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Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

macworld.com

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Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#111

Post by oliv__ »

tambourine_man wrote: post #105
jandrese wrote: post #17

I wish Apple would make a sort of Raspberry Pi like board with an A series chip, ethernet, HDMI, GPIO, SD Card, etc... for $50-$100 that runs Linux. I would also like a flying unicorn. Seriously, a high power SBC at a reasonable price point would be insanely useful for projects like portable MAME cabinets, video transcoders, scene displays, etc... I love the Pi but it's so old tech, especially the video cores, that i…

Not a flying unicorn, but still a winged equine: the Mac Nano. A tiny white puck with a single usb-c plug for power and data. Inside, an A12 running OS X. Education and “enthusiast” market. GPIO as a dongle, of course. They can release the A13 version in colors the next year :)

Take my money

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#113

Post by vbezhenar »

Reason077 wrote: post #64
lnanek2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS is not particularly different from OSX. That's why Apple developers get to use a super fast simulator instead of the dog slow emulator we Android developers are stuck with.

Similarities between iOS and macOS don't have much to do with it. The reason the Android emulator is slow is that it is actually emulating an ARM CPU. The iOS simulator, on the other hand, is running an iOS natively built for x86, and Xcode targets the x86 architecture when you build your app for the simulator.

Does anyone really uses ARM emulation? I think, everyone just uses x86 Android image which should be the same as Apple's iOS Simulator. And if you need to test ARM, you should just use real phone.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#114

Post by hawski »

jandrese wrote: post #17

I wish Apple would make a sort of Raspberry Pi like board with an A series chip, ethernet, HDMI, GPIO, SD Card, etc... for $50-$100 that runs Linux. I would also like a flying unicorn. Seriously, a high power SBC at a reasonable price point would be insanely useful for projects like portable MAME cabinets, video transcoders, scene displays, etc... I love the Pi but it's so old tech, especially the video cores, that i…

Your best bet would be a SBC with i.MX8M - the same SoC that will be in Librem 5. That's because it's one of the best supported SoCs by mainline Linux kernel.

With Etnaviv drivers for GPU you can be pretty much covered. And I think it will get better.

I'm hoping that someone will make a netbook with i.MX8M. Or maybe even Chromebook - it would be then easily repurposeable.

I'm eyeing WandPi 8M [0], armstone mx8m [1] and Nitrogen8M [2].

[0] https://www.wandboard.org/products/

[1] https://www.fs-net.de/en/products/armstone/armstonemx8m-with...

[2] https://boundarydevices.com/product/nitrogen8m-imx8/

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#115

Post by valarauca1 »

mepian wrote: post #39
stefan_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple chips famously have Imagination GPUs that have zero open-source support, a far ways off even from Nvidia. They are the absolute worst. That's before you consider that all the stuff Apple did to that poor ARM probably means you can't even boot Linux into a terminal on it today.

>Apple chips famously have Imagination GPUs Not anymore, Apple switched to in-house GPUs recently.

This is marketing hype.

Apple’s commits to the LLVM (where the shader gets compiled into GPU executable code) states the A11 GPU target is “PowerVR Rogue” ISA. Which is identical to how it compiles for the A10.

So it’s still using foreign IP for the instruction set. Maybe Apple moved things around/optimized internals? Get better path optimization, or improve IPC?

But it’s weird they didn’t add optimizations specifically for that A11. So an A10/A11 GPU just run the same opcodes.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#116

Post by dmayle »

jandrese wrote: post #62
dmayle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rock64 and variants should do what you're looking for.

I said I wanted a working GPU.

It does have a working GPU. There is the RK3328 specific libmali: https://github.com/rockchip-linux/libmali

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#117

Post by drcode »

jimmy1 wrote: post #9
roryisok wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its only a matter of time before apple unveils what's basically high spec clamshell iPad pro and stops making new macbooks.

I disagree, I think they are doing a full about-face with these latest generation of garbage MBPs and I am hopeful for the refreshes. A lesson many will learn the hard way, eventually, is you don't scorn your power users because they are an endless source of evangelism and free marketing for your product.

No one should pay an "apple premium" anymore for their computer- Their recent MBPs and their lack of response to the many complaints shows they don't care about reliability and quality in 2018- I am so happy now that I'm using a PixelBook as my dev machine (with the new official linux support)

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#118

Post by Dunedan »

sveme wrote: post #74

OT, but with the whole GDPR drama, this website has made a better effort than most to comply. However, I doubt that all the default opt-ins would be ruled GDPR-compliant.

I got pretty confused by their popup, because there are three options:

- "Update Privacy Settings"

- "Sounds Good, Thanks"

- "Not Now"

Apparently "Sounds Good, Thanks" is their wording for expressing consent, which is already odd, but what does "Not Now" mean? Does it mean no consent, so no tracking for now? In any case, pretty poor wording as well.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#119

Post by freshyill »

sho wrote: post #95
jey wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. All I really want is more RAM so that I can tab between Safari and Facebook without one of them getting unloaded and losing my place.

Which model do you have? No way this should be happening on a recent one just between two applications. On the X (3GB) this doesn't seem to be an issue for me at all.

I'm really impressed by how long apps remain in RAM on my 8 Plus. I'll play a game before bed and find it still where I left off during my commute the next morning, and that's with some browsing/podcasts in between.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#120

Post by dmayle »

dmayle wrote: post #116
jandrese wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said I wanted a working GPU.

It does have a working GPU. There is the RK3328 specific libmali: https://github.com/rockchip-linux/libmali

And the docs: http://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Graphics
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