Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores • Hacker News Board

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#31

Post by dang » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

bipson wrote: post #26

ksk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is the author seriously so deep in the "Apple-is-the-world" bubble that he has not yet heard of BigLittle? Why the rude comment?

Please mind that the rudeness is your interpretation. I was just astonished how it doesn't mention BigLittle at all . Not a single word. On the other hand, he had enough time to go on a history lesson about multicore for PowerPC first introduced for Macs, which I found considerably less relevant, technically.

It's not just interpretation, because your comment broke the HN guidelines. If you call someone "seriously so deep in the [some-idiotic-opinion] bubble", you're doing two things we ask people not to: (1) snarking, and (2) calling names.

Would you mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and following those rules when commenting here, even when someone hasn't mentioned a relevant technology in their article?

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#32

Post by bipson » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #28

GeekyBear wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found this experiment to be revealing: >Specifically, after explaining briefly that I was the editor of a tech news site, I would ask iPhone users “why do you use an iPhone?” and Android phone users “why do you use an Android phone?” My phone was always in my pocket when I asked, and I made sure to never mention a rival platform at all. In about three months I ended up asking 219 different people this que…

Thank you for sharing. Here's the tl;dr: 47% of Android users sampled (51 out of 107) « said things like “iPhone users are a cult,” “I hate Apple,” “only stupid people use iPhones,” or “I hate the iPhone” when explaining to me why they chose an Android device. Seriously, people actually used the word hate » 5% of iPhone users sampled (6 out of 112) « said something negative about Android or about a specific Android p…

Yet anyone that is commenting something on this thread which could be interpreted as anti-Apple is downvoted quite harshly.

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#33

Post by dang » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 8:46 PM UTC

bipson wrote: post #32

pohl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing. Here's the tl;dr: 47% of Android users sampled (51 out of 107) « said things like “iPhone users are a cult,” “I hate Apple,” “only stupid people use iPhones,” or “I hate the iPhone” when explaining to me why they chose an Android device. Seriously, people actually used the word hate » 5% of iPhone users sampled (6 out of 112) « said something negative about Android or about a specific Android p…

Yet anyone that is commenting something on this thread which could be interpreted as anti-Apple is downvoted quite harshly.

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You're now taking this thread far off-topic and to a less interesting place.

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#34

Post by saagarjha » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 8:48 PM UTC

bipson wrote: post #32

pohl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing. Here's the tl;dr: 47% of Android users sampled (51 out of 107) « said things like “iPhone users are a cult,” “I hate Apple,” “only stupid people use iPhones,” or “I hate the iPhone” when explaining to me why they chose an Android device. Seriously, people actually used the word hate » 5% of iPhone users sampled (6 out of 112) « said something negative about Android or about a specific Android p…

Yet anyone that is commenting something on this thread which could be interpreted as anti-Apple is downvoted quite harshly.

They're downvoted because they don't offer anything interesting to the discussion, not because people think they're anti-Apple. They're thinly-disguised attacks on the article's author.

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#35

Post by mikeash » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

bipson wrote: post #27

dep_b wrote: post #22

A significant part of the people that respond here seem to be offended by the lack of acknowledgement for the fact that Samsung had this before Apple had it. I find that a really interesting response from a psychological standpoint. Not the fact that the article could mention it although for the topic at hand it's not required, but just the fact that it actually is offensive to some people. All I see is an Apple geek…

I guess you consider me one of those offended, and let me assure you, I am not. It is just weird if a technical presentation doesn't even mention the environment (lack of a better word) at all , but considers PowerPC multicore history for Mac relevant, which technically I consider not. There are people out there, that don't consider technology or innovation to be Apple or other-vendor specific, heck, go ahead and sto…

You think PowerPC Mac multicore history is not relevant, on an Apple-focused blog that talks a lot about the Mac? How?

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#36

Post by jrs95 » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #28

GeekyBear wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found this experiment to be revealing: >Specifically, after explaining briefly that I was the editor of a tech news site, I would ask iPhone users “why do you use an iPhone?” and Android phone users “why do you use an Android phone?” My phone was always in my pocket when I asked, and I made sure to never mention a rival platform at all. In about three months I ended up asking 219 different people this que…

Thank you for sharing. Here's the tl;dr: 47% of Android users sampled (51 out of 107) « said things like “iPhone users are a cult,” “I hate Apple,” “only stupid people use iPhones,” or “I hate the iPhone” when explaining to me why they chose an Android device. Seriously, people actually used the word hate » 5% of iPhone users sampled (6 out of 112) « said something negative about Android or about a specific Android p…

I can sort of understand that sentiment from Android users. They tend to value control/customization. I've tried Android several times for this reason, because it is compelling. I've always gone back to iOS though, and it's basically just been for a combination of performance and polished UX. My issues with Android were basically:

* Little visual stutters and other relatively minor things bother me more than they should

* High rate of passive battery drain. Android devices seem to typically have much larger batteries, but they chew through power a lot faster when they're not being used than iOS devices. Heavy users probably get better battery life on Android overall, though.

