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

[Arachnotronic]

And more advanced software features mean the user experience suffers on older slower CPUs.

I am experiencing this now with my A7 iPhone 5S. It's still quite usable for the most part, but not infrequently I get quite annoyed with it. In contrast, in 2013, it seemed screamingly fast.

yep, and that's how Apple gets people to upgrade.

 

[stingerman]

And more advanced software features mean the user experience suffers on older slower CPUs.

I am experiencing this now with my A7 iPhone 5S. It's still quite usable for the most part, but not infrequently I get quite annoyed with it. In contrast, in 2013, it seemed screamingly fast.

It's hard to go back to a 5S size display once you're on a plus model and now I'm hoping Apple goes even bigger. Maybe if they go full edge to edge and get rid of the top and bottom margins when they put home button behind the display.

 

[Commodus]

It's hard to go back to a 5S size display once you're on a plus model and now I'm hoping Apple goes even bigger. Maybe if they go full edge to edge and get rid of the top and bottom margins when they put home button behind the display.

I don't think we want that "just a slab of glass" phone as much as we think we do.

Apple ought to trim the bezels around the iPhone, to be sure, but you still need someplace you can rest your thumbs to avoid covering the screen. It's not a big problem on a phone like the Galaxy S7 Edge, but there are moments with that phone where it's hard to avoid gripping the display. There's a middle ground between the current iPhone design and that neurotic "bezels are the devil incarnate" attitude that pervades tech forums.

 

[lopri]

Laughing my ass off here. Big middle finger to the big.LITTLE naysayers over the last few years. I guess that good micro-architecture just can't compensate for the laws of physics.

It is also a rebuke to the nonsensical (and in a way xenophobic) narrative that the multiple core SOCs are created to appease Chinese market or some such. Lest people believe Apple shoved up 2 moar cores for marketing purposes, that is.

 

[asendra]

It's hard to go back to a 5S size display once you're on a plus model and now I'm hoping Apple goes even bigger. Maybe if they go full edge to edge and get rid of the top and bottom margins when they put home button behind the display.

I really don´t get this, but to each it's own. I have a Nexus 6 lying around the office, and handle often enough 6+/6s+ and they are just unusable to me as a main phone. Hell, I have a 6s and I miss my 5s every time I hold my sisters 5se! I concede that the 5s/6se screen now feels small, but the device itself it´s a joy to hold. I would love for them to reduce the overall size of the 6s while maintaing that screen size.

It might have something to do with me using my iPad whenever Im home, or using my phone for running, gym, etc

Anyways, going back to the A10, I actually feel they are even overpowered in the GPU department given that I don´t game at all go my iPhone, lol. I have felt zero need to update my 6s though, apart from the usual GAS. Now, an A10x with 40% more CPU performance than the current iPad pro might make me upgrade my iPad Air 2, specially now that my sisters mini 2 is showing it´s age.

 

[Eug]

Again, I cannot vouch for authenticity of this, but now we have a different benchmark, AnTuTu, and AnTuTu itself blogs about it on its website:

178397: iPhone 7
177266: iPad Pro
136477: iPhone 6s Plus
98101: iPad Air 2
80554: iPhone 6 Plus

So, these results suggest A10 Fusion is roughly 1/3rd faster than A9, and over 2X as fast as A8.

http://www.gizmochina.com/2016/09/12/iphone-7-antutu-benchmark-a10-chipset/

I don't really know this benchmark but I believe it favours single threaded performance over multi-threaded. It also includes GPU performance among other things in the overall score, so it's not a pure CPU benchmark. (You can compare the individual subtests, but it's kind of hard to find that information online for the different chips.)

Here is the link to the actual Antutu page: http://www.antutu.com/view.shtml?id=8272

If you translate it, you'll see that the single-core CPU performance is over 20000, or to be exact, 20300.

