I have a feeling that most of the people who frequent this site would be more interested in Anandtech's A12 deep dive that was part of their iPhone XS review than a PR interview on the A12X that is light on performance or power use metrics.
CPU:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re...
GPU:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re...
This is a fine article for what it is, but isn't it really "Apple marketing walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip"? (at least I assume Anand wasn't hired as a SoC architect)
There's little technical detail that wasn't in the ipad review's benchmarks[1] and previous speculation on using apple chips in desktop machines[2].
Everything new they gave no details on, and the only in-depth answers were hard hitting questions like "you could have made a slow chip, why did you decide to make a fast one instead?" and "why is apple so good at teamwork?" (maybe not the questions that were asked, but they were the questions that were answered :)
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/2018-ipad-pro-review...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/apple-is-exploring-m...
I was briefed personally by Anand after the introduction event in New York. I guess I can say that now, as it's out that Anand is taking care of this side of the business. It was the most compelling, interesting, clear and well informed briefing on a silicon in my entire career as a tech reporter. Anand is a an A+ player, and Apple has made an incredible hire in his case.
I wonder how long it will be before Apple releases a laptop with an A-X chip.
They’re already shipping their custom T2 chips in their laptops. The compiler toolchain can build great binaries for their A chips. They’ve swapped CPU architecture before and the modern Mach binary format can hold versions of the executable built for different architectures.
They will probably need a Rosetta equivalent to emulate x86 for all the applications that are slow to switch. That might be tricky because of the huge surface area of the x86 instruction set. But I think it will only be a matter of time. It might also explain why they have kept the MacBook and MacBook Air product lines - they might want one of them to stay with intel’s cpus and the other to switch to their A* chips going forward. Or maybe they’ll just wait another generation or two and switch CPUs across their whole line in one go.
I found Rob Beschizza's thought [1] about the new iPad Pro insightful: "a very powerful machine, handicapped by iOS having no workflow".
Because of the sandboxed nature of iOS, and the current immaturity of the Files app/feature, it's hard and inconsistent how you can exchange files between apps on the iPad. As a result, you're still mostly stuck to using one app to do things in iOS. The workflow is still fragmented.
[1] https://boingboing.net/2018/11/06/ipad-pro-deemed-amazing-fo...
Is it really true this A12X is comparable to last year's Macbook Pro?
On that Macbook Pro I could run several VMWare sessions running Windows and Linux (have run 3 at the same time in the past). I can run Handbrake encoding videos across cores while still browsing the net in Chrome with 4 windows open each to different profiles each with 5 to 20 tabs. Have 4 terminal windows open, at list one of them serving a dev webpage. Run VSCode and Unity and Visual Studio and other stuff all at once. I've also done things like compile Chrome from source. Run XCode, run 2-3 iOS simulators.
I get that an A12X can't do those exact tasks as it's not the same instruction set but could it do the equivalent and get similar perf?
That's amazing if true. An iPad Pro weighs 1/4th of my MBP (2014). My MBP's fans spin like crazy when running a high intensity app and the case gets too hot to touch.
I'd love to believe a machine that has no fans and doesn't get hot and weighs 1/4 as much could actually have the same or more perf for real but when I actually use an iPad it rarely feels as fast and given it doesn't multitask well there's no way for me to check that perf is really comparable in real world use cases.
Anyone have any insight? Is it just because the chip was redesigned to be more efficient it can match or exceed the i7 in my MBP? Should Amazon be filling their AWS racks with A12X based machines that get the same per at much less heat and power? (Yea I know they can't by A12X chips buy still). Don't iPhones and say top Samsung phones generally show similar perf?
I really wish Apple to stick an A-series chip in a MacBook Pro with an Intel co-processor.
Best of both worlds.
Don't need x86? Don't spin up the Intel chip, doing something that requires x86, spin it on up.
This way you get software compatibility with the power sipping of the ARM CPU.
This is nuts. The iPad Pro is so massively ahead of the game, it's even hard to believe. It is faster than the MBP 2017 and ALMOST as fast as the MBP 2018. We're talking a device that is 5.9mm thick and is battery-powered!
Now here's my prediction: Apple does not really want to build an ARM-powered MBP. Instead, they will eventually allow iPads to double boot into iOS and/or MacOS.
Call me crazy, but this would be huge. Of course, Apple would still build traditional laptops, maybe even with ARM processors in them, but only as a byproduct of their iPhone / iPad product line.
I would have figured anand would give this interview to anandtech.
Would have been interesting for Ars to have asked them how their GPU differs from the IMGTec/PVR IP they acquired besides adding more cores, what did they change?
They give the impression by saying it’s a custom GPU that it’s a from scatch in-house design but it’s unlikely to be the case.
I've been considering getting an iPad w/ Pencil for over a year now as a note-taking and doodling apparatus (too often I'll scribble a system diagram down, realise I've missed a bit, and had to start again thanks to the immutability of pen and paper). But beyond that, I don't think I'd have a use for one.
All this power sounds great, but I really don't know what else I'd do with it, beyond surfing an ad-riddled internet on my couch.
If any developer has a life-changing daily use case for their iPad, I'd love to hear it.
Apple are paving the way to A-chip laptops, not only by building excellent tech, but also PR-wise.
Their last keynote was clearly a gymnastics exercise to ignore Intel CPUs and dismiss laptop performance while later praising their own chips which power a tablet that has no software ready to use that much speed.
The fact that one of the most secretive companies executes a PR-stunt by providing an exclusive interview to one of the most respected tech outlets only confirms this strategy. Expect similar movements in the following months.
Now, it is only a matter of "when", not "if", Apple will start selling laptops with their chips.
As as an aside, this strategy is extremely similar to the one they used when dropping the headphone jack on the iphone: "leak" the news to a respected outlet, perform damage control before the keynote, and test the reaction of the market. When they introduced the headphoneless iphone, that topic was so beaten up that it got much less attention compared to a surprise revelation.