4 ms·

Siri was originally an App, but it took a huge amount of effort to get it to work. I believe the reason the feature is exclusive to the iPhone 4S is due to har

by nirvana 15y ago

Siri was originally an App, but it took a huge amount of effort to get it to work. I believe the reason the feature is exclusive to the iPhone 4S is due to hardware. Apple said the processor in the iPhone 4S is the A5. This may be the exact same chip in the iPad 2, or it might be the same class of chip. Apple doesn't detail the internals of their processors, so they can make device specific versions and call them the same thing if they want. Thus, this A5 could have co-processors in it that didn't exist in the one for the iPad 2. Specifically, I remember there begin something about an image co-processor that the camera uses, and it seems logical that there might be some video encoding or at least video feature extraction being done in hardware to enable 1080p video. (a big step up from 720p). There may well be a feature extraction engine in the A5 to turn the audio recording of your voice into a series of symbols that are much more efficient to send over the wire to the SIRI service. But, even if there are no co-processors, voice recognition is a very CPU intensive process, and the A5 has another CPU in it, as well as a greatly improved GPU. Either or both may be required for the current version of SIRI (which is more complete than the original) to work. Thus it literally may be the case that Siri wouldn't run on the iPhone 4.

sambeau 15y ago
There is a signal processor in the iPhone 4 A5. Phil Schiller mentioned it briefly in the keynote when talking about the camera (64 mins in). Schiller referred to it as an "Image Signal Processor" so it may be that it is custom silicone for used only by the camera but it seems more likely that it is a more general DSP and was badged like this for the presentation. It is probably a version of ARM's NEON technology: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php NEON technology can accelerate multimedia and signal processing algorithms such as video encode/decode, 2D/3D graphics, gaming, audio and speech processing, image processing, telephony, and sound synthesis by at least 3x the performance of ARMv5 and at least 2x the performance of ARMv6 SIMD Which directly mentions both image processing and speech processing. Update: According to wikipedia that's exactly what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 The A5 contains a rendition of chip based upon the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU with NEON SIMD accelerator and a dual core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. Their source is the reliable AnandTech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performa... Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 Interestingly, as this is the iPad A5 being discussed it strengthens the argument for Siri-on-iPad2 (assuming the signal processor is key to Siri working efficiently).
- masklinn 15y ago
  > Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP NEON is included in the A4's Cortex A8. In fact, NEON was added back in the 3GS: http://wanderingcoder.net/2010/06/02/intro-neon/ http://wanderingcoder.net/2010/06/02/intro-neon/ Only the 2G and the 3G don't have it.
  - sambeau 15y ago
    Well, that blows that theory out of the water! So does the iPhone 4S have a different kind of DSP, too?
    - masklinn 15y ago
      I fear I have no idea at all. Sorry.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nonane 15y ago
Doesn't sound right. We've already seen single core Android phones cope with speech recognition without a problem (though they send their data to Google's servers). Gubber's 'capacity planning' theory seems more plausible if indeed the audio is being sent over the wire.
Kylekramer 15y ago
Apple won't even claim this. They just waffle and avoid the question. I don't know why it is so hard to believe that Apple would do this to give more incentive to buy the 4S. It is the flipside of the famous Google criticism "if you aren't paying, you are the product". With Apple, you get the product, but you are going damn well pay for it. Whereas on my Android my crap prepaid 600 MHz phone runs Voice Actions just fine.
- ugh 15y ago
  Waffle? Apple never waffles. Apple just says nothing at all. I have no problem with Apple purposefully limiting Siri to the new iPhone and I don't really understand people who think that because the hardware supports it they should get it. It would be nice but it's Apple's choice.

by nirvana 15y ago

sambeau 15y ago

There is a signal processor in the iPhone 4 A5. Phil Schiller mentioned it briefly in the keynote when talking about the camera (64 mins in). Schiller referred to it as an "Image Signal Processor" so it may be that it is custom silicone for used only by the camera but it seems more likely that it is a more general DSP and was badged like this for the presentation. It is probably a version of ARM's NEON technology: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php NEON technology can accelerate multimedia and signal processing algorithms such as video encode/decode, 2D/3D graphics, gaming, audio and speech processing, image processing, telephony, and sound synthesis by at least 3x the performance of ARMv5 and at least 2x the performance of ARMv6 SIMD Which directly mentions both image processing and speech processing. Update: According to wikipedia that's exactly what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 The A5 contains a rendition of chip based upon the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU with NEON SIMD accelerator and a dual core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. Their source is the reliable AnandTech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performa... Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 Interestingly, as this is the iPad A5 being discussed it strengthens the argument for Siri-on-iPad2 (assuming the signal processor is key to Siri working efficiently).

masklinn 15y ago
> Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP NEON is included in the A4's Cortex A8. In fact, NEON was added back in the 3GS: http://wanderingcoder.net/2010/06/02/intro-neon/ http://wanderingcoder.net/2010/06/02/intro-neon/ Only the 2G and the 3G don't have it.
- sambeau 15y ago
  Well, that blows that theory out of the water! So does the iPhone 4S have a different kind of DSP, too?
  - masklinn 15y ago
    I fear I have no idea at all. Sorry.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

nonane 15y ago

Doesn't sound right. We've already seen single core Android phones cope with speech recognition without a problem (though they send their data to Google's servers). Gubber's 'capacity planning' theory seems more plausible if indeed the audio is being sent over the wire.

Kylekramer 15y ago

Apple won't even claim this. They just waffle and avoid the question. I don't know why it is so hard to believe that Apple would do this to give more incentive to buy the 4S. It is the flipside of the famous Google criticism "if you aren't paying, you are the product". With Apple, you get the product, but you are going damn well pay for it. Whereas on my Android my crap prepaid 600 MHz phone runs Voice Actions just fine.

ugh 15y ago
Waffle? Apple never waffles. Apple just says nothing at all. I have no problem with Apple purposefully limiting Siri to the new iPhone and I don't really understand people who think that because the hardware supports it they should get it. It would be nice but it's Apple's choice.