 

[Commodus]

If those benches hold up, it's pretty significant. I know Apple and Qualcomm tend to leapfrog each other in terms of performance each year, but consider this: the A9 was still competitive with the Snapdragon 820 despite all the advancements from Qualcomm's chip. That means that the A10 Fusion is likely faster than even the Snapdragon 821, and Apple may hold a performance edge for longer than it did last year.

 

[Mopetar]

yep, and that's how Apple gets people to upgrade.

I don't think it's all just bit rot, though to some degree the new OS features are more taxing and our perception of what was fast becomes what is average, the biggest thing to obsolete older hardware in my mind is the growing amount of bloat on the web.

I recall an article from last year that said that in the original unveiling video for the iPhone, it took about 10 seconds to load the NY Time's desktop site using the iPhone's browser. The author attempted to do it the same using the original iPhone with the website now and it took over two minutes to fully load because of how much more cruft is being slapped onto webpages. It's crazy to see how much crap something like Ghostery blocks and how many different trackers or other Javascript I don't care about gets loaded if you turn off the blocking.

 

[Eug]

If those benches hold up, it's pretty significant. I know Apple and Qualcomm tend to leapfrog each other in terms of performance each year, but consider this: the A9 was still competitive with the Snapdragon 820 despite all the advancements from Qualcomm's chip. That means that the A10 Fusion is likely faster than even the Snapdragon 821, and Apple may hold a performance edge for longer than it did last year.

Isn't Snapdragon 821 just the same chip as 820 but with a minor clockspeed bump?

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/snapdragon/2016/07/11/snapdragon-821-builds-820-processor-success

 

[Arachnotronic]

If those benches hold up, it's pretty significant. I know Apple and Qualcomm tend to leapfrog each other in terms of performance each year, but consider this: the A9 was still competitive with the Snapdragon 820 despite all the advancements from Qualcomm's chip. That means that the A10 Fusion is likely faster than even the Snapdragon 821, and Apple may hold a performance edge for longer than it did last year.

The A9 rips the 820 a new one in CPU performance, and the 821 won't fare much better. A10 is several generations ahead of Qualcomm here.

 

[Commodus]

Isn't Snapdragon 821 just the same chip as 820 but with a minor clockspeed bump?

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/snapdragon/2016/07/11/snapdragon-821-builds-820-processor-success

Well, that's the thing -- it's a combination of Apple iterating quickly and Qualcomm moving slowly. I can imagine that Qualcomm is really, really hoping that the A11 isn't another large boost... the last thing it wants is a world where Apple has a seemingly permanent performance lead.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Well, that's the thing -- it's a combination of Apple iterating quickly and Qualcomm moving slowly. I can imagine that Qualcomm is really, really hoping that the A11 isn't another large boost... the last thing it wants is a world where Apple has a seemingly permanent performance lead.

Sucks for Qualcomm, because that's very likely going to be reality.

 

[witeken]

Sucks for Qualcomm, because that's very likely going to be reality.

It's always funny to read in articles statements like "It’s a common fallacy...", but I wonder how many people actually think the fallacy those articles then talk about, certainly in this age. So let's see what this popular site, that is supposed to inform people, thinks what people think.

...convenient to Apple, to think that the iPhone maker doesn’t care about specs. Oh, they’re too busy sticking cigarette stubs into people’s ears, those Cupertino types, to mind the nerdy feeds and speeds of their phones. The iPhone is behind the Android curve on almost every spec, and yet it remains the world’s best-selling smartphone year after year. It’s not because specs don’t matter, but because the same spec means different things in the iOS and Android ecosystems.

Entertaining. And then it goes on rambling about battery life and I imagine other things, but after such a pretentious start I'm not going to continue reading.


Competing with the iPhone's specs is harder than it seems

When I go to the Apple site, however, which is I think where people who want an iPhone first go to to learn more about it, I read different words.

iPhone 7 dramatically improves the most important aspects [clever, specs in disguise] of the iPhone experience. It introduces advanced new camera systems. The best performance and battery life ever in an iPhone. Immersive stereo speakers. The brightest, most colorful iPhone display. Splash and water resistance.1 And it looks every bit as powerful as it is. This is iPhone 7.

