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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?

#151

Post by eru »

corethree wrote: post #136
eru wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The human brain IS an example of such a mechanism. We've done it artificially as well with machine learning and genetic algorithms. The amount of concepts in the neural network of an LLM is too large for us to fully understand. At best we can only hope to understand these things as a sort of curve fitting optimization problem.

I was using some weasel words, because the human brain does have some structure that we can decipher. Specific injuries to the brain, even in different people, tend to cause the same specific problems. (With heavy emphasis on 'tend to', this is not deterministic, like removing the 'e' key from your keyboard.)

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

#152

Post by vbezhenar »

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…

As far as I understand, chips are basically made of parts. CPU, of course, then one part for USB peripheral, another for USART, another for ADC and so on. Every peripheral is more or less a complete and isolated device. So if it's possible to get hands on this peripheral datasheet (I think it's called IP) written for chip designers, that would reveal complete complexity of the given part of the MCU.

Also I don't really have an idea, but I wouldn't be surprised, if a very significant part of transistor budget has been spent on SRAM or something similar, which is not very fascinating.

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

#153

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Dalewyn wrote: post #128
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.

The wizzards can channel the power of lightning through rocks to produce porn, what a time to be alive.

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

#154

Post by Shawnj2 »

timmaxw wrote: post #141

What are all those transistors doing? I've heard the cache is the biggest part. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A17 , the A17 has 72MB of cache. Cache is typically SRAM. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory , a single bit of SRAM typically uses 6 transistors, but it could be anywhere from 4 to 10. So that's between 2.3B and 5.7B transistors for the cache. That leaves about 1B transist…

Apple has a bunch of device function hardware in the SOC like the SSD controller, the security chip, the GPU, the neural engine, etc. a decent amount of which probably uses hardware logic.

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

#155

Post by Shawnj2 »

causi wrote: post #146
eru wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting humans on the moon in the first place was mostly just grandstanding. Manned space exploration in general is mostly just entertainment. I'm glad humanity hasn't continued wasting resources on that particular endeavor. Unmanned probes do good work for science. (Though even there I am not sure about the bang-for-the-buck compared to other alternatives.) Have a look at '20 Breakthroughs from 20 Years of Science a…

Putting humans on the moon in the first place was mostly just grandstanding. Manned space exploration in general is mostly just entertainment. Indeed, and I believe refusing to acknowledge that fact is actively harming not just spaceflight but manned spaceflight. We're spending tens of billions of dollars trying to set up for some bullshit useless moon base when we could be setting boots on Mars just to prove we can.…

I think a moon base is actually more useful because there’s actual commercial use cases to a moon base like mining etc. and not only that but doing a mars mission is far easier and cheaper if you already have a moon base since you can make rocket fuel on the moon for cheaper in terms of delta-V if you can come up with a hydro lox chemistry design.

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

#156

Post by Shawnj2 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #54
Legend2440 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine learning is that use case, it'll eat up as much processing power as you can throw at it. LLMs on your phone are a few hardware generations out, but they are coming.

ML/AI is not really a use case but rather a technology. The use cases may come a one point but right now, as far as I can see, they are missing.

The use case is Siri not being complete shit

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

#157

Post by niek_pas »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #156
throwaway4good wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ML/AI is not really a use case but rather a technology. The use cases may come a one point but right now, as far as I can see, they are missing.

The use case is Siri not being complete shit

And autocomplete! The new iOS 17 completion stuff is neat but nothing compared to what state-of-the-art LLMs can do today.

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

#158

Post by causi »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #155
causi wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting humans on the moon in the first place was mostly just grandstanding. Manned space exploration in general is mostly just entertainment. Indeed, and I believe refusing to acknowledge that fact is actively harming not just spaceflight but manned spaceflight. We're spending tens of billions of dollars trying to set up for some bullshit useless moon base when we could be setting boots on Mars just to prove we can.…

I think a moon base is actually more useful because there’s actual commercial use cases to a moon base like mining etc. and not only that but doing a mars mission is far easier and cheaper if you already have a moon base since you can make rocket fuel on the moon for cheaper in terms of delta-V if you can come up with a hydro lox chemistry design.

What could you mine on the moon that would be worth transporting home?

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

#159

Post by eru »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #155
causi wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting humans on the moon in the first place was mostly just grandstanding. Manned space exploration in general is mostly just entertainment. Indeed, and I believe refusing to acknowledge that fact is actively harming not just spaceflight but manned spaceflight. We're spending tens of billions of dollars trying to set up for some bullshit useless moon base when we could be setting boots on Mars just to prove we can.…

I think a moon base is actually more useful because there’s actual commercial use cases to a moon base like mining etc. and not only that but doing a mars mission is far easier and cheaper if you already have a moon base since you can make rocket fuel on the moon for cheaper in terms of delta-V if you can come up with a hydro lox chemistry design.

That might be true, but that doesn't mean the moonbase needs to be manned.

Especially since the signal lag from earth is so small, so you can even use remote human operators for many tasks instead of investing a lot in AI.

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

#160

Post by this15testing1 »

Daz1 wrote: post #126
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 :)

if you can willfully ignore exploitation and externalities
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