* App quality. This gap is getting smaller and smaller, but it's still noticeable.

* Build quality. iPhones tend to be a lot more durable these days, at least since the iPhone 6 was released. Android devices have been cheaper feeling and more fragile in my experience.

* Bloatware. Most Android devices come with a bunch of shit I don't want and can't easily uninstall.

But all of these things considered, if I was a part of this survey, I would probably have just said something like "I use an iPhone because Android is for poor people" just "for the lulz".

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#37

Post by tasty_freeze » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 10:35 PM UTC

wolf550e wrote: post #8

bipson wrote: post #2

Is the author seriously so deep in the "Apple-is-the-world" bubble that he has not yet heard of BigLittle? In what way is the A11 different?

Wikipedia says [1] that ARM big.LITTLE "Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP), which enables the use of all physical cores at the same time" has been "implemented in the Samsung Exynos starting with the Exynos 5 Octa series (5420, 5422, 5430)", available in Q3 2013. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_big.LITTLE#Heterogeneous_m...

I think the original article is fine as it is and has no need to cite everything which came before. But I wanted to point out that Nvidia Tegra3 shipped with big/little in 2011:

https://www.cnet.com/news/nvidias-tegra-3-cpu-increases-perf...

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#38

Post by msla » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 11:02 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #28

GeekyBear wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found this experiment to be revealing: >Specifically, after explaining briefly that I was the editor of a tech news site, I would ask iPhone users “why do you use an iPhone?” and Android phone users “why do you use an Android phone?” My phone was always in my pocket when I asked, and I made sure to never mention a rival platform at all. In about three months I ended up asking 219 different people this que…

Thank you for sharing. Here's the tl;dr: 47% of Android users sampled (51 out of 107) « said things like “iPhone users are a cult,” “I hate Apple,” “only stupid people use iPhones,” or “I hate the iPhone” when explaining to me why they chose an Android device. Seriously, people actually used the word hate » 5% of iPhone users sampled (6 out of 112) « said something negative about Android or about a specific Android p…

I use Android because iPhones are too expensive for absolutely no additional functionality. How does that figure?

My next phone isn't likely to be Android or iPhone, but Linux, assuming Purism pans out.

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#39

Post by StillBored » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 11:36 PM UTC

I'm not sure all this big.little stuff is the future. The heterogenous cores make scheduling/caching/etc a nightmare particularly when someone decides that the cores have different features.

Particularly, since I think its all a crutch for lack of finer grained power control within the CPU core. Want to save more power, turn off a few of the duplicate functional units, shutdown 3/4 of the ROB buffer, or fuse a few pipeline stages together as the frequency is reduced. Whatever. The point being its possible to have a finer grained performance profile on a bunch of higher performance cores rather than wasting 1/2 the die on caches and cores that are basically useless for any real work outside of handling idle loop wakeup events to tell the GPU it needs to scroll or run a idle TCP stack's keepalives..

Re: Observing the A11's Heterogenous Cores

#40

Post by lathiat » Fri, Nov 10, 2017, 11:59 PM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #39

I'm not sure all this big.little stuff is the future. The heterogenous cores make scheduling/caching/etc a nightmare particularly when someone decides that the cores have different features. Particularly, since I think its all a crutch for lack of finer grained power control within the CPU core. Want to save more power, turn off a few of the duplicate functional units, shutdown 3/4 of the ROB buffer, or fuse a few pi…

As someone relatively naive on these things, iOS seems like the kind of platform where it's easier to integrate than the more generic case. Much easier for them to optimise for it, since (1) Apps are often using Apple-provided frameworks and you can optimise around those specifically

(2) iPhones are generally performing a single task in the foreground and frequently background tasks. Even with an iPad that moves up to only 2 simultaneous tasks. Seems much easier to optimise the scheduling based on that.

(3) There is a very limited set of hardware developers have to optimise for, literally basically 1 CPU per year. On that basis, any quirks will likely be found in development and can be fixed then rather than having different quirks accross a wider range of CPUs that you might have seen in Android [since 1 and 2 would apply reasonably equally to Android devices]