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How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

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Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#21

Post by edgyquant »

moh_maya wrote: post #12
Mistletoe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this hasn’t resulted in people being more happy. It’s quite the paradox. What are we doing all this for? https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n... I don’t post that to be negative, because I agree with what you are saying about a unique time to be alive and have done the same Atari to Xbox Series X glow-up and I marvel at the improvements there. But I do think happiness (and decrea…

At some level, I think this is orthogonal to technological progress. One possible way of getting at this is to ask if people were more ‘happy’ when there wasn’t this level of tech available - and I’m not sure the answer is yes - I mean, there’s the mythos of ‘a simple life’ and ‘noble savages’, but from what I’ve read of life even a 100 years back - I would surmise folks were as unhappy / miserable then too - but lik…

Maybe happy isn’t the right word, but I think it’s pretty clear people were more content and felt a sense of purpose. Social media has made things worse, but it’s really the loss of community and religion that has led to the crisis of loneliness and depression among todays people.

Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#23

Post by willis936 »

justinator wrote: post #7
willis936 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security. Nature owes nothing to anything. Even the warmest bosom in the cosmos (Earth) is hostile, temperamental, and temporary. If the death of one individual is a tragedy then I don't know the right word to describe the termination of life.

Or the false sense of security.

What is false about it?

Are you arguing that we are less secure against nature while sitting in climate controlled buildings with food stores in them, and a global industrial complex raised to keep these trains running?

Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#24

Post by jwells89 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #22

In terms of usefulness and end user experience, I find no difference between the iPhone X (A11, 4 billion transistors) and my current 14. Seems to me that all that extra processing power is still looking for a use case.

For me there’s some benefit in little things like on-device OCR and image classification, which has been helpful for quickly surfacing particular photos in my library but yes the broad strokes have not changed much.

Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#25

Post by jeffbee »

olliej wrote: post #18

I vaguely recall (many years ago) some GPU (a Matrox one iirc) coming out and it being a huge deal because of how many transistors it had. I think it may have been an amazing 100 million. Times have changed :D

Sub-micron lithography was also an inflection point in the discourse, even if it was an irrelevant threshold to physicists.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=submicron+lith...

Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#27

Post by jdjdjdhhd »

olliej wrote: post #18

I vaguely recall (many years ago) some GPU (a Matrox one iirc) coming out and it being a huge deal because of how many transistors it had. I think it may have been an amazing 100 million. Times have changed :D

Computers used to evolve much more quickly... Or at least the improvements made a much bigger difference

Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#28

Post by jeffbee »

throwaway4good wrote: post #22

In terms of usefulness and end user experience, I find no difference between the iPhone X (A11, 4 billion transistors) and my current 14. Seems to me that all that extra processing power is still looking for a use case.

Even if you didn't change anything about the software, the newer CPUs would still give you better energy efficiency and thereby longer battery life.

Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#29

Post by accrual »

Etheryte wrote: post #8
Mistletoe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this hasn’t resulted in people being more happy. It’s quite the paradox. What are we doing all this for? https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n... I don’t post that to be negative, because I agree with what you are saying about a unique time to be alive and have done the same Atari to Xbox Series X glow-up and I marvel at the improvements there. But I do think happiness (and decrea…

Leaving aside issues caused by social media etc, this always seems like an odd take to me. Why do you expect technology to make people happier? I mean, cars have gotten drastically better since their inception, but I don't really expect my car to make me happy, much like I don't expect the insulation of my house to make me happy, or the x-ray machine my doc uses to make my life a happy one. I think technological deve…

> I don't really expect my car to make me happy, much like I don't expect the insulation of my house to make me happy, or the x-ray machine my doc uses to make my life a happy one

I think this is valid for most people. But as I've tried to integrate more gratitude into my life, I've noticed that it is possible to feel happiness from these things. I find it all too easy to disregard many of the things I have because they've always been there and available. But as soon as I don't have some of my comforts (being outside in the cold, camping and batteries are dying, my car needs an unexpected repair, a pain in my arm that I can't treat myself, etc.), it becomes easier to realize just now nice things really are.

Re: How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?

#30

Post by samwillis »

scarface_74 wrote: post #19
htk wrote: post #3

I consider myself very lucky to be born in this age of civilization where technology increases at such incredible pace. Playing games on an atari in my childhood, then sega master system, nintendo, snes, pc games, the first 3d acceleration consumer cards, all the way to having a supercomputer in my pocket. What a time to be alive.

I think it is more amazing that we went from the Wright brothers in 1903 to landing on the moon in 1969.

And we haven't been back in 50 years, despite all the incredible technology improvements.

The Apollo guidance computers had "several tens of thousands of transistors"[0], we now have 19 billion in our pocket!

0: https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/apollo-11-mank....

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