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Does anyone know where we're heading next? Will there be a slowdown of performance increase the next years? Did we hit a barrier?
by arez 8y ago
Does anyone know where we're heading next? Will there be a slowdown of performance increase the next years? Did we hit a barrier?
- trumped 8y agoslowdown in performance increase? haven't we been there for a decade?
- smilespray 8y agoFor PCs, sure. Not for mobile chips.
- wmf 8y agoApple is claiming only 15% performance improvement for the A12 CPU cores; in the past it was more like 30-50% per generation. But 15% is far more than the ~5%/year that we've seen in PC processors.
- pertymcpert 8y agoYep, but also they're claiming 40% lower power consumption. So it's safe to assume they could have traded that power efficiency gain for more performance. Despite that, most of that gain in PPA is due to the 7nm transition, rather than micro-architectural developments.
- Bud 8y agoThat's assuming they could cool off such a design. Cooling is harder to deal with in a mobile device. Can't just throw big fans in there.
- djrogers 8y agoCooling is a factor of energy input. If they can cool the A11 using 40% more power, they can cool an A12 using the same power. That said, I’m more than happy to save that extra power - battery life is a good thing.
- ewzimm 8y ago9x performance on the Neural Engine compared to the A11 is the big increase. We'll probably see slower CPU/GPU increases with massive advances in AI for a few generations now.
- dis-sys 8y ago> But 15% is far more than the ~5%/year that we've seen in PC processors. thanks to threadripper, there were huge jumps for PC in the last 12-18 months. 2990wx bumped Cinebench R15 score from less than 4,000 (Intel's 7890XE) to 5500+ overnight.
- smilespray 8y agoIt has to be said that the core Threadripper concept is just throwing more cores at the problem.
- snaky 8y agoThat happened long ago. Low power cores - done. Specialized coprocessors - more and more of them (from VPU to AI and whatnot). Universal coprocessors - Apple has FPGA on board since iPhone 7 (iCE5LP4K).
- ktta 8y agoWould you mind sharing a source for this?
- cududa 8y agoThere isn't really one particular source. Just kind of been something happening about and written about in numerous forms over the last few years
- ktta 8y agoI was referring to the presence of an FPGA on the iPhone. There doesn't seem to be a good source on what they're actually used for. Just that they're there.
- snaky 8y agohttp://www.techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/blog/apple-iphone-7-teardown/ http://www.techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/blog...
- swebs 8y agohttps://www.technologyreview.com/s/601441/moores-law-is-dead-now-what/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601441/moores-law-is-dead...
- ksec 8y ago7nm+ in 2019, 5nm in 2020, 3nm in 2021, 3nm+ in 2022. That is TSMC Roadmap. Also likely to ship according to Apple A Series SoC / iPhone shipping schedule. The 2020 / 2021 scheduled are not set in stone yet depending on EUV yield. There are work on 2nm that is likely coming in 2023 or 2024. All the nm numbers are TSMC's, i.e don't compare them against Samsung or Intel. People likes to talk about barriers, but as you see we still have 5 - 6 years of road ahead of us. And it is hard to see further ahead than this. I am pretty sure we have many ways to improve even beyond TSMC's 2nm technical barrier, but the problem is cost barrier. Who is going to paid for 3x to 5x more expensive SoC or R&D.?