Apple A9X the new mobile SoC king

[witeken]

Nice how instead of delaying the A9X/iPad Pro further the chip team just delivered.

A certain large PC processor maker could learn a thing or two from these guys.

You know, Intel could've delayed Skylake by a year or so, but the company just delivered and decided to even squeeze a new generation in between SLK and CNL.

 

[NTMBK]

You know, Intel could've delayed Skylake by a year or so, but the company just delivered and decided to even squeeze a new generation in between SLK and CNL.

Meanwhile, in mobile...

 

[Arachnotronic]

You know, Intel could've delayed Skylake by a year or so, but the company just delivered and decided to even squeeze a new generation in between SLK and CNL.

Broadwell was kinda crap, though. No HEVC/VP9 decode in hardware? Even AMD Carrizo had HEVC decode.

They needed Skylake to stay competitive, and they'll need Kaby Lake at the very least so their media decode functionality doesn't lag behind what the top mobile phone chips will have in 2016...

 

[witeken]

Broadwell was kinda crap, though. No HEVC/VP9 decode in hardware? Even AMD Carrizo had HEVC decode.

They needed Skylake to stay competitive, and they'll need Kaby Lake at the very least so their media decode functionality doesn't lag behind what the top mobile phone chips will have in 2016...

We all know how QCOM is doing in mobile...

 

[Arachnotronic]

We all know how QCOM is doing in mobile...

Their SoCs are very good. Don't confuse business issues w/ technical ones.

Intel's mobile group is so beyond suck that I didn't even bother to mention them in my previous post

 

[witeken]

Their SoCs are very good. Don't confuse business issues w/ technical ones.

Intel's mobile group is so beyond suck that I didn't even bother to mention them in my previous post

The problem is that we don't know the details. What is going on with the Infineon transition to Intel fabs? What are their official internal mobile plans as of 2016? They clearly don't see themselves playing in the high-end, high volume. They are forced to cut down by 800M per year.

There's so much unclear about Intel in mobile that it's hard to understand them.

 

[poofyhairguy]

We all know how QCOM is doing in mobile...

As in they get almost every major flagship design win? That they dominate the part of the Android market that still has margin?

Intel would kill to be where Qualcomm is in mobile, even if the 810 sucked.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The problem is that we don't know the details. What is going on with the Infineon transition to Intel fabs? What are their official internal mobile plans as of 2016? They clearly don't see themselves playing in the high-end, high volume. They are forced to cut down by 800M per year.

There's so much unclear about Intel in mobile that it's hard to understand them.

Smoke & mirrors, intentional obfuscation. Intel Mobile is cooked unless they can pick it up soon.

 

[witeken]

Smoke & mirrors, intentional obfuscation. Intel Mobile is cooked unless they can pick it up soon.

Could be obfuscation before huge announcement ().

 

[NTMBK]

Could be obfuscation before huge announcement ().

They are slashing investment in mobile, so that's rather doubtful.

 

[Eug]

As I mentioned in the thread in the Apple forum, this makes more sense to me now.

I was very happy to find out that my Apple Air 2 was going to have triple core, an updated GPU, and 2 GB RAM. And I liked it so much that a year later when there was a $100 off sale, I bought a second one, even before the 2015 iPad announcement (although hedging my bets by keeping the seal unbroken until after the announcement).

However, it always struck me that a triple-core A8X with a large die size was probably overbuilt for the iPad Air 2. I didn't know why it was built like that, and thought perhaps Apple was playing the specsmanship game against its competitors even though it traditionally didn't think it needed to do that.

Now that I know it was actually built for the iPad Pro, that explains things.

BTW, it seems the best iPads so far have been the ones with the biggest dies, so perhaps Apple should stick to that. Coincidentally, those have been the iPads I've bought. I got the A5X in the iPad 2 way back when, and now own two of the A8X in the iPad Air 2.

Could be obfuscation before huge announcement ().