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Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

bbc.com

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Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#101

Post by egsmi »

pradn wrote: post #57
bleepblorp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think about it, it's deeply depressing how much incredibly interesting technology (and cumulative human effort) goes into portable computing devices that have the primary commercial purpose of forcing people to look at advertising. There's something deeply wrong when the best purpose humanity can find for all the effort that goes into things like 5G and EUV lithography is to use it to keep people addicted to F…

It's torturous to claim that phones have a "primary commercial purpose of forcing people to look at advertising". Most people would say phones are for talking to loved ones, having fun, getting the news, and playing games. Just today, I skimmed the NYT and FT, read about the Polish author Jan Potocki (and tweeted out quotes from the article), emailed my landlord, and reminisced with friends about our favorite biscuit…

> It's torturous to claim that phones have a "primary commercial purpose of forcing people to look at advertising".

That's true. I also read a lot comments on hacker news.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#102

Post by egsmi »

hajile wrote: post #55
easton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They compare it to the A12 I think because the iPad Pro and previous iPad Air (I believe, can’t remember) were both running A12 variants. It may still have something over the A13, but if they are trying to convince people to upgrade they probably want to compare it to the previous gen.

The issue is more fundamental. Apple hasn't made any computing breakthroughs. They got a lot of gains by going super-wide to extract obvious parallel performance. They are now at the point where adding more units costs more than it offers (at present). Their fundamental advantage over x86 is that aarch64 is less quirky, so implementing good ideas takes less time. Their only "easy" dial left is ramping clocks, but tha…

Do you have any reference for that?

I am very curious how the "width" of an Apple cpu was measured. One of the few good measurements I know of was done here and it's a bit inconclusive as the result is very particular.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442131

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#103

Post by sangnoir »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #8
mahkeiro wrote: post #3

A funny things is that we keep hearing about US only tech power, but AMSL (NL), is needed by TSMC (TW) to engrave a reference design by ARM (UK). But US is going one more time to limit EU tech by getting its hand on both ARM and AMSL as they previously did with many EU tech companies... At one point EU should realize that the US are playing the same game as the Chinese and are really not business friend.

The EU knows this, but they will continue to comply with US trade sanctions until they can live without the US in all areas. A giant hurdle (but not the only one) is NATO and being able to counter Russia. While NATO and the EU are separate, many countries are members of both. If the EU took a hard stance and said that they value trade with China more than the US's security complaints, the US could very well use that…

The EU unsuccessfully tried to save the JCPA (aka "Iran nuclear deal") from US sanctions by creating an alternative financial payment infrastructure based on the Euro & European banks & side-stepping sanctions as enforced by the US Treasury.

It totally would have worked, had the US not escalated to sanctioning any entities that dared to utilize this alternative system to deal with Iran. You are right to say the EU needs to get a bigger stick to successfully protect its interests when they diverge from American interests. In the long term - I'm talking decades - American troops will leave Europe, perhaps leaving a skeleton crew managing nuclear deterrence: whether they will be pulled back, or pushed out remains to be seen, but the natural evolution of the EU project will eventually result in a standing European army. What happens on Nov 3 will accelerate or delay this eventuality

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#104

Post by c0nducktr »

wil421 wrote: post #46
amelius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure they don't complain about how things turn out for them Apple also shouldn't complain, but still they let the consumer pay twice: once for the phone, and then the tax.

How is the consumer paying twice? I don’t pay a different price for an in-app purchase vs a direct purchase.

Can app developers charge 30% more for subscriptions done through the app store vs those done through their own payment methods?

If not, you're likely paying for it, due to the increased average cost to deliver the service/product.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#105

Post by [deleted] »

wil421 wrote: post #46
amelius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure they don't complain about how things turn out for them Apple also shouldn't complain, but still they let the consumer pay twice: once for the phone, and then the tax.

How is the consumer paying twice? I don’t pay a different price for an in-app purchase vs a direct purchase.

[deleted]

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#106

Post by ianai »

jm4 wrote: post #70
ianai wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market would soar after ending the tariffs.

The market is also incredibly shortsighted most of the time. Trump being obnoxious and overall just bad - depending on your perspective - and Trump being right to want to do something about China are not mutually exclusive. It was a growing problem that needed to be addressed. I hope the president for the next 4 years and beyond handles it well.

How does a country of 300 million go up against a country of 1.4 billion in any way based on per capita aggregates? Previous administrations saw the “baby” elephant for what it was and decided to introduce it to the world on US terms instead of Chinese terms. That’s basically what Kissinger says Mao communicated to him when they met-that China would surpass the US someday and they were planning for it centuries out if needed.

There is a silver lining though. The US land is more fertile and has greater resources than China. It’s also got a more diverse system across the board - and the world stage typically prefers the US to China (at least before Trump).

You tell me how the US positions itself any better than what it did and now seeks to undo.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#107

Post by throwaway4good »

chrisjc wrote: post #73
throwaway4good wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US tech war against China acts as a massive subsidy for China's domestic semiconductor companies. I suspect that is why the Chinese response has been so muted.

Interesting... Can you elaborate more on this idea?

An economy independent of foreign supplies has been a goal of communist China since its inception. And an active government program for high-end chip production including foundries has been there for a decade.

The problem is: How do you convince a world class chip designer like HiSilicon that it should use a local foundry rather than TSMC? TSMC which is more advanced, more reliable, maybe even cheaper? Without breaking China's commitment to WTO and other agreements that facilitate open trade.

That problem is solved now by the policies of the US.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#108

Post by burntoutfire »

anonAndOn wrote: post #97
burntoutfire wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US is also a threat to Western values, just look around the world and see how many people hate America. Usually it's because of the pretty bad shit that American government has done to them. Though I agree that being under Chinese or Russian rule seems like an on average worse outcome than the current American dominance.

FWIW, Churchill wasn't completely wrong when he (supposedly) said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

If only that were true. In history of American foreign policy, there's plenty of cases where America severely messed some nation up and then just... got up and left.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#109

Post by wltprgm »

saagarjha wrote: post #96
wltprgm wrote: post #80

the machine learning on A14 is still slower than Qualcomm and Samsung chips [0] Android smartphones are smarter than iPhone technically by the article's common sense [0] https://youtu.be/F_IsBD6E3O4

Nobody has these chips in their hands, so I would treat any claims with skepticism at this point.

https://youtu.be/F_IsBD6E3O4?t=801

13:21 in the video clearly shows that Snapdragon 865 already at 15 TOPS while A14 only has 11 TOPS

how is that skepticism?

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#110

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

Analemma_ wrote: post #54
a5withtrrs wrote: post #20

Cool tech. And I'm all for making integrated circuits and components more dense and space efficient. But I also wish that wouldn't result in the devices getting unreasonably thin/fragile. I'd rather have a sturdier device with 2-3x the battery capacity any day. As it is, I put a bulky case/screen protector and carry a spare battery and cable. Not exactly an ideal solution.

Every generation of the iPhone after the 6 has been thicker, with more battery capacity, than the previous one. Where is this meme about "they just keep making the phones thinner with worse battery life" coming from?

Not true I don't follow iphones super closely but I remember they reduced thr battery capacity at least once.
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