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Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#161

Post by tk75x »

scarface74 wrote: post #135
Svexav wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you want a single physical device anyway? All my files and apps setup they way I want them on a single device that's with me 24/7. Complete privacy and security because my data never leaves my device (except for backups to a time machine or iCloud). I don't have to own multiple computers. I own one computer: my iPhone. There's only one device to setup, update, and maintain. If I want to have a larger scre…

All my files and apps setup they way I want them on a single device that's with me 24/7. Complete privacy and security because my data never leaves my device (except for backups to a time machine or iCloud). So you don’t want your data to leave your device for privacy reason but you back it up to iCloud?

Encrypt your backups.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#162

Post by IOT_Apprentice »

IOT_Apprentice wrote: post #22
oddevan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no FaceID (yet, maybe it's coming) on laptops, so we don't need the ML chip. With Apple's focus on on-device ML, I would guess this will be the first part of the A-series trifecta (CPU, GPU, Neural) to be included on a Mac and exposed to developers. I can imagine a bunch of possibilities for such a chip, not just FaceID.

Exactly. Why couldn't developers/hackers start using the ML chip via python etc to do machine learning, facial recognition from remote cameras, etc?

Well what do you know! https://www.liip.ch/en/blog/numbers-recognition-mnist-on-an-...

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#163

Post by philwelch »

mtgx wrote: post #148
philwelch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving to Intel chips did two or three things for Apple: 1. It helped them jump from a failing CPU platform to a non-failing CPU platform. PPC was not keeping up with x86 anymore and Apple's two PPC vendors were going in opposite directions because there wasn't enough of a market for CPU's for Macs. (There were even rumors of future Power Macs migrating to a full POWER CPU rather than PPC.) 2. It meant you could run…

Apple is already blocking Linux installations on new hardware via the T2 chip, so I'm getting the feeling Apple doesn't care much about Linux support on its laptops.

The T2 stops you from booting Linux, unless you specifically disable that functionality, but if you read closely you’ll notice I was mostly talking about running Linux in a VM, which actually is a common use case.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#164

Post by nrb »

philwelch wrote: post #89
nrb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people (except maybe Apple shareholders) would be happy with a single physical device that handles a variety of use cases rather than paying Apple $1500 a pop, several times over, for the exact same hardware in different physical cases.

Hardware is expensive, but how much of that expense is the CPU and how much of it is the variety of screens and cases that you would still need to have to switch form factors?

That depends on if you already own a TV or monitor, both of which are available for a small fraction of the price Apple charges.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#165

Post by theluketaylor »

ksec wrote: post #143
theluketaylor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The near total lack of the word "intel" at the keynote was certainly quite noticeable. The question is how much was that a negotiating ploy for better pricing/stock with intel and how much was positioning for arm macs. I think a bit of both. I went back to remind myself of the details of the switch from powerpc to intel. It was announced at wwdc 2005 (june) when they released a developer transition kit. The announcem…

>The question is how much was that a negotiating ploy for better pricing/stock with intel. From an Apple perspective you could easily justify the price for all the old Intel Chip. 1. Intel has a 2 years+ node advantage which you cant get anywhere even if you pay. 2. Intel has the best performance / watt CPU on the market, also highest performance Core on the market, you cant get it anywhere even if you pay. 3. x86 co…

The modem business from apple represents a huge amount of leverage over intel. It doesn't really matter what part it is, if you sell 50 million of something per quarter you're going to do whatever it takes to keep that business. Even if apple stops buying x86 processors modems alone make them one of intel's most important customers, especially when intel is trying to grow their modem business.

thunderbolt is a hurdle to arm macs but I don't think an insurmountable one. As you mentioned Intel already committed to opening the spec and if apple can't negotiate getting tunderbolt host controllers tossed in super cheap and forcing intel to honour its own commitments with modem sales they don't deserve to be valued at 1T.

TB is one of the big reasons I think macbook would be the obvious 1st mac to switch. It currently only has USB-C (no TB) and it's due for a refresh since the lack of touch id makes it an outlier.

When apple switched from ppc it was a multiple year effort and I don't see any reason a switch to arm, whether it's a full move or particular products would be any different.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#166

Post by kllrnohj »

m_mueller wrote: post #147
kllrnohj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think one thing you’re missing is how good Apple’s GPU have become (and will be in 1-2 years). Not compared to other discreet GPUs they haven't. They are still 5 years behind consoles. The only time mobile ever "catches up" and achieves "console-class" is near the end of a consoles ~5-8 year lifetime. The performance is superb for mobile, and certainly good enough for integrated (it'd be perfect in something like…

Right, but I figure this could be scaled up with larger dies. Sure, Apple is not yet on eye level with Nvidia & AMD, but given their massive R&D budgets I don’t think that’s for long. Also, AR & VR drives demand for GPU FLOPS/Watt in a tight envelope, which has proven to scale quite well to larger chips in CPUs (see mobile ARM -> Cavium & co.).

