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For Huawei, that's pretty much a given. Doesn't explain Apple and Samsung though. For Qualcomm, I would be surprised if their bread and butter ARM CPUs weren't

by llampx 8y ago

For Huawei, that's pretty much a given. Doesn't explain Apple and Samsung though. For Qualcomm, I would be surprised if their bread and butter ARM CPUs weren't mobile CPUs. Why stick with reference designs if they could tweak them or come up with higher performing ones? The Apple iPhone CPUs from two years ago are still trading blows with the latest Snapdragons. That's crazy.

rsynnott 8y ago
IIRC, Apple just spends more; they have more transistors. This is a luxury that is harder for Qualcomm to afford, as their customers wouldn't put up with it.
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > IIRC, Apple just spends more; they have more transistors. Also, Apple has a full ARM license and full control over the OS and the software that runs on it. Which means it is very well possible that they have extended the instruction set to accelerate real-world JS performance.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    That was a rumor floating around - that WebKit took advantage of new A12 instructions. It wasn’t true at the time. They may have released the patch since then. https://twitter.com/saambarati/status/1049202132522479616 https://twitter.com/saambarati/status/1049202132522479616
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      It's not just about WebKit. The remainder of the OS, including the graphic stack, is most likely to be optimized as hell for the A12 CPU.
      - StillBored 8y ago
        There is a _LOT_ to be said for gaining a few %5 here and there improvements. Apple can both optimize their software for a very limited set of micro-architectures (a luxury that doesn't exist on android which runs on everything from tiny in order cores to larger more general purpose OoO cores) as well as optimize the cores themselves for an exact instruction sequences they determine to be critical for _their_ OS/applications/power envelope. This means their cache sizes/latency/TLBs/ROB buffers/frequency/power profiles/etc are decided not based on what generates a good specCPU score but what generates a good iOS/safari experience. Its a complete vertical integration and no one should be surprised that a general purpose kernel (linux) running a AOT/JIT'ed environment on top of an os abstraction layer (android) on top of processors frequently designed to exist in applications that aren't phones gets beaten on a phone centric benchmark. Call me when someone gets a big hadoop benchmark or dpdk results on an apple core.
        saberience 8y ago
        The new A12 processor comes very close in the same benchmarks to the best desktop processors, not mobile specific or phone centric benchmarks. I don't know why you persist in your non factual and biased comments. "What is quite astonishing, is just how close Apple’s A11 and A12 are to current desktop CPUs. I haven’t had the opportunity to run things in a more comparable manner, but taking our server editor, Johan De Gelas’ recent figures from earlier this summer, we see that the A12 outperforms a moderately-clocked Skylake CPU in single-threaded performance. Of course there’s compiler considerations and various frequency concerns to take into account, but still we’re now talking about very small margins until Apple’s mobile SoCs outperform the fastest desktop CPUs in terms of ST performance. It will be interesting to get more accurate figures on this topic later on in the coming months." https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re...
        StillBored 8y ago
        "we see that the A12 outperforms a moderately-clocked Skylake CPU in single-threaded performance" moderately clocked skylake != "best desktop processors" There is a good 2x perf difference between a 2 something Ghz skylake and a 4.5Ghz skylake, particularly on L2 cache bound single thread benchmarks (which is what specint2006 is these days, its more a cache benchmark except for libquantum which is "broken" and more accurately reflects clockrate*cores). A moderately clocked skylake is a laptop. But you say, IPC matters!!! Sure it does, but a microarch with the same IPC and the ability to clock 2x faster is generally a 2x faster CPU. Nor is apple shipping a phone with 16+ cores... People have been saying their phones were as fast as their desktops for years, and its not anymore true today than it was 5 years ago. Its questionable whether it will really ever happen as there is this heat/power dissipation problem in phones that desktops don't have. Not to mention desktops don't have nearly the physical constraints on RAM/storage/IO capacity you find in a phone/laptop.
- frankchn 8y ago
  Further, Apple chip design probably doesn't need to respond to market pressure the same way Qualcomm does. If Snapdragons get too expensive, phone manufacturers will switch to Huawei / Samsung / MediaTek, but Apple can absorb a $5 or $10 increase in per chip cost for better performance and power efficiency since it is vertically integrated.

