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Early iPhone 6 Benchmark Results Show Only Modest Gains For A8
MojoKid writes: Historically speaking, we typically see impressive performance gains each time Apple releases a new custom processor for its mobile products. Certainly that was true of the A7 SoC, the world's first 64-bit smartphone processor. So, can we expect the same kind of performance bump from the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, both of which sport the new custom A8 SoC? Maybe not. The iPhone 6 recently surfaced in results for the Basemark X benchmark and armed with a dual-core 1.4GHz Cyclone CPU and A8 GPU, the iPhone 6 scored 21,204.26 and a earned a place at the top of the chart, though not by much. By comparison, the iPhone 5s scored 20,253.80 in the same benchmark. In other words, the iPhone 6 is currently less than 5 percent faster than the iPhone 5s, at least as far as the Basemark X benchmark is concerned.
Who cares about performance anymore. Fast enough is fast enough. Which one lasts longer on battery?
It's like 3D Mark, for iOS?
Something tells me Basemark X doesn't take advantage of any of the Apple specific APIs. We've been seeing a solid ~30-40% increase in FPS when using Metal over the iPhone 5S. Everything else feels about the same though, but then again I haven't had access to our test units for any extended length of time to actually benchmark stuff (they've been kept in a locked up room with no windows chained to an unmovable desk bolted into the floor for the past two weeks). The hardware definitely is faster, but it seems like one of those things that won't matter unless you're targeting iOS specifically and writing Apple proprietary code, so I kinda question how that is going to play out in the future (especially when everyone wants their shit to run on Android and iOS and Blackberry and WinMo all at once).
We already know the gains are less from the keynote. If you look at the graph Apple showed of CPU speed it shows an exponential increase in speed until the 5, but then a noticeable levelling off to the 6.
What they're focussing on now is different. CPU is obviously almost good enough, battery is more important. Instead they're offloading functionality. The motion coprocessor and the GPU. Compare the GPU graph to the CPU one and you see much greater gains.
I'm guessing Apple didn't get modest gains, I'm sure they are making money hand over fist.
Be seeing you...
If you are comparing A8 performance vs A7 (as the title would imply you are), then you need to take into account the different screen sizes and pixel counts. The iPhone 6 has a fair bit more pixels that have to be pushed by the GPU.
Apple's done a lot of work with Grand Central Dispatch (is that the right technology?)
GCD helps manage tasks across multiple cores pretty well.
The GPU leverage though, is handled either by writing OpenCL code, or normal code that uses the Accellerate framework to do a variety of math, which internally hits the GPU when it makes sense.
OpenCL is kind of involved to get into but it's often very easy to fix up the math in heavier calculations to use Accellerate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I though the real race was to be the first company get their phone back up to the size of the analog Motorola bricks with a bonus for a 12" whip antenna.
You can't offload anything onto the GPU. Only certain specific types of things, and certain math.
It's not very specific, it's pretty broad. The Accellerate framework includes quite a lot of stuff...
We could offload more still if OpenCL was on iOS (which contrary to another post I jet put up, it is not quite yet - it's just lurking under the public API surface).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1gb is low next to other systems.
When Siri came out people figured out right away they just encode and send the audio to the "cloud" to do all the work.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
We're reaching the flat end of the curve. It'll all be marketing from here on out.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Apple has absolute control of the software ecosystem and can probably gain significant performance from appropriate optimizations. The android landscape is much more heterogeneous and probably less optimized for each individual device. Think consoles vs PC.
Raw benchmarks like this one may not properly reflect user's perception of performance when different ecosystems are compared. In the end, I expect the iPhone 6 to feel at least as fast as the fastest Android devices in real use cases.
but there are always the ones that want to compare their external penis
If the 5S and 6 have comparable performance, it means the 5S remains a long term option across OS upgrades. No need to keep a tablet in your pocket...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
What they're focussing on now is different. CPU is obviously almost good enough, battery is more important.
This... I want a longer battery, lighter weight, etc...
It is already fast enough and it will be awhile before apps catch up.
They will, but not for a few years, then we'll need another jump.
