Since their comparisons were to the A12 in the previous iPad Air, if you work it backwards it doesn't look like as large a jump as usual from the A13. Looking at around 16% faster CPU and 8-9% faster GPU? I wonder if this is why they debuted in an iPad Air first, since its much more impressive in comparison to the last Air than the last iPhone, where they can kind of say they already talked about it at the iPhone event.
Couldn't expect those huge single core gains forever, but from the iPhone 11 to 12 this looks like a smaller jump. If the iPhone 12 Pro had ProMotion that would have been an easy consideration if the added efficiency offset the higher refresh rate, but it doesn't sound like we're getting that this year.
I'm fairly convinced by Andrei's supposition that they've gone for improved efficiency by constraining peak performance in the mobile devices - that would also be compatible with them "unlocking" the higher performance states for the MacBook devices they're launching later.
I think they're using all of their main architects for the Arm v9-based A15. So A14 is just a rehashed and slightly improved (mostly from switching to new 5nm process) A12. Why A12 and not A13? Because A13 was not a very well balanced CPU microarchitecture - too power hungry.
>>I think they're using all of their main architects for the Arm v9-based A15 A15? It is on final stages and will be sampled soon (if not already) In 6 months they will start mass production of these things. Architects are working on A17.
Well, also bleeding edge 5nm cpu, which is its only strong point. seems meh overall, but that cpu alone is "up to 15% higher performance with the same power consumption as the previous generation, or 30% lower power consumption with maintained performance." so adding that to their gen-to-gen upgrades as something happened for sure, well maybe....
but yeah I laughed at the presentation 6x faster than Chromebook. YEAH, but I can get like 11 Chromebooks those guys mentioned for same price.
While completely correct on the pricing, it doesn't tell a meaningful story. Sometimes 11 Chromebooks will have you finishing your tasks just as slowly as 1. Of course the newest iPad may not be the best choice if all you need is to watch Youtube or browse the web close to a power outlet. Right tool for the job, match your purchase to your performance needs (+some overhead). 9 women giving birth to a child in a month and all that...
What's the use case of needing so much performance on a tablet? With that price range, they shouldn't be comparing it to low-end Chromnebooks, but rather Ryzen 7 laptops...
A tablet can easily transition to a "desktop mode" by connecting it to a monitor and a keyboard. Now, if for some invalid reason, tablet manufacturers limit a universal connectivity, or software utilization , it is a completely different story.Modern tablets could enable you to carry with you, your desktop everywhere. And yes , they are powerful enough for this purpose, now.
That said comparing mobile to desktop chips, must be the secret all know and no-one admits publicly. Letting alone that mobile products are one or sometimes two node processes ahead, how can you start saying they are equal when it is quite certain that after 30 to 60 mins mobile chips will throttle due to heat accumulation? Second , both single and multi-core frequencies are about 70% higher in desktop-laptop. Assuming same instructions per cycle(I very much doubt they are equal , but anyway), desktop and laptop processors have a theoretical 50 to 70% more performance(quite probably, more, because of higher IPC). But their real world performance is still better than the mobile, because they can sustain a certain load almost indefinitely and at higher frequencies because of active cooling. So, that in practice their single core performance is actually closer X2 and their multicore closer to x20 and all that on inferior node tech.
So , there you go , having the geekbench sprout where it should not, to create confusion and get consumers to buy , admittedly increasingly powerful chips, but still a great distance from similarly priced or cheaper desktop products. Not only that, the whole philosophy is such , the end-user will never take advantage of their computational prowess because they are designed from the get go as data consuming and lifestyle devices.
Don't forget the camera! $100 for a fingerprint reader AND and extra 4MP, a stop of light gathering capability, and slow-mo video. On a tablet. Why, by Apple standards, it's positively a bargain. 😐
And removal of the headphone jack on a media consumption device. Yet another stupid decision... yes Bluetooth is an option but it’s another thing to charge and can add latency. A USB C adapter blocks the port for charging and adapters get in the way (for gaming) because it’s in the middle of the tablet...
Not having a headphone jack and a fingerprint sensor are strange and bad, but I also wondered what Apple's obsession with crappy LCD screens is.
I prefer dark backgrounds, and due to the way LCD screens work that's a constant power drain that's really unhelpful in Tablets. Aside from generally looking worse. At least iPads tend to have good color balance?
