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

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coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
6,400
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Safari on the iPhone 7 Plus is the smoothest browsing experience in my entire house. It's not absolutely perfect, but in terms of buttery smoothness it gets close. Note that my fastest desktop is a quad-core Core i7 870 2.93 GHz iMac, which according to the Geekbench results search gets 2810/8574, and it's definitely not as smooth as the iPhone 7 Plus. Granted the iMac has to contend with a 27" 2560x1440 screen and a lot more OS overhead, but then again the iMac has 12 GB RAM.
My Nexus 5 offered smoother browsing than my 6600K, both on FHD screens, do you reckon 2Ghz Snapdragon 800 was faster than 4Ghz Skylake? Or could it be that a number of other factors have such influence on this "test" that they make it a moot comparison to begin with?
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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My Nexus 5 offered smoother browsing than my 6600K, both on FHD screens, do you reckon 2Ghz Snapdragon 800 was faster than 4Ghz Skylake? Or could it be that a number of other factors have such influence on this "test" that they make it a moot comparison to begin with?
As I said in my post, there are a number factors, which include the OS overhead.

Nonetheless, the performance and feel of the iPhone 7 Plus is pretty damn impressive. The 6 Plus certainly didn't feel like this even at launch. It was laggy right out of the starting gate, even running iOS 8.

As for your Nexus 5, I don't have one, but it wasn't reported as being lag-free. (Actually, I did have one, as it came free with my cell phone service, but I sold it immediately so I didn't really test it out.)
 

sxr7171

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2002
5,079
40
91
What happens with the frequency of the cores during long load?


Drops hard. I tested it. Let the phone heat up and the Geekbench results are one third of the maximum. Then drop the phone in ice water and run again. They go right back up.
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
6,400
12,849
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As I said in my post, there are a number factors, which include the OS overhead.
What you did not say in your post is that those factors which influence perceived performance make any comparison purely subjective.

I hope you really enjoy your new iPhone, every fact I learned about it points towards an excellent product, probably has the best mobile CPU created to date, but let's not indulge ourselves into inventing new metrics for performance. Even watching the same animation, rendered from the same system, on different 5" and respectively 25" screens will be perceived as different in "smoothness" even if pixel count is similar.

How fast can you scroll a page on the new iPhone? Let me guess: Safari still limits scroll speed.

As for your Nexus 5, I don't have one, but it wasn't reported as being lag-free. (Actually, I did have one, as it came free with my cell phone service, but I sold it immediately so I didn't really test it out.)
No iPhone is lag free, or else iOS would drop loading screens and redundant animations altogether.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,752
1,285
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Drops hard. I tested it. Let the phone heat up and the Geekbench results are one third of the maximum. Then drop the phone in ice water and run again. They go right back up.
Given your ice water comment, I wasn't sure if you were pulling our collective legs or not, but I gave this a whirl. I ran Geekbench 5 times in a row and every time the run time was about 2'40" to 2'42", and the scores were all in the ball park of about 3400/5500 to 3500/5650 or so.

The delay between tests was about 2-3 seconds each as that's how long it took me to start it up again after each run.

The phone got just lightly warm.


What you did not say in your post is that those factors which influence perceived performance make any comparison purely subjective.

I hope you really enjoy your new iPhone, every fact I learned about it points towards an excellent product, probably has the best mobile CPU created to date, but let's not indulge ourselves into inventing new metrics for performance. Even watching the same animation, rendered from the same system, on different 5" and respectively 25" screens will be perceived as different in "smoothness" even if pixel count is similar.

How fast can you scroll a page on the new iPhone? Let me guess: Safari still limits scroll speed.
I think you need to actually try these phones out in person. Scroll speed is way faster than any iOS device I have ever tried. If the scroll speed is limited, then it's definitely sufficient for my usage. To put it another way, I don't care if the scroll speed is limited or not, since now the user (me) is the bottleneck not the hardware/software.

And no, this is not a new metric BTW. This has been talked about for just about forever. Sure, it's subjective, but it's nonetheless not new.

And also yes, it depends a lot on OS optimization, but again it's not new. Remember Project Butter?

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/G/google_project_butter.html

No iPhone is lag free, or else iOS would drop loading screens and redundant animations altogether.
Of course no OS or iPhone has instantaneous loading of everything. But it's noticeably smoother on the iPhone 7 Plus. Next to an iPhone 6 Plus or a Note 5 for that matter, the difference in lag would be obvious. I can even see it with a 6s vs a 7 Plus. However, it doesn't really bother me on a 6s, but did on a 6 Plus. And I'm not alone:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-6-plus-lag-poll.1791582/
 

sxr7171

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2002
5,079
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My comparison was when it was downloading music. Have to use that 256GB. It's gets so hot that the Geekbench result is close to 1200. Then I dropped in ice water and ran again. I got almost 3700.

Also yes I think iOS scroll speed is limited but in a useable way. Some phones will let you flick right to the bottom or top. You can't get any real movement with a flick in iOS. You have to almost drag it all the way.

Some of these things should be options. I think even the lightest setting for force touch is too hard. And scrolling should have an option where the "weight" of the page is lighter.
 
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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,752
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My comparison was when it was downloading music. Have to use that 256GB. It's gets so hot that the Geekbench result is close to 1200. Then I dropped in ice water and ran again. I got 3600.
Oh I see. To give the A10 credit though, that heat mostly isn't being generated by the SoC then. It seems accessing the storage (which is comparatively a low compute requirement for A10 generates a lot more heat than the CPU itself running benches.

Also yes I think iOS scroll speed is limited but in a useable way. Some phones will let you flick right to the bottom or top. You can't get any real movement with a flick in iOS. You have to almost drag it all the way.
The AnandTech forums have an up/down arrow icon in the bottom right corner. If you tap the down arrow it scrolls to the bottom. If you tap the up arrow it scrolls to the top (much like when you tap the space above the URL in Safari). No pauses.