by llampx 8y ago

rsynnott 8y ago

IIRC, Apple just spends more; they have more transistors. This is a luxury that is harder for Qualcomm to afford, as their customers wouldn't put up with it.

mschuster91 8y ago
> IIRC, Apple just spends more; they have more transistors. Also, Apple has a full ARM license and full control over the OS and the software that runs on it. Which means it is very well possible that they have extended the instruction set to accelerate real-world JS performance.
- scarface74 8y ago
  That was a rumor floating around - that WebKit took advantage of new A12 instructions. It wasn’t true at the time. They may have released the patch since then. https://twitter.com/saambarati/status/1049202132522479616 https://twitter.com/saambarati/status/1049202132522479616
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    It's not just about WebKit. The remainder of the OS, including the graphic stack, is most likely to be optimized as hell for the A12 CPU.
    - StillBored 8y ago
      There is a _LOT_ to be said for gaining a few %5 here and there improvements. Apple can both optimize their software for a very limited set of micro-architectures (a luxury that doesn't exist on android which runs on everything from tiny in order cores to larger more general purpose OoO cores) as well as optimize the cores themselves for an exact instruction sequences they determine to be critical for _their_ OS/applications/power envelope. This means their cache sizes/latency/TLBs/ROB buffers/frequency/power profiles/etc are decided not based on what generates a good specCPU score but what generates a good iOS/safari experience. Its a complete vertical integration and no one should be surprised that a general purpose kernel (linux) running a AOT/JIT'ed environment on top of an os abstraction layer (android) on top of processors frequently designed to exist in applications that aren't phones gets beaten on a phone centric benchmark. Call me when someone gets a big hadoop benchmark or dpdk results on an apple core.
      - saberience 8y ago
        The new A12 processor comes very close in the same benchmarks to the best desktop processors, not mobile specific or phone centric benchmarks. I don't know why you persist in your non factual and biased comments. "What is quite astonishing, is just how close Apple’s A11 and A12 are to current desktop CPUs. I haven’t had the opportunity to run things in a more comparable manner, but taking our server editor, Johan De Gelas’ recent figures from earlier this summer, we see that the A12 outperforms a moderately-clocked Skylake CPU in single-threaded performance. Of course there’s compiler considerations and various frequency concerns to take into account, but still we’re now talking about very small margins until Apple’s mobile SoCs outperform the fastest desktop CPUs in terms of ST performance. It will be interesting to get more accurate figures on this topic later on in the coming months." https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re...
        StillBored 8y ago
        "we see that the A12 outperforms a moderately-clocked Skylake CPU in single-threaded performance" moderately clocked skylake != "best desktop processors" There is a good 2x perf difference between a 2 something Ghz skylake and a 4.5Ghz skylake, particularly on L2 cache bound single thread benchmarks (which is what specint2006 is these days, its more a cache benchmark except for libquantum which is "broken" and more accurately reflects clockrate*cores). A moderately clocked skylake is a laptop. But you say, IPC matters!!! Sure it does, but a microarch with the same IPC and the ability to clock 2x faster is generally a 2x faster CPU. Nor is apple shipping a phone with 16+ cores... People have been saying their phones were as fast as their desktops for years, and its not anymore true today than it was 5 years ago. Its questionable whether it will really ever happen as there is this heat/power dissipation problem in phones that desktops don't have. Not to mention desktops don't have nearly the physical constraints on RAM/storage/IO capacity you find in a phone/laptop.
frankchn 8y ago
Further, Apple chip design probably doesn't need to respond to market pressure the same way Qualcomm does. If Snapdragons get too expensive, phone manufacturers will switch to Huawei / Samsung / MediaTek, but Apple can absorb a $5 or $10 increase in per chip cost for better performance and power efficiency since it is vertically integrated.