The iPhone XS and XS Max Review: Unveiling the Silicon Secrets(anandtech.com)
anandtech.com
The iPhone XS and XS Max Review: Unveiling the Silicon Secrets
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets
342 comments
Apple CPU Architecture excellence is nothing short of amazing. iPhone XS A12 processors are 2x or 3x the speed of a Snapdragon 845 (Pixel 3) and have lower power consumption. For these benchmarks they're approaching consumer desktop CPU performance, which typically draw 40-50 watts, using only 4 watts in the A12. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re... …
Crazy how far ahead the iPhone is over every single Android phone. I moved over years ago because of the horrible hardware, lower-quality apps, and lack of support. Seems like this trend will continue.
"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 Skylake CPU."
How do they do it?
How do they do it?
> Overall the new A12 Vortex cores and the architectural improvements on the SoC’s memory subsystem give Apple’s new piece of silicon a much higher performance advantage than Apple’s marketing materials promote. The contrast to the best Android SoCs have to offer is extremely stark – both in terms of performance as well as in power efficiency. Apple’s SoCs have better energy efficiency than all recent Android SoCs while having a nearly 2x performance advantage. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we were to normalise for energy used, Apple would have a 3x performance efficiency lead.
Wow.
Wow.
I don't think people realize how important this story is. Apple is about to take the single thread performance crown from Intel, who has held it nearly uncontested for, what, a decade or more? And they're doing it in a phone! Imagine what they could do on a laptop or desktop power budget. I'll bet you won't have to imagine much longer either, as I expect an ARM Mac within a few years.
Indeed in terms of cellular connectivity, the new iPhones boast a significant jump as we’ve seen an upgrade in download speeds to a gigabit for LTE networks.
I would like to see this speedtest and know the location, please.
I would like to see this speedtest and know the location, please.
This may be obvious to many but I just noticed that the iphone's default wallpaper is designed to hide the notch.(at least I assume the wallpaper in this review is the default)
At this point I'm fairly confident that my XS is more powerful than my 2008 Mac Pro tower. How long before Apple goes full ARM for all of their future products? Owning basically the entire hardware chain.
I wonder if Apple will ever get into the server market, even indirectly through licencing their cores.
Android isn't keeping up anymore.
The iPhone prices are ridiculous. It can cost as much as 5 average Chinese Android phones. Maybe they don't have such fast CPU but still are pretty usable, and often have similar amount of RAM. Don't understand why people choose to pay more just to buy a device to browse Instagram or Telegram.
It seems obvious, to me at least, that within the next decade, desktop/laptop/server makers will jump ship to ARM. Cheaper, faster, lower power chips with fanless designs and longer battery life. I can't for the life of me figure out why Intel's stock is valued so highly today. What am I missing?
> Cellular ... UE Category 16 LTE (1Gbps) with 4x4 MIMO and LAA
Do cellular providers allow 4x4 (or even 2x2) connections? Do they provide gigabit bandwidth to individual devices? I'd be surprised if they simply handed out bandwidth to whomever could suck down the most.
Do cellular providers allow 4x4 (or even 2x2) connections? Do they provide gigabit bandwidth to individual devices? I'd be surprised if they simply handed out bandwidth to whomever could suck down the most.
That web site is so full of cruft, it has become unusable. Even the best iPhone can‘t change that.
[deleted]
Steve Jobs would never have allowed the UX regressions that have plagued the X and XS iterations.
iPhone X or Xs is no good and a UX step backwards...
- No I don't want to take hundreds of accidental screenshots a day & upload them to iCloud
- In traffic jams I want to grab my phone with my thumb and have it open right away as my iPhone 8 does. Not mess with it.. put it up to my face & push up to open it. Why add a step?
Im taking this junk back today!
- No I don't want to take hundreds of accidental screenshots a day & upload them to iCloud
- In traffic jams I want to grab my phone with my thumb and have it open right away as my iPhone 8 does. Not mess with it.. put it up to my face & push up to open it. Why add a step?
Im taking this junk back today!
I’d love to upgrade to these epic new phones, but I won’t, because FaceID…
Removing the fingerprint reader ruined the usability for me.
Removing the fingerprint reader ruined the usability for me.
[deleted]
- A12 has 8MB on chip “SoC cache”
- Big core L1$ = 128kB; Little Core L1$ = 32kB
- For the big core, L2$ is a whopping 128 instances 6MB per core/thread, 8MB at 64KB/inst.
- Little core L2$ is 32 instances, 1.5MB per core/thread, 2MB at 64KB/inst
- A12 GPU uses memory compression!
- A12 Big has 2.38 GHz base clock and 2.5 GHz 1 core boost
- A12 Little has 1.538 GHz all core, and 1.562 GHz 2 or 3 core boost, and 1.587Ghz 1 core boost
- A11 and A12 have a 7-wide decode (up from 6 on the A10) and 6Int ALU (up from 4 on the A10)
- Apple’s microarchitecture seems to far surpass anything else in terms of width, including desktop CPUs
- SPECint/fp Numbers show that it’s got 2x the speed of and any all other mobile SoC’s. 3x perf/watt if you normalize speed / power consumption.
- SPECint/fp numbers also show that the A12 is faster than a skylake server cpu (in core-for-core IPC). Not a perfect comparison, but far better than Geekbench