Honestly totally stupid decision on a media-focussed device. You can possibly argue it on the iPad Pro (but not really), on the Air it’s a deliberate money-grab.
Why does Apple, or any mobile doc maker, keep pushing to tsmc's newest si nice so fast? The performance benefits have vanished almost completely, they don't need huge dies, the yield is lower and it costs a lot more to develop the chip.
So if they stuck to 16nm, the A14 would be almost 400mm^2 If they stuck to 10nm the A14 would be about 250mm^2 If they stuck to 7nm the A14 would be about 150mm^2
The space inside an iPhone is pretty precious, and having a part under 125mm^2 seems to be the threshold that Apple says, "I can afford this".
Also, you seem to ignore the fact that the cost of developing this chip is spread out over iPhones, iPads, iPods, Apple Watches, Apple TVs, and soon Macs.
Those storage options are just awful. 64GB for a $600 device in 2020 is a no no, 32GB is even worse considering their iPhone SE starts at 399 with 64GB base.
It's almost as though people are buying these devices for purposes (eBook Reader, mount on the wall HomeKit controller) that don't actually NEED a lot of flash...
Okay so the number is $330. You still spent that on a device permanently on a wall as a remote controller. Try to imagine the look on the face of one of the poor bastards who made the thing.
You say this, but as someone who's worked in an Apple store and provided support to a large array of different sorts of people who use these devices, most of them don't realise how much space they're using until they run out. Then they'd come and ask what to do about it, and I'd have to tell them there was no way to expand the storage and then offer them one of several unsatisfactory/expensive options to help out.
Those are probably the same people that have 30GB mailboxes on their work email, after working at the company less than 5 years, too. IE, the people we who do support and migrations absolutely HATE - because it's 90% JUNK they don't need. Every time I look at my phone or iPad, I can't help but think I wasted money getting the 256GB versions. I'm at 30GB on both, and there's enough music on my phone to drive across the country and back and not hear the same song twice, and enough books on my iPad to keep me busy reading steadily for the next couple of weeks (and I read a LOT, and fast). And a few games on each in case I get bored, not to mention personal AND work email, etc.
Peskarik, read up on cosmic rays. They bombard us every second. And don’t get me started on solar radiation. This causes cancer. I’m sorry I had to tell you this.
Any other useless marketing metrics to put into the list?
How many nm is "5nm" these days? If they can make the chips they can tell us what the actual scale is. I'm tired of marketeer fiction dominating tech coverage.
It’s an ongoing pandemic and there’s a future, predicted, global economic crisis. What does Apple do? Jack-up prices. 130$ from 32 to 128gb? The same as with the 64 to 256 jump in the Air model? Well, as a very long term Apple fan, they can now go fuck themselves.
How do you keep a 2 Trillion dollar company a 2 Trillion dollar company. BTW, you can tell them off, they do not care. In fact, I am pretty sure, since you are so pissed, you will eventually buy an Apple product, obviously you care a lot!
It kind-of makes sense. They're expecting people to hang onto their devices for longer, so they need to jack the prices up now to front-load the profits.
Finally, in this pandemic, Apple realizes and accepts that only relies on your face for biometric is a flawed idea. Using your face only is a very white/western-centric notion but hey, not everyone is white eh!
I think that they mean that people in Asian countries have been wearing face-masks for far longer than people in Western countries - ever since the bird flu in 1997.
I have seen a 12 hour battery life quoted. Is this going to be another joke with battery life. None of the 3 ipads I have got in the past 12 months get anywhere close to the supposed battery life. My 7th generation iPad lasts under 4 hours of my daughter watching in the car. And my iPad Pro gets just of 3 hours of her playing minecraft and often struggles to render it smoothly. I can't imagine how their silicon is going to power the Mac...
Remember... all battery life quotes are from ideal circumstances. if you're doing ANYTHING other than the method they used to test, the battery life will be shorter.
I get decent battery life playing games on both my iPad Pro and iPhone - the real battery killer is all the damn ads in the 'free' versions of games. Last two thing I installed play a 30 second video ad between ever 15 second to complete level. DELETE.
The battery life estimates will be the maximum with the lowest brightness setting, probably doing something like loading web-pages every few minutes, with a bit of scrolling.