Yes, longer battery life would be nice but it's the bigger screen size and the fingerprint sensor that are motivating me to trade my iPhone 4S in for an iPhone 6+, I've decided that I want a phablet. It takes more effort to crack the fingerprint sensor than it takes to just sitting in your couch and punching in four digit pin-codes until you unlock the phone. I could put a password on my phone but punching in a password every time I get an e-mail is way too bothersome and I can't read Google maps in landscape mode on my iPhone 4S anymore because the display is just too small. As long as the device has adequate processing power to run the latest apps and games for the next 5 years and gets OS updates (which previous experience with Apple devices tells me it will) I don't really care that much about whether it has benchmarks and a processing speed that trumps those of the latest offering from Samsung, LG, HTC et al. In fact the majority of the features that I really value the most are software features ranging from the 'Continuity' OS X integration, 'HealthKit', App services and Universal Touch ID authorization for all apps to the little stuff you almost don't notice like, the revamped keyboard, built in phone calls over wifi, an overview over which app is using the most power, reply notification for especially important messages, ... the list goes on. Now if they'd only get around to putting a folding bookmarks menu in the little wizard you use when you add a bookmark in Mobile Safari... this is iOS version 8 for Christ's sake and Apple still hasn't gotten around to fixing it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Basemark X results across all vendors are at http://results.rightware.com/b...
The iPhone 6 is around #17. iPhone 5s, #21.
Of course, everything else in the top 25 is running quad-core CPUs at 2+ GHz.
iPhones? Dual-core at 1.3-1.4 GHz.
That's some crazy math right there.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
No, I want an iBag with a 12" retina display on the bag!
I'm a geek. I do very involved hacking of hardware and software, fixing tech issues, debugging, etc, all day at work. To me, I just want a phone that works, doesn't take any mental effort to use as I want, when I want. If I retire some day, I might have fun with an android. I just value simplicity where I can get it.
I'd never buy an iPhone, sorry, I don't like the idea of being locked into the Apple way... but I've seen little mention of how the camera compares to current flagship Android phones
All the security related faux pas
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There is absolutely no reason to expect a 64 bit architecture to be faster than a 32 bit architecture unless you are doing a lot of 64 bit operations, or need more than 4G of RAM.
Right in theory, wrong in practice. If the only change was the width of the registers then it would make little difference to performance, but both the leading 32-bit architectures also gained more registers and new instructions when moving to a 64-bit architecture. ARM, in particular, made a number of performance-increasing changes to the architecure such as the removal of condition codes from most instructions.
So in practice 64 bit code usually runs faster. But don't take my word for it, look at the benchmarks for A7 running in 32 mode vs 64 bit mode.
Okay Fanboys and FAndroids - what is the point of this discussion?
I am a survivor of the PC Wars, the Clone Wars and the OS Wars. I saw the evolution of the mobile phone - starting with a Panasonic Bag phone myself.
We are talking about smartphones and which is faster, better. We are talking about putting down people who like the way does things because we don't agree with their priorities or policies.
The fact is, we are talking about a device that is, inherently, a phone. What do most of you use your smart phones for? Email reading? Sending messages? Gaming? Watching video? Productivity? Solving world hunger?
It's a phone with two different ways of approaching the world. Android is free for download. It works until the software can't keep up with the hardware evolution. Same goes for iOS. It's free (comes with the phone and updates are free) and it works until the software can't keep up the hardware evolution.
The choice between Android and Apple is a personal one. I am not a gamer and don't watch videos on my phone. My kids are. They are quite happy with the iPhone 5s and, until now, the 4s. iOS 8 will probably not work well, if at all, on a 4s. So, they may be getting an upgrade.
We have Apple devices in our household. They just work. We have Windows devices as well. My boys' Windows laptops continue to get viruses and malware despite having taking all the necessary "precautions". I spend several days every few months fixing their Windows devices. So, tell me...is Windows better than Apple? I would say "yes" when considering which has more productivity applications or in wider use for business. But, for what I do and need, Apple is perfect. I design systems for a living.
Yes, I used to code down to the metal and build my own PCs. No time for that now. I want something that just works.
All this applies to these Apple/iOS and /Android battles. It doesn't matter.
I use my smartphone, an iPhone 5, to do the things I need to do. I am not rendering games so I don't care about rendering rate. I take pictures, but most can't see the difference between 8 and 16 megapixels anyway...unless you are creating posters. I send and receive email and texts (from time to time). I use it to handle my calendar. I like the way iOS behaves and how to develop for it. Maybe, you don't. That's your choice. I also like the way Apple focuses on fit and finish. Until recently, Android devices were plastic.