PS: That [superlative] [ever] structure actually should not impress people. Or do people expect that Apple is going to reduce performance? So every improvement will be the [superlative] ever.

 

[Andrei.]

The A9 rips the 820 a new one in CPU performance, and the 821 won't fare much better. A10 is several generations ahead of Qualcomm here.

Qualcomm and the 820 are hardly the ones you want to compare the A9 to. Pretty much everything beats the 820 in CPU. The A72 in the K950/955 should be the better comparison and beats A9 in efficiency, and we should compare the A10 to the A73's of the K960.

Plus the A10 will have a process disadvantage for 6-8 months once QC and Samsung get to 10nm next cycle.

 

[witeken]

Plus the A10 will have a process disadvantage for 6-8 months once QC and Samsung get to 10nm next cycle.

Do we know that the successor of Kryo will be 10nm?

 

[Andrei.]

Do we know that the successor of Kryo will be 10nm?

I don't expect a successor to Kryo. (Edit: except the S821 cpu revision.)

I place my money on S830 having 4+4 A73 A53 on Samsung 10nm and E8895 the same just with revised M1 cores instead of A73's.

Regarding efficiency, if I were to just account for increasing cpu core power, efficiency would be A72 > M1 ~ A9 > A57 ~ Kryo however I can't differentiate L2 and other SoC power from single core power so that mixes things up and A9 has advantage there. Makes you wonder if it's really the CPU itself or the surrounding stuff that makes A9 that good.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I don't expect a successor to Kryo. (Edit: except the S821 cpu revision.)

I place my money on S830 having 4+4 A73 A53 on Samsung 10nm and E8895 the same just with revised M1 cores instead of A73's.

Yep, Qualcomm needs to just stop developing custom cores. No value add over ARM, in fact probably negative value given that A72 outperforms Kryo.

 

[Commodus]

It's always funny to read in articles statements like "It’s a common fallacy...", but I wonder how many people actually think the fallacy those articles then talk about, certainly in this age. So let's see what this popular site, that is supposed to inform people, thinks what people think.

*snip*

Entertaining. And then it goes on rambling about battery life and I imagine other things, but after such a pretentious start I'm not going to continue reading.


Competing with the iPhone's specs is harder than it seems

When I go to the Apple site, however, which is I think where people who want an iPhone first go to to learn more about it, I read different words.

Hyperbole from both sides notwithstanding, The Verge is right in that Apple isn't as obsessed with specs as most of its competitors.

Of course it cares about faster performance, better cameras, improved displays and all that. But go to Apple's overview page for the iPhone 7 and notice that specs only come up occasionally. It's not bragging about clock speeds, the amount of RAM, or dishing out specific benchmark figures. You can't even find the CPU clock rates or RAM in the tech specs -- you have to turn to a third party for that. Instead, Apple is usually talking about things in terms of what they mean to the user, or in terms of relative performance. The A10 chip is twice as fast as the A8 in your old iPhone 6, for example, or improves the games you play.

This isn't to say that its rivals aren't improving. The Galaxy S7, in a sense, is a mea culpa for Samsung: it was so obsessed with the Bigger Numbers Are Always Better strategy that it forgot about whether or not those specs actually mattered to end users. That it actually stepped down to a 12-megapixel camera, for example, showed that it actually cared about the quality of your photos, not just their size. But many Android vendors are still all about the specs, like Sony (do you really want a 13-megapixel front cam if it doesn't work well in low light?)... and what frustrates them is that Apple beats many of them by refusing to play their game.

 

[Mopetar]

Well, that's the thing -- it's a combination of Apple iterating quickly and Qualcomm moving slowly. I can imagine that Qualcomm is really, really hoping that the A11 isn't another large boost... the last thing it wants is a world where Apple has a seemingly permanent performance lead.

