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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?

#121

Post by devnullbrain »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
scarface_74 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “For All Mankind” is a great “What If” show about what things would be like if we had kept pushing forward. The thing about the series though was that NASA was self funded and didn’t have to justify spending billions in taxpayer money. Also, do we really have better propulsion technology to make space travel more efficient?

Imagine if all of the worlds armament budgets were instead rerouted to science and space travel...

20 years ago nobody spent any money on smartphones. Now, the money spent on them has created billions of processors with magnitudes more power than the spacecraft we're being wistful about. Consumerism rerouted itself to forwarding science.

And that's just a device for watching cat videos. The carry-over between rockets and modern technology like hypersonic missiles is even greater - which is why we invented the space race to begin with.

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

#122

Post by Salgat »

mlsu wrote: post #48

I've often struggled to really "grok" how complex chips are. They all kinda look the same. I write software, so I know how complex that is, but like the device itself -- it's this little black box. What's the difference between one little black box and another? Most people don't even get that far; they think the computer is the screen that lights up. I've been reading datasheets a lot at work. The datasheet for an ST…

The reality is that 70-90% of a CPU is SRAM (cache and registers), and only a small portion is actual logic and even that is replicated across multiple cores. Factor in the extremely redundant gpu on the SoC with its own cores and SRAM along with the I/O controller and those billions of transistors boil down to a tiny amount of actual unique logic circuits. Still very impressive, but helps put things in perspective.

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

#123

Post by duskwuff »

mlsu wrote: post #48

I've often struggled to really "grok" how complex chips are. They all kinda look the same. I write software, so I know how complex that is, but like the device itself -- it's this little black box. What's the difference between one little black box and another? Most people don't even get that far; they think the computer is the screen that lights up. I've been reading datasheets a lot at work. The datasheet for an ST…

> Those manuals indicate just a fraction of the complexity that lies inside of the device -- they describe features that I can use, not even how those features are implemented or made.

And even then:

1) There's parts of the manual which are brief summaries, written with the assumption you're already familiar with the larger standards they interface with. The SDIO and USBOTG sections of the reference manual come to mind in particular, not to mention all the external manuals it takes to describe the ARM Cortex-M architecture.

2) That's a fairly simple microcontroller. (Given the page count, it sounds like you're working with STM32F401.) The STM32H7 series reference manual is 3500+ pages.

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

#124

Post by yieldcrv »

mlsu wrote: post #48

I've often struggled to really "grok" how complex chips are. They all kinda look the same. I write software, so I know how complex that is, but like the device itself -- it's this little black box. What's the difference between one little black box and another? Most people don't even get that far; they think the computer is the screen that lights up. I've been reading datasheets a lot at work. The datasheet for an ST…

hm, I dont feel the same way

you should do some coding closer to the chip

some bitshifting, some bit level manipulation

you dont have to be good at assembly, just do a hello world and make a mental visualization of the registers being hit

look up the OPCODES in your specific chipset , make some code to hit that specifically

make a process that does it as fast as possible and benchmark it, do it faster or slower on a different chipset, or a resource constrained environment

it makes it all really easy to follow and visualize

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

#125

Post by kccqzy »

yieldcrv wrote: post #124
mlsu wrote: post #48

I've often struggled to really "grok" how complex chips are. They all kinda look the same. I write software, so I know how complex that is, but like the device itself -- it's this little black box. What's the difference between one little black box and another? Most people don't even get that far; they think the computer is the screen that lights up. I've been reading datasheets a lot at work. The datasheet for an ST…

hm, I dont feel the same way you should do some coding closer to the chip some bitshifting, some bit level manipulation you dont have to be good at assembly, just do a hello world and make a mental visualization of the registers being hit look up the OPCODES in your specific chipset , make some code to hit that specifically make a process that does it as fast as possible and benchmark it, do it faster or slower on a…

That's not even close to the chip. Dabbling around with the ISA doesn't tell you much about the micro architectural features of the chip. I'm sure "do some bit twiddling" is absurd advice for someone who has written a driver.

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

#126

Post by Daz1 »

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.

Capitalism is amazing :)

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

#127

Post by rzimmerman »

holoduke wrote: post #74
jdjdjdhhd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Moore is still alive. In 2030 we have an estimated one trillion transistors on a chip. We would need that for our ever increasing hunger for memory and processing power. 1TB model on your iphone 22 with 100 tokens per second.

Well technically he died in March, but the law holds true.

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

#128

Post by Dalewyn »

mlsu wrote: post #48

I've often struggled to really "grok" how complex chips are. They all kinda look the same. I write software, so I know how complex that is, but like the device itself -- it's this little black box. What's the difference between one little black box and another? Most people don't even get that far; they think the computer is the screen that lights up. I've been reading datasheets a lot at work. The datasheet for an ST…

>I sometimes have to take a moment, because I remember descriptions of alien technology from sci-fi books. Complexity, opaqueness, power. Chips.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

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

#129

Post by huytersd »

corethree wrote: post #118
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 we're unlucky. I think the next generation or a couple generations down the line they will figure out biological immortality. If you're immortal the sum total of things you will see in your lifetime will dwarf the experience you're having now.

I agree. I feel like we missed immortality by a few decades to a hundred years at the most. We might be some of the last generations that actually have to die.

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

#130

Post by eru »

corethree wrote: post #117
mlsu wrote: post #48

I've often struggled to really "grok" how complex chips are. They all kinda look the same. I write software, so I know how complex that is, but like the device itself -- it's this little black box. What's the difference between one little black box and another? Most people don't even get that far; they think the computer is the screen that lights up. I've been reading datasheets a lot at work. The datasheet for an ST…

I don't think it's nearly as complex as you think. The important measure isn't transistors, but the amount of concepts formed by composing transistors together. There's no way in hell people can make sense of 19 billion separate concepts. Likely what's going on in the chip is just repeated patterns designed to make a very simple machine operate really really quickly. But of course I'm not denying the complexity. But…

> There's no way in hell people can make sense of 19 billion separate concepts. Likely what's going on in the chip is just repeated patterns designed to make a very simple machine operate really really quickly.

You are right about human designed chips. If you use something like simulated evolution or backpropagation or some other techniques from machine learning or mathematical optimization, you can get machines with billions of parts but not necessarily any clear pattern nor repetition.

The human brain might be an example of such a mechanism.

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