Why Apple's chip design beats everyone else in an instant
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Wang Sicong, a popular internet celebrity, said in an interview with Marie Claire magazine that "I don't care about money when making friends, because none of them are as rich as I am." It's like this when you are at the top, it's lonely - if you don't agree, run a score, because none of them are as high as A10 (haha face). Apple has made routine upgrades to iPhone 7/7 Plus this year, and A10 has accidentally led Android's top processors by one year. The performance improvement is exciting enough. Is this a distortion of human nature or a moral decline? Let's find out. Compare the scores to see how powerful A10 is . AnTuTu released the mobile phone performance list for September. The top 5 are all dominated by newly included models. From high to low, they are iPhone 7 Plus/7 (A10 processor), Le Pro3 (Snapdragon 821 processor), Xiaomi 5sPlus/5s (Snapdragon 821 processor). In the list, only the A10 chip has a score of over 170,000, which is significantly better than Snapdragon 821. Foreign media ArsTechnica counted the GeekBench3 scores of flagship models, and netizens' comments were sharp: For the first time in history, Android processors have been surpassed by Apple in CPU single-core, multi-core and GPU. And because GeekBench4 increases the weight of integer operations to 45%, the A10's advantage over Snapdragon 820/821 in CPU single-core scores has been further widened. Are you kidding me? CPU is designed as "dual dual-core" "The central processing unit of the A10 Fusion chip adopts a new quad-core design, with two high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores. The high-performance core can run up to twice as fast as the iPhone 6, while the high-efficiency core can run at as low as one-fifth of the power of the high-performance core. This means that it can achieve ideal performance and energy efficiency according to different needs." The above Apple copy is translated into human language as follows: A10 Fusion adopts the "quad-core" architecture for the first time, or it is called "glue dual-core". This means that the iPhone 7 can only mobilize two cores at any time, and only one mode of high performance or high energy efficiency is available, so in fact, the A10 chip still relies on dual-core to defeat quad-core, octa-core and even deca-core. In fact, there is a precedent that all CPU cores cannot be parallelized, such as the Samsung Exynos5410 processor in the above picture, which led to a war of words between dual quad-core and true octa-core. Tentatively, we can read the following conclusions: 1. A10 can switch between violent and quiet personalities at any time, but to be honest, the processor turbo frequency may be more efficient than the switching of core groups; 2. Apple has reservations on the expansion of physical cores, and it is not ruled out that A10 is just a transitional product for the next generation A11 processor. Are you kidding me? What is the GPU? The A10 Fusion is equipped with a six-core GPU, which has a performance of 3 times that of the A8 and 1.5 times that of the A9, which is definitely better than the Adreno 530. Some people believe that the A10 Fusion has driven the FHD resolution that can be supported by the thousand-yuan chips in the Android world, which is really a butcher knife. iPhone is smooth to use. The industry says that iOS optimization is better than Android, and Apple's hardware is the main reason. For this mysterious GPU core, foreign media TheMotleyFool speculates that Apple has three options to choose from. The first option is Imagination Series 7XT Plus (which can be understood as an enhanced version of Series7XT in A9/A9X). However, given that A10 still uses TSMC's 16nm FinFET process, it has improved graphics performance by 1/2 and reduced graphics power consumption by 1/3 compared to A9, so it is unlikely to use an old core. The second possibility is to use the new generation Series 8XT graphics core. Imagination has only announced some technical parameters of PowerVR Series 8XE (GE8200/GE8300), and the outside world does not have a deep understanding of Series8XT. Therefore, it is not ruled out that by keeping the performance and functions of Series 8XT secret, Imagination has allowed Apple to surprise customers in a way that would have been impossible. The third possibility is that Apple has independently developed a new graphics core, but Apple did not express this tendency at the press conference, and there is currently no sufficient evidence to support it. In summary, the relatively reasonable guess about A10's graphics technology is that it uses the Series8XT core. Apple holds 8.48% of Imagination's shares and may have exclusive control over the Series8XT series, which is much more reliable than the so-called exclusive control of MediaTek HelioX25. Keyword 1: Number of transistors Compared with the number of CPU cores that white consumers are keen on, Apple is more concerned about the number of processor transistors. A7 integrates more than 1 billion transistors, and this number doubled to 2 billion on A8. At the launch conference this fall, Apple announced that the number of A10 transistors was as high as 3.3 billion. Unlike those glamorous multi-core players outside, this is Apple's herd tactic. The number of transistors is positively correlated with processor performance to a certain extent. The godfather of nuclear bombs, Huang Renxun, released the next-generation "Xavier" super chip, which integrates 7 billion transistors and has a computing performance of 20 trillion times per second. However, 20W power consumption is obviously not something that mobile phones can bear. NVIDIA is ready to use it for driverless cars as the brain of artificial intelligence. Keyword 2: Processor frequency According to a report released by Chipworks, a professional disassembly team abroad, the area of the A10 Fusion chip is 125 square millimeters, which is smaller than the 150 square millimeters estimated by the outside world. On the one hand, it shows the design skills of Apple's engineering team, and it is also expected to save Apple hundreds of millions of dollars in manufacturing costs. The positions of the two small cores in the figure below have been determined, and the area is really not large. Apple has increased the main frequency of the two high-performance cores of the A10 Fusion from 1.84GHz of the A9 chip to 2.34GHz, and the frequency of the remaining two high-efficiency cores is 1.05GHz. Foreign media ArsTechnica even directly described it as "Most, but not all, of the performance gains over the A9 in the iPhone 6s come from that clock speed boost". High frequency is power, but if other variables are not improved, the negative impact of squeezing performance is very easy to highlight. The drag: process Since the A10 Fusion still uses TSMC's 16nmFinFET process, the heat generated by the full-blooded A10 Fusion at full speed cannot be underestimated. In addition, the internal space of the mobile phone is not as spacious as that of a tablet or notebook, so the heat dissipation efficiency is much lower. Of course, Apple has also provided a special solution - water cooling, which must have made Sony laugh in the toilet. Another problem that iPhone 7/7 Plus has to bear is the high-frequency howling problem, which is most likely caused by the breathing current caused by the change in CPU load, which triggers the piezoelectric effect on the ceramic capacitor. This type of noise phenomenon can only be perceived in a quiet environment and will not affect the normal operation of the mobile phone. Keyword three: iOS We often say that software and hardware need to be co-designed. Students who adhere to Android fundamentalism will not consider mobile phones other than Nexus/Pixel. In the iOS ecosystem, Apple, as the rule maker, has absolute control. Facts have proved that the choices made by Apple are often very appealing and forward-looking. Based on powerful hardware, iOS10 uses "Metal" graphics processing technology to improve the parallelism of the central processing unit and the graphics processing unit, reduce CPU overhead and optimize GPU performance. Whether browsing the web, switching between different apps, or playing complex 3D games, the graphics effect and response speed of the device are fast and smooth. Apple claims that the Metal architecture can bring a console-level gaming experience to the iPhone. Foreign media Phone Buff compared the running speed of Galaxy Note 7 and iPhone 6s. Unfortunately, Note 7 failed to beat the 6s released a year ago. Especially in terms of game loading speed, iPhone almost completely crushed the Android flagship. The above is a personal analysis of the reasons for the explosive performance of A10 Fusion. Behind it is a reflection of Apple's strong strength in software and hardware design. I am afraid this is what a world-class technology company should look like. The iPhone has been on the market for 9 years and has sold more than 1 billion units. It has built an empire almost from scratch, which is really amazing. Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity. |
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