It doesn't matter what Apple is doing. Qualcomm doesn't compete with them. Qualcomm doesn't even really have direct competition because Samsung doesn't sell their Exynos to anyone else and the other competition is buying cheaper, low spec SoCs that are vanilla ARM.

NVidia's Tegra stopped being a good fit for phones, TI stopped making ARM SoCs, and Intel has given up on getting their chips into phones. The closest thing Qualcomm has to competition is MediaTek.

The real danger for Qualcomm is that the other third party manufacturers give up and Samsung just decides to go completely with their own line while the Chinese companies continue to use low-cost components for the bulk of their devices with a few of the halo products using Snapdragon SoCs.

 

[Commodus]

It doesn't matter what Apple is doing. Qualcomm doesn't compete with them. Qualcomm doesn't even really have direct competition because Samsung doesn't sell their Exynos to anyone else and the other competition is buying cheaper, low spec SoCs that are vanilla ARM.

NVidia's Tegra stopped being a good fit for phones, TI stopped making ARM SoCs, and Intel has given up on getting their chips into phones. The closest thing Qualcomm has to competition is MediaTek.

The real danger for Qualcomm is that the other third party manufacturers give up and Samsung just decides to go completely with their own line while the Chinese companies continue to use low-cost components for the bulk of their devices with a few of the halo products using Snapdragon SoCs.

I'd say it does matter, although it may only be relevant in the long term. Let's say the gulf between Apple's chips and Qualcomm's is large for a long time. Customers notice that hey, the iPhone users are doing things that our phones can't do. Apple ends up claiming more of the high end, which hurts Qualcomm as well as Android vendors that depend on Qualcomm for powering their high-end phones.

Samsung can turn to Exynos chips, but it still doesn't have the capacity to use them exclusively (and this is assuming it could keep pace with Apple). If it had to drop Qualcomm now, you'd see rampant shortages. And HTC, LG, Sony, Xiaomi? Screwed. They'd lose their value as high-end phone makers and would have to settle for being mid-tier to low-end brands. Xiaomi might do better because it already has a strong budget line (Redmi models, for example), but it's already falling... it doesn't need someone pushing it off the cliff.

Of course, it's important to stress that this is all theoretical. It depends on how the Snapdragon 830 (that's what's reportedly comes next) improves on the 820, and whether or not Apple can see itself improving by leaps and strides for a while longer. I'm mainly surprised that Qualcomm didn't have a great answer to Apple in 2016. The 820 was really just a catch-up release, and the 821 doesn't change that.

 

[Eug]

What is the die size of 820/821? I couldn't find that (but I'm on a phone).

Remember, A10 is ginormous. I guess you also have to factor in the size of the modem too.

 

[stingerman]

Qualcomm is already just mid-tier. What we have today is overpriced mid-tier phones competing with iPhone flagships. Just look to the China android phones that are every bit as good as the android phones we get in the west but they sell for so much less.

The differentiator with the high end Samsung phones is bloatware that advanced users take off and replace at the first chance. Apple owns the high end and most of the profits of the industry. It's not just their advancing specs but their well implemented software.

 

[nvgpu]

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/0...at-annual-upgrades-with-one-major-catch/5/#h1

Both Qualcomm & Samsung are nothing more than a joke when it comes to mobile CPU performance. Apple keeps destroying both competitors custom cores in performance & power efficiency.

 

[raghu78]

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/0...at-annual-upgrades-with-one-major-catch/5/#h1

Both Qualcomm & Samsung are nothing more than a joke when it comes to mobile CPU performance. Apple keeps destroying both competitors custom cores in performance & power efficiency.

The A10 fusion is a performance beast in both CPU and GPU metrics. Apple is embarassing Qualcomm in CPU performance.

 

[vissarix]

According to geekbench the A10 have higher ipc compared to skylake, i wonder why they do not make a desktop version since it would be faster and use it for they own mac family instead of using intel cpu's..