What I meant about scrolling though is that even if I go to the full desktop site at say www.theglobeandmail.com I can continuously scroll from the top to the bottom of the page using repeated alternating flicks with by two thumbs. On my iPad Air 2 and on my iPhone 5s, they can't keep up with my thumbs. Neither can my Pentium dual-core at work sometimes, using Chrome with the scroll bar (although again it's mostly fine).

I'm sure some more complex desktop-oriented sites would cause lags, but for the mobile and desktop sites I usually frequent, the 7 Plus is a noticeable improvement over previous iOS devices.
 

slashbinslashbash

Golden Member
Feb 29, 2004
1,945
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When I got my iPhone 5 on AT&T LTE, the hardwired Internet situation was such that it was noticeably smoother and faster in loading and scrolling websites, than my 2013 MBP (4core i7 2.2 with 16GB of RAM). Also I use Firefox on the MBP, so that is a constant pain in the neck for slowness/lagginess. It's definitely an apples to oranges comparison due to different screen sizes, software capabilities (I mean Flash doesn't even try to load on the iPhone), and software stack, but I got that "OMG my phone is faster than my nice laptop" feeling with the 5. A good part of that was due to the AT&T LTE in that particular area, which was getting around 50 Mbit at the time that I first got my phone, but slowed down noticeably over the ensuing weeks as more people got LTE capable phones. The hardwired Internet was a cable product (i.e., janky) around 15 or 20Mbit down.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,752
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Interesting. I just heard on the AT podcast that Intel got a CDMA licence through its VIA Telecom purchase last year. I didn't know that.

I wonder what this means for Intel vs Qualcomm in Apple phones next year.
 

witeken

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2013
3,899
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Woah, that Intel modem is 34 bucks? Where do they get the number from? If that were the case, if Apple sells just 50M Intel modems, Intel would get $1.7B in revenues. Surely such a number would be too big to go unnoticed in their earnings forecasts.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,841
5,456
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witeken

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2013
3,899
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The foundry will have volume production of its 10nm process before the end of the year and be ready to take orders for its 7nm process by April, said Sun.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330503

Edit:

Yields for 256 Mbit SRAMs at 7nm are two months ahead of plan with risk production starting in the first quarter of 2017, said Sun.

The 10nm process provides a 50% die scaling and 50% speed gain or 40% power reduction over 16FF+ and provides “the highest density in the industry today in contact pitch,” said Sun.
TSMC's 10nm node is completely unclear to me. Here he says 0.5x scaling, before we heard 0.52x and we've also heard 2.1x already. Note that this 50% is compared to 16nm+, not 16FFC.

Compared to 10nm, TSMC’s 7nm node delivers 15-20% more speed or 35-40% less power consumption and a 1.63x better routed gate density, said Sun. An ARM Cortex-A72 core in the 7nm process could deliver 30% more performance or 56% less power consumption than in 16FFC, said Hou.
Only 1.63x scaling and then they call it a full node shrink to 7nm, lol. Intel will at 10nm really gain a 1 node advantage, let alone at 7nm.
 
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witeken

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2013
3,899
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What I don't understand though, is why Intel doesn't go with short cells for their Core m. This shows that Intel does not take ultramobile serious. Apple A10 has now 2x as much transistors, or so?

But I'm not convinced by the Fool article. New process could also mean 16FFC.

Given TSMC's timeline, A10X might still be a year away. By then, they will probably call it A11X, so that solves the naming problem. Apple has skipped Xs before.
 

asendra

Member
Nov 4, 2012
156
12
81
Well, that confirms? A10x on TSMC "10nm" node.
If generally iPad SOC variants have 50% better GPU perf and 30-40% more CPU, using the same node, I'm dying to know how further have they come with this A10X.

Will they go with little cores also? Or go full big quad core? 2 big cores with SMT? If they get 30-40% better ST than A9X (same perf advantage than A9->A9X, A9->A10)It's going to be a beast
 
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asendra

Member
Nov 4, 2012
156
12
81
I was thinking 2,7-2,8GHz, more seems unlikely. Plus other refinements, better memory subsystem etc
A10 is 2,2GHz in a phone, and TSMC 10nm claimed at least 15% freq. improvement at same power level. So I could see them having 20-30% more freq in an iPad, specially the 12.9".
 
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sxr7171

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2002
5,079
40
91
These iPads have much more area to dissipate heat and a much larger battery. I'm sure it could boost up pretty high and stay low so they can advertise high battery life.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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What I don't understand though, is why Intel doesn't go with short cells for their Core m. This shows that Intel does not take ultramobile serious. Apple A10 has now 2x as much transistors, or so?

But I'm not convinced by the Fool article. New process could also mean 16FFC.

Given TSMC's timeline, A10X might still be a year away. By then, they will probably call it A11X, so that solves the naming problem. Apple has skipped Xs before.

16FFC is not a new process. It's a subset of 16FF+.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
8,009
6,454
136
These iPads have much more area to dissipate heat and a much larger battery. I'm sure it could boost up pretty high and stay low so they can advertise high battery life.

Reducing the power draw from the screen or wireless radios has a bigger impact on overall battery life than reducing CPU power-draw. Even in cases where the SoC is under heavy load it's typically the GPU-heavy games that are responsible.

I think that for Apple the clock speeds are as much a factor of binning as power consumption. At their volumes they can't afford to be too picky (especially if only sourcing from a single supplier) so they probably have many chips that could clock a lot higher, but there aren't enough chips capable of hitting those speeds within the TDP constraints they have so they have to play more conservative on the clock speeds.
 
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