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tipoo - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Since their comparisons were to the A12 in the previous iPad Air, if you work it backwards it doesn't look like as large a jump as usual from the A13. Looking at around 16% faster CPU and 8-9% faster GPU? I wonder if this is why they debuted in an iPad Air first, since its much more impressive in comparison to the last Air than the last iPhone, where they can kind of say they already talked about it at the iPhone event.Couldn't expect those huge single core gains forever, but from the iPhone 11 to 12 this looks like a smaller jump. If the iPhone 12 Pro had ProMotion that would have been an easy consideration if the added efficiency offset the higher refresh rate, but it doesn't sound like we're getting that this year.
dudedud - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Unless they haven't changed their architecture as was rumored, that 16% faster would be solely for the, again rumored, boost clock to 3Ghz.And two years without any meaningful improvement in their arch would be really really odd.
tipoo - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
And with all the expanded caches at that.Most odd. I wonder if they're sandbagging their own numbers for reasons and purposes (AS Macs?)
Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
I'm fairly convinced by Andrei's supposition that they've gone for improved efficiency by constraining peak performance in the mobile devices - that would also be compatible with them "unlocking" the higher performance states for the MacBook devices they're launching later.Krysto - Wednesday, September 23, 2020 - link
I think they're using all of their main architects for the Arm v9-based A15. So A14 is just a rehashed and slightly improved (mostly from switching to new 5nm process) A12. Why A12 and not A13? Because A13 was not a very well balanced CPU microarchitecture - too power hungry.vvid - Thursday, September 24, 2020 - link
>>I think they're using all of their main architects for the Arm v9-based A15A15? It is on final stages and will be sampled soon (if not already)
In 6 months they will start mass production of these things.
Architects are working on A17.
shabby - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
That's an expensive fingerprint button, $100 for it? Geez...Alistair - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
yeah, i'm not impresseddeil - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Well, also bleeding edge 5nm cpu, which is its only strong point.seems meh overall,
but that cpu alone is "up to 15% higher performance with the same power consumption as the previous generation, or 30% lower power consumption with maintained performance."
so adding that to their gen-to-gen upgrades as something happened for sure, well maybe....
but yeah I laughed at the presentation
6x faster than Chromebook. YEAH, but I can get like 11 Chromebooks those guys mentioned for same price.
close - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
While completely correct on the pricing, it doesn't tell a meaningful story. Sometimes 11 Chromebooks will have you finishing your tasks just as slowly as 1. Of course the newest iPad may not be the best choice if all you need is to watch Youtube or browse the web close to a power outlet. Right tool for the job, match your purchase to your performance needs (+some overhead). 9 women giving birth to a child in a month and all that...Ptosio - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
What's the use case of needing so much performance on a tablet?With that price range, they shouldn't be comparing it to low-end Chromnebooks, but rather Ryzen 7 laptops...
IUU - Sunday, October 4, 2020 - link
A tablet can easily transition to a "desktop mode" by connecting it to a monitor and a keyboard. Now, if for some invalid reason, tablet manufacturers limit a universal connectivity, or software utilization , it is a completely different story.Modern tablets could enable you to carry with you, your desktop everywhere. And yes , they are powerful enough for this purpose, now.That said comparing mobile to desktop chips, must be the secret all know and no-one admits publicly. Letting alone that mobile products are one or sometimes two node processes ahead, how can you start saying they are equal when it is quite certain that after 30 to 60 mins mobile chips will throttle due to heat accumulation?
Second , both single and multi-core frequencies are about 70% higher in desktop-laptop. Assuming same instructions per cycle(I very much doubt they are equal , but anyway), desktop and laptop processors have a theoretical 50 to 70% more performance(quite probably, more, because of higher IPC). But their real world performance is still better than the mobile, because they can sustain a certain load almost indefinitely and at higher frequencies because of active cooling. So, that in practice their single core performance is actually closer X2 and their multicore closer to x20 and all that on inferior node tech.
So , there you go , having the geekbench sprout where it should not, to create confusion and get consumers to buy , admittedly increasingly powerful chips, but still a great distance from similarly priced or cheaper desktop products.
Not only that, the whole philosophy is such , the end-user will never take advantage of their computational prowess because they are designed from the get go as data consuming and lifestyle
devices.
Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Don't forget the camera! $100 for a fingerprint reader AND and extra 4MP, a stop of light gathering capability, and slow-mo video. On a tablet. Why, by Apple standards, it's positively a bargain. 😐plewis00 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
And removal of the headphone jack on a media consumption device. Yet another stupid decision... yes Bluetooth is an option but it’s another thing to charge and can add latency. A USB C adapter blocks the port for charging and adapters get in the way (for gaming) because it’s in the middle of the tablet...vanish1 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
No headphone jack is a deal breaker. PassSamus - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Seriously, what excuse do they have for not putting a fingerprint sensor on a tablet. They basically lost the education market doing this.Great_Scott - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Not having a headphone jack and a fingerprint sensor are strange and bad, but I also wondered what Apple's obsession with crappy LCD screens is.I prefer dark backgrounds, and due to the way LCD screens work that's a constant power drain that's really unhelpful in Tablets. Aside from generally looking worse. At least iPads tend to have good color balance?
tipoo - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
They have a fingerprint sensor?Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
If you're a student, they'll give you free AirPods to lose down the back of your sofa.plewis00 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Honestly totally stupid decision on a media-focussed device. You can possibly argue it on the iPad Pro (but not really), on the Air it’s a deliberate money-grab.Frenetic Pony - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Why does Apple, or any mobile doc maker, keep pushing to tsmc's newest si nice so fast? The performance benefits have vanished almost completely, they don't need huge dies, the yield is lower and it costs a lot more to develop the chip.It just seems like a shibboleth.
anonomouse - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
put more stuff on a chip of a given limited sizemichael2k - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
A14, 5nm, ?100mm^2?, 11.8b transistorsA13, 7nm, 98mm^2, 8.5b transistors
A12, 7nm, 83mm^2, 6.9b transistors
A11, 10nm, 87mm^2, 4.3b transistors
A10, 16nm, 125mm^2, 3.3b transistors
So if they stuck to 16nm, the A14 would be almost 400mm^2
If they stuck to 10nm the A14 would be about 250mm^2
If they stuck to 7nm the A14 would be about 150mm^2
The space inside an iPhone is pretty precious, and having a part under 125mm^2 seems to be the threshold that Apple says, "I can afford this".
Also, you seem to ignore the fact that the cost of developing this chip is spread out over iPhones, iPads, iPods, Apple Watches, Apple TVs, and soon Macs.
zamroni - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
To get more chips per wafer, hence cheaper production costdudedud - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Those storage options are just awful.64GB for a $600 device in 2020 is a no no, 32GB is even worse considering their iPhone SE starts at 399 with 64GB base.
name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
It's almost as though people are buying these devices for purposes (eBook Reader, mount on the wall HomeKit controller) that don't actually NEED a lot of flash...jabber - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Well a lot of us in developed nations stream most of our media. Some of us also never play games on our phones and tablets.timecop1818 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
lmao imagine buying a 700$ device to permanently put on a wall as remote controller.name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Imagine buying an *iPad*, not an iPad Pro, not an iPad Air, for that purpose...Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Okay so the number is $330. You still spent that on a device permanently on a wall as a remote controller. Try to imagine the look on the face of one of the poor bastards who made the thing.Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
You say this, but as someone who's worked in an Apple store and provided support to a large array of different sorts of people who use these devices, most of them don't realise how much space they're using until they run out. Then they'd come and ask what to do about it, and I'd have to tell them there was no way to expand the storage and then offer them one of several unsatisfactory/expensive options to help out.rrinker - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Those are probably the same people that have 30GB mailboxes on their work email, after working at the company less than 5 years, too. IE, the people we who do support and migrations absolutely HATE - because it's 90% JUNK they don't need.Every time I look at my phone or iPad, I can't help but think I wasted money getting the 256GB versions. I'm at 30GB on both, and there's enough music on my phone to drive across the country and back and not hear the same song twice, and enough books on my iPad to keep me busy reading steadily for the next couple of weeks (and I read a LOT, and fast). And a few games on each in case I get bored, not to mention personal AND work email, etc.
Alistair - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
1TB NVME SSD in the Xbox Series X, $499. 64GB in the $600 iPad...diehardmacfan - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
What a terrible comparison.Peskarik - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Apple is 2 Trillion dollar company, they HAVE to charge those prices.Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Indeed, otherwise they'd still be a measly 1 Trillion dollar company! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the shareholders?!damianrobertjones - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Peronally, I buy the 64Gb model as I mostly just view media or browse social media. For anything else, I have the Surface Pro 7.Plus... I cannot justify the insane prices of the other models.
Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
64GB I can just about understand, but 32GB is a sad joke.maofthun - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Does the new Air have 4 speakers? Which generation of pencils do the Air and and regular ipad use?maofthun - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Nevermind. Saw the specs on Apple's site :)gimpsoft - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
where the 5G ??Peskarik - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
4G radiation is not enough for you, huh?Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Got some bad news for you about WiFi...LMonty - Saturday, September 26, 2020 - link
Peskarik, read up on cosmic rays. They bombard us every second. And don’t get me started on solar radiation. This causes cancer. I’m sorry I had to tell you this.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
TDP, nm...Any other useless marketing metrics to put into the list?
How many nm is "5nm" these days? If they can make the chips they can tell us what the actual scale is. I'm tired of marketeer fiction dominating tech coverage.
iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Over 9000. Happy now?Rudde - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Use wikichip for actual dimensions. TSMC 7nm has fins with 30nm pitch, 6nm width and 52nm height.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Thank you. That is much more informative than "7nm" and also shows how deceptive "7nm" is.Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
It tells you the generation of the process in a convenient, easily-readable fashion. You're free to ferret out the details if you want them.liquid_c - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
It’s an ongoing pandemic and there’s a future, predicted, global economic crisis. What does Apple do? Jack-up prices. 130$ from 32 to 128gb? The same as with the 64 to 256 jump in the Air model? Well, as a very long term Apple fan, they can now go fuck themselves.69369369 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
They probably are fucking themselves with diamond-covered gold dildos right now.Peskarik - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
How do you keep a 2 Trillion dollar company a 2 Trillion dollar company.BTW, you can tell them off, they do not care. In fact, I am pretty sure, since you are so pissed, you will eventually buy an Apple product, obviously you care a lot!
Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
It kind-of makes sense. They're expecting people to hang onto their devices for longer, so they need to jack the prices up now to front-load the profits.x064 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
The regular iPad uses the A12X, not the A12.DanD85 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Finally, in this pandemic, Apple realizes and accepts that only relies on your face for biometric is a flawed idea. Using your face only is a very white/western-centric notion but hey, not everyone is white eh!damianrobertjones - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
"Using your face only is a very white/western-centric notion"- Racist comment is a bit racist. I'm pretty sure that people from non-white.western-centric areas also use their face to unlock. Why wouldn't they?
huangcjz - Monday, September 21, 2020 - link
I think that they mean that people in Asian countries have been wearing face-masks for far longer than people in Western countries - ever since the bird flu in 1997.Speedfriend - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
I have seen a 12 hour battery life quoted. Is this going to be another joke with battery life. None of the 3 ipads I have got in the past 12 months get anywhere close to the supposed battery life. My 7th generation iPad lasts under 4 hours of my daughter watching in the car. And my iPad Pro gets just of 3 hours of her playing minecraft and often struggles to render it smoothly. I can't imagine how their silicon is going to power the Mac...damianrobertjones - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Remember... all battery life quotes are from ideal circumstances. if you're doing ANYTHING other than the method they used to test, the battery life will be shorter.Any game will eat battery life.
rrinker - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
I get decent battery life playing games on both my iPad Pro and iPhone - the real battery killer is all the damn ads in the 'free' versions of games. Last two thing I installed play a 30 second video ad between ever 15 second to complete level. DELETE.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
The other issue is battery capacity longevity.huangcjz - Monday, September 21, 2020 - link
The battery life estimates will be the maximum with the lowest brightness setting, probably doing something like loading web-pages every few minutes, with a bit of scrolling.isthisavailable - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
$130 extra to upgrade from 32 to 128gb. Yeah, right...Spunjji - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Unfortunately, they won't stop doing it until people stop buying their products.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Which won't happen as long as Android and Windows are trash.ET - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
USB-C?ET faints.
plewis00 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Do these new iPads have a 3.5mm socket? I’m guessing the 8th gen does (as it’s an existing chassis) and the iPad Air 4 doesn’t...The disparity between USB C and Lightning is getting jarring as well, I’m surprised Apple has split standards like this...
GSMFind - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 - link
You can see detailed information about the latest iPad tablets here: https://gsmfind.com/apple?type=tablet