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Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

semianalysis.com

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Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#31

Post by FullyFunctional »

Symmetry wrote: post #5
jhloa2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If SRAM is as ubiquitous throughout chip designs as the article suggests, wouldn't that mean the theoretical density prediction is off?

Time for eDRAM! Ok, this process doesn't support eDRAM. Also, I don't understand the SRAM scaling failure here and I don't know if it would apply to eDRAM too. But it's something to think about given the increasing importance of wire delay.

I'm not sure you are serious, but eDRAM isn't a direct replacement for SRAM. At best it's useful for L3 or L4 cache given the inherently higher latencies.

I think we just have to accept that silicon scaling is slowing down.

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#32

Post by jiggawatts »

talentedcoin wrote: post #6

I think this is cool if they’re the future of the Mac, but aren’t these chips just wasted in the iPad? I say this as an iPad Pro (1st-gen) owner ... it’s already way more processing power than I can really use, because after trying for months to get a sensible workflow going (mostly based around Pythonista, Editorial and RealVNC) I’ve relegated it to a OneNote and Netflix machine. What’s the point other than the cool…

I was just looking into optimising a large web application.

I told the customer that using a caching layer such as a CDN would help paper over the worst of the inefficiencies in their application and the network stack.

That was true! The download times halved.

However, benchmarks with F12 developer tools showed that while downloads reduced from 200ms to 100ms, the overall load times were still seconds, of which about 50% was actual CPU time.

(This is typical of large, complex sites built by non-experts or organisations where performance is not a primary concern.)

Web sites like these perform very noticeably better if you have more CPU cores or faster CPU cores.

Essentially, CDNs are easy to deploy and 5G provides nearly gigabit download speeds, so the bottleneck has shifted back to the CPU for a lot of the web.

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#33

Post by Symmetry »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #31
Symmetry wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time for eDRAM! Ok, this process doesn't support eDRAM. Also, I don't understand the SRAM scaling failure here and I don't know if it would apply to eDRAM too. But it's something to think about given the increasing importance of wire delay.

I'm not sure you are serious, but eDRAM isn't a direct replacement for SRAM. At best it's useful for L3 or L4 cache given the inherently higher latencies. I think we just have to accept that silicon scaling is slowing down.

I was assuming last level cache would be the majority of the usage in this case. Maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#34

Post by Reason077 »

urthor wrote: post #25
talentedcoin wrote: post #6

I think this is cool if they’re the future of the Mac, but aren’t these chips just wasted in the iPad? I say this as an iPad Pro (1st-gen) owner ... it’s already way more processing power than I can really use, because after trying for months to get a sensible workflow going (mostly based around Pythonista, Editorial and RealVNC) I’ve relegated it to a OneNote and Netflix machine. What’s the point other than the cool…

Never underestimate the PUBG Mobile/Genshin Impact demographic basically. There's a lot of corner cases there where certain consumers value it a lot. Also performance per watt is a huge deal. The expanded power envelope that improved PPW brings allows 120hz displays which are battery hogs.

I wonder if Apple Silicon means we might finally get PUBG on Mac. If they can make it work on an iPad, they can make it work on a Mac with similar hardware... right?!

I'm already missing the glorious few months that PUBG could be played on Mac via Stadia.

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#35

Post by ajross »

rdw wrote: post #3

The article says that Apple isn't making full use of the 5nm process node, and blames lack of SRAM scaling for it (presumably due to the large amount of L3 cache). Is this a problem that all processors are about to hit, or is this going to be overcome once process engineers are more familiar with 5nm?

This bit didn't make a lot of sense to me. SRAM is routinely the MOST optimized and MOST worried-over aspect of silicon layout. SRAM cell architectures get hand-optimized carefully years in advance of any process improvements. They aren't just logic that gets spit out of generic tooling.

So while it would make sense that a new process would have new design rule that didn't map well to older EDA tooling, it's harder to see that argument holding for SRAM. If SRAM isn't scaling, why is general logic?

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#36

Post by threeseed »

talentedcoin wrote: post #6

I think this is cool if they’re the future of the Mac, but aren’t these chips just wasted in the iPad? I say this as an iPad Pro (1st-gen) owner ... it’s already way more processing power than I can really use, because after trying for months to get a sensible workflow going (mostly based around Pythonista, Editorial and RealVNC) I’ve relegated it to a OneNote and Netflix machine. What’s the point other than the cool…

Many professionals are using iPad Pro for audio e.g. DAW and video e.g. editing.

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#38

Post by wmf »

tpowell wrote: post #16

I was curious just how many chips per wafer they net. From this 2018 article[1], it appears to be ~530 at 5nm, which would be $32ea if that yield is accurate. The same article estimated 7nm chips came out to $18ea. Apparently, R&D spend went up 50% from 7nm to 5nm. I'm curious to see how many flavors of the A14 Apple cooks up given the comparatively high die cost. [1] https://wccftech.com/apple-5nm-3nm-cost-transisto…

I got 656 total dies of which ~600 are good so that's $28.

https://caly-technologies.com/die-yield-calculator/

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#39

Post by twoodfin »

tpmx wrote: post #8

Foundry sale price of $238/chip seems way too high. See e.g. https://www.cultofmac.com/658650/iphone-11-pro-max-productio... > Apple A13 processor that (is) supposedly is priced at $64.

Yeah, that $238/chip figure can't possibly be right. Apple's putting this chip in a $700 phone with at least a 50% margin. They're not blowing more than half the BoM on the SoC.

Re: Apple’s A14 Packs 134M Transistors/mm²

#40

Post by wmf »

samatman wrote: post #13
tpmx wrote: post #8

Foundry sale price of $238/chip seems way too high. See e.g. https://www.cultofmac.com/658650/iphone-11-pro-max-productio... > Apple A13 processor that (is) supposedly is priced at $64.

That is apparently the price to assure that Apple is the only purveyor in town with a 5nm process chip. Worth it? Apple thinks so.

Apple doesn't have an exclusive on 5 nm; it's also being used by Kirin 9000, Snapdragon 875, some Exynos, and a future Dimensity SoC.
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