Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

macworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 192 posts

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

#121

Post by fastball »

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 :)

I'm confused as to how you have a computer with only a single port... what do you imagine plugging the one port into?

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

#122

Post by fastball »

lsiunsuex wrote: post #53
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…

Worse is the array of smart devices that are forced to use Android type hardware / Android OS. Looking at the Peloton cycle I have specifically which clearly runs Android OS. Could be so much better if it was on faster hardware / could link up to Apple Watch for stats. Make a version of iOS that companies can build off of; maintain the OS patch cycles but let them put their own app / front end on it. Tons of smart de…

Why would that be good for Apple?

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

#123

Post by dep_b »

Perhaps Apple could introduce a Mac Mini with an iPad-class version of the A12 for all people that need to develop for iOS but don't want to spend a ton on hardware. The basic tools like Xcode and some Apple productivity software could already be ported, most developer toolchains would follow. The Simulator would have realistic CPU characteristics. And Apple would ease in on the transition to macOS-ARM.

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

#124

Post by beokop »

fastball wrote: post #121
tambourine_man wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I'm confused as to how you have a computer with only a single port... what do you imagine plugging the one port into?

Previous MacBook 12” user here. Either power, or peripherals. Just not at the same time.

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

#125

Post by jandrese »

fastball wrote: post #121
tambourine_man wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I'm confused as to how you have a computer with only a single port... what do you imagine plugging the one port into?

Power I'd guess, since he didn't specify a battery. The display would be wirelessly beamed directly into your brain.

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

#126

Post by BenjiWiebe »

vbezhenar wrote: post #113
Reason077 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've used both. ARM emulation is slow, as you'd expect from a CPU emulation. The default, x86, is blazingly fast. Of course, this is assuming you remember to turn on virtualization features on your CPU.

The default x86 is a fair bit faster than my phone....

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

#127

Post by derefr »

fastball wrote: post #121
tambourine_man wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I'm confused as to how you have a computer with only a single port... what do you imagine plugging the one port into?

A USB-C Thunderbolt Display that delivers power over the cable and has a USB hub built into it. These exist, though they're expensive.

Or, an eGPU enclosure, which also delivers power over the cable and has a USB hub built into it. (You just need to plug a monitor into it.) These exist, and are surprisingly cheap if you buy them bundled with a graphics card.

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

#129

Post by bronxbomber92 »

valarauca1 wrote: post #115
mepian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 specifica…

Citation for those commits?

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

#130

Post by derefr »

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 :)

Have you tried developing apps for the Apple TV? It's basically like that; just too low-powered to actually run macOS.
Post reply on HN