Scaling up is one of those easier said than done things. Until Apple actually does it there's no reason to assume they could do it.

Cavium is sort of your proof that scaling is hard. The 32-core ThunderX2 @ 2.2ghz with 56 PCI-E lanes has the same TDP as the 32-core AMD Epyc with 128 PCI-E lanes. And it's slower than the competition from AMD & Intel at comparable power budgets.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#167

Post by philwelch »

nrb wrote: post #164
philwelch wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware is expensive, but how much of that expense is the CPU and how much of it is the variety of screens and cases that you would still need to have to switch form factors?

That depends on if you already own a TV or monitor, both of which are available for a small fraction of the price Apple charges.

If you have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, it's (theoretically) possible to use a smartphone as a desktop PC. That's also the least popular form factor for a computing device these days. Laptops or tablets would, even on the physical level, be much harder to pull off this way.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#168

Post by dragonwriter »

philwelch wrote: post #167
nrb wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on if you already own a TV or monitor, both of which are available for a small fraction of the price Apple charges.

If you have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, it's (theoretically) possible to use a smartphone as a desktop PC. That's also the least popular form factor for a computing device these days. Laptops or tablets would, even on the physical level, be much harder to pull off this way.

For a laptop, all you need is a keyboard/screen clamshell unit with a docking port for the phone where a drive would be on a typical laptop.

A tablet is pretty similar, but the dock needs to be behind the screen, which probably makes a thicker than average tablet. Or you just make a foldable phone which folds out to a tablet.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#169

Post by djrogers »

coder543 wrote: post #140
ianai wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My figure is per the 6th benchmark here https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/apple-macbook-air-...

That's a comparison between macOS and Windows, not the SSDs themselves. I would not have believed how terrible Windows is at small file I/O unless I had seen it myself dozens of times over the years. If they had put Linux on one of those laptops for comparison, I would consider a chart like that fair. If you actually read technical deep dives like AnandTech posts on SSDs and MacBooks alike, you would see that they re…

And that's exactly my point - the SSDs spec sheet numbers are based on the NAND chips, but the controllers slow them down in real world performance. I've still yet to see a benchmark that shows Macbook Air/Pro/iMac Pro level SSD permormance from any other SSD equipped computer.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#170

Post by coder543 »

djrogers wrote: post #169
coder543 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a comparison between macOS and Windows, not the SSDs themselves. I would not have believed how terrible Windows is at small file I/O unless I had seen it myself dozens of times over the years. If they had put Linux on one of those laptops for comparison, I would consider a chart like that fair. If you actually read technical deep dives like AnandTech posts on SSDs and MacBooks alike, you would see that they re…

And that's exactly my point - the SSDs spec sheet numbers are based on the NAND chips, but the controllers slow them down in real world performance. I've still yet to see a benchmark that shows Macbook Air/Pro/iMac Pro level SSD permormance from any other SSD equipped computer.

No, I’m saying Apple has been using industry standard controllers until literally the MacBook Air refresh that just launched.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12670/the-samsung-970-evo-ssd...

You can buy this SSD today. There are others like it, and some, like Intel's Optane SSDs actually substantially outperform anything Apple has put in their computers in terms of IOPS, even though the Optane line hasn't focused on raw sequential throughput yet. Off the shelf SSDs get the much vaunted performance of "Apple's" SSDs (they're just normal SSDs...) being discussed in this thread.

In fact, the SSDs in those windows computers are as fast as the one I've linked to. The benchmark you were linking to was benchmarking NTFS vs APFS under a small file I/O workload, which NTFS sucks at. It was not benchmarking the SSDs in any effective manner. I am certain that I pointed this out in my comment above! If those laptops were copying a few large files, the performance would have been identical. If those laptops were running Linux, the performance would have been identical.

Look here! https://www.anandtech.com/show/12167/the-microsoft-surface-b...

Scroll to the bottom and tell me what you see! Yes, that SSD is performing as well as your vaunted MacBook!

Apple's iPad Pros are technological marvels. Their laptops' storage systems are not, and you're just deceiving yourself if you think otherwise.

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