No, but the big cores CPU design hasn't changed much seemingly. Besides the big.LITTLE, the A9X has a 12 cluster GPU whereas the 7 still has the same 6 cluster GPU that the 6 had.

In other words, the 7's improvement over the 6 is basically a CPU and GPU clock speed boost and the addition of the Little cores.

Wouldn't the addition of LITTLE cores and the controller alone be worth calling it a major update? One would think so. Plus, I believe the new photo DSP is built into A10 as well.