A year ago, Apple came out with their Gold finished iPhone. All the FAndroids made fun over this. A year later, Samsung is pushing a gold finished phone like it's all the rage. WTF?
They are phones with the ability to help us get other things done. Android has found its way into embedded systems. iOS isn't ever going there. And, if I start programming embedded systems again, I will worry about it. I can code native Object-C and Java. But, I use other tools to develop across both iOS and Android platforms rather than getting down to the metal.
For me, a phone is little more than a phone right up until it makes it me money and helps put food on my table and roof over my head. If it means I have to code to make money and I *actually* make money. That's good. If it is smart enough to make money for me by watching the stock market and buying and selling for me automagically so I get rich? Well, I am all for that. I won't care what platform it's on..I will want one. I bet you will too (unless you're earthy crunchy).
Until then, stop worrying about what Apple does if you don't like Apple.
Buy what you like. If you have to discussion over the devices, do so in a civil tongue. If not, I can get as much discourse and hatred reading the political posts on CNN.
"Certainly that was true of the A7 SoC, the world's first 64-bit smartphone processor."
What's the point of a 64bit processor with 1 GB of RAM?
If nothing else, it lays the groundwork for future phones with more memory as well as ensuring that the I6 phones will be running the same OS as the iphone 7 and possibly 8.
Exactly, same here. I original did have an Android for OPs reasons, but then after I got one, I was like you know what I don't give a shit, give me something that works well that I don't need to tinker with and that also has a decent interface.
And even though on paper my android phone specs blew the iPhone out of the water, it didn't matter android 2.x was laggy as shit and the UI was fucking horrible.
You can also do a lot with jailbreaking, but I don't even bother doing that. The iPhone just works. Now the new Androids with 3.x+ release looks a lot better, but meh.
That just means Apple has to come up with new reasons to obsolete the current-2 versions of devices running their iOS. Which won't be a problem. They're good at that.
Many make the wrong assumption that 64 bit processor means only increasing the memory pointers to 64 bit. This is not the case with the transition from the A6 to the A7. The instruction set changed from ARMv7s to ARMv8 (or ARM64). There are performance gains to be made moving to a new, revised ISA for which 64 bit is but one of the characteristics. Further, Apple has been working on their toolchain and they can leverage certain software compiler improvements especially within the Objective C runtime, like tagged pointers and inline reference counting that are made possible with 64 bit pointers.
See: https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog...
Moores law is hitting a wall - and sharply limits the possibility of simply improving the speed of increasing the performance of single-core processors.
Interestingly however, one alternative - in addition to magical as-yet-unthought of technology is single purpose cores that remain switched off most of the time, and are only powered up to do a specific task very efficiently.
(source note 1-7 and the next 22 are all double the clock speed and quad core)
so indeed, few will care about whatever speed increase the 6 brings.
Apple = 90% marketing / 10% features lol
NFC is the most amazing new tech.... wait a min it's been around for like 10 years..
OK it has a bigger screen, oh wait that's already been around for a couple years.
OK we have a payment system now, well with itunes prices we know it's going to be a rip-off lol
Our display is even better but please be aware websites might not look right because we can't stick to standards.
The battery you can't replace now even lasts longer! (How many people are buying one because they don't want to pay to have a new batt put in? lol)
I'll probably get hate over this but eh I think it was a huge disappointment.
Hopefully they have something to combat the new samsung / lg screens that are coming soon.
Rom's > All My friend has a galaxy s2 that runs 4.4.4. custom rom fine lol.
That's a low blow since the Razr is considered their worst phone ever made internally lol
But yes I agree, this was definitely a catch up device.
Why would you want an OLED screen over a sRGB accurate screen?
No, you don't have to selectively download it. It can come in with the automatic crap which is turned on by default.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Who cares about performance anymore.
People who want a better phone and aren't marketing for Apple.
Only on Slashdot they can turn the fact that the Iphone 6 bumped the iPhone 5s from spot one to spot two, while still beating the now spot 3 by being only a little less than twice as fast into a slam on the performance.
Oh, and one thing the surprised-by-the-result article doesn't understand is that they completely ignored that Apple's goal was to increase performance durably and not just for the first few minutes of demand, followed by a large drop afterwards.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
That just means Apple has to come up with new reasons to obsolete the current-2 versions of devices running their iOS. Which won't be a problem. They're good at that.
IOS 8 is going to be pushed as far back as the iPhone 4S. Now go ahead, wrap that up in your canard, and smoke it.