Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#2Why would you want your external GPU built into the display?
When I saw the headline, I thought maybe it had a webcam and the A13 would do things like portrait mode, before the image reached the computer.
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#3Interesting. Does this mean the display itself would be running the WindowServer process? On my mac with a 5k external display, it's consistently using about half a core all throughout the day.
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#4Maybe this also aims to include some Apple TV features into the display. As some people use the same screen for work and entertainment in their living rooms.
Therefore it could also provide a new node for Siri access.
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#5Sounds like iOS or tvOS will be on board the monitor. I would find it more interesting to have a monitor with 16 to 32 cores of M1 (or M2?) that expand the compute and render capacity of a MacBook Pro when plugged in. As nice as mobile video editing is currently, having your monitor host an elastic compute capability and help cut down on 4K or 8K video rendering would be very, very interesting.
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#6Why would you want your external GPU built into the display? When I saw the headline, I thought maybe it had a webcam and the A13 would do things like portrait mode, before the image reached the computer.
Possibly to support wireless connections? You;ll be able to move your mouse across devices in the next version of iOS/macOS, so maybe this will allow you to use a screen without a device connected to it?
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#7Sounds like a possible convergence of iMac and & XDR monitor!
If you have a couple thousand dollar display, throwing $60 in cpu, RAM, & storage on top of it seems like a pretty dead-obvious win to me. Most companies would just have nothing particularly good to offer- Android? Windows? webOS? Ok options but not great, and they are paying a lot more for less well-integrated cpus. For Apple, they have great chips made not bought, in vast volume, and can make their pick of OSXI, TV, or iOS OS software.
I believe the new iMac 27 might not have Target Display Mode, the ability to take HDMI input, which old displays had[1]. I'm not sure that kind of capability is really needed, for long. One of the things I'm looking forward to with USB4 is that there is a really good 40Gbps host-to-host connectivity build right in to the spec. This is a generic connection, not specific to video, but I can certainly imagine doing a really good low-latency remote-desktop over a high quality connection like that. So, my hope is, medium-term, that we don't need HDMI &c input on our computers for them to act as auxiliary displays. There's already a world of softwares out there for using tablets auxiliary displays, my Linux desktop runs Sway which makes adding a virtual/remote display extremely simple, all that we're missing is a way for two computers to plug in-to one another & connect! Amazingly comedically weird situation.
[1] https://www.lifewire.com/use-imac-as-monitor-with-target-dis...
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#8Why would you want your external GPU built into the display? When I saw the headline, I thought maybe it had a webcam and the A13 would do things like portrait mode, before the image reached the computer.
Possibly to support wireless connections? You;ll be able to move your mouse across devices in the next version of iOS/macOS, so maybe this will allow you to use a screen without a device connected to it?
Why not do 3d inside the monitor? You send it textures and triangles and you get great 3d perf when connected, and more power efficiency when you are mobile (without the monitor connected).
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#9Why would you want your external GPU built into the display? When I saw the headline, I thought maybe it had a webcam and the A13 would do things like portrait mode, before the image reached the computer.
I don't know, but my guess:
Apple Exec: "Build an external display for the iPhone and/or iWatch."
Apple Engineers: "Ok, but we will need a GPU built into the display or it'll look like shit. It'll also need a lot of RAM/SSD to store textures, etc. Additionally, a high bandwidth, low latency wireless connection between the iDevice and the display (e.g. UWB)."
Previously to support an enormous external display the iDevice would need to have a large GPU, battery, etc that are mostly unused except for when the display is "active". With a GPU in the display, the iDevice just needs good enough data transfer rate to get textures and stuff over to the display, meanwhile events like mouse movement, or open an app, or switch apps can be very low latency instructions sent from the iDevice to the display and vice-versa.
Re: Apple testing new external display with A13 chip
#10I'm guessing it's to go along with a DaaS (desktop as a service), like the recently announced windows 365.