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iPhone 6s's A9 Processor Racks Up Impressive Benchmarks
MojoKid writes: Underneath the hood of Apple's new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models is a new custom designed System-on-Chip (SoC) that Apple has dubbed its A9 processor. It's a 64-bit chip that, according to Apple, is the most advanced ever built for any smartphone, and that's just one of many claims coming out of Cupertino. Apple is also claiming a level of gaming performance on par with dedicated game consoles and with a graphics engine that's 90 percent faster than the previous generation. For compute chores, Apple says the A9 chip improves overall CPU performance by up to 70 percent. These performance promises come without divulging too much about the physical makeup of the A9, though in testing its dual-core SoC does seem to compete well with the likes of Samsung's octal-core Exynos chips found in the Galaxy S6 line. Further, in intial graphics benchmark testing, the A9 also leads the pack in mosts tests, sometimes by a healthy margin, even besting Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 in tests like 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited.
IIRC, didn't Apple crow about increasing the CPU - RAM bandwidth by a fair bit? That tends to speed up nearly everything. Yeah, they went from LPDDR3 to LPDDR4.
You cherry-picked the first benchmark mentioned, and disregarded the other tests where iPhone 6S out-performed the other phones.
>In Geekbench, the iPhone 6s Plus performed second only to Samsung's newest Galaxy models
So it came in second! Yay!
I'm not sure where you got your figures (since there is no citation, Yay!); but this article claims that the iPhone 6s "Obliterates" the competition. And the GeekBench 3 scores in that article would tend to support that claim.
Now, if only their UI designers would get some sense in their heads and kill this white and harsh blue, ultra skinny fonts, overly animated everything and go back AT LEAST A LITTLE to the iOS 5 and iOS 6 realism.
That UI was SO much easier to understand and less visually hideous to look at.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
You're Holding the Geekbench Wrong
Only because Satan likes iPhones. We all know that iPhones are the work of the Devil, and that hellfire awaits those who buy iPhones. Throw yours away, brother. Don't be sucked into the Devil's evil plot! Buy Android, the smartphone for the Righteous!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Was this before or after the carrier bloatware was added?
Um, in case you didn't know, on the iPhone, the Carriers aren't allowed to add ANY bloatware whatsoever.
You cherry-picked the first benchmark mentioned, and disregarded the other tests where iPhone 6S out-performed the other phones.
To be fair, the other benchmarks were:
sunspider
and
graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark. (Where I'd generally expect the same system winning one really should mean winning all.)
Personally, I don't play games on my phone. So 3dmark etc is irrelevant to me. (But I realize many people do, including my own kids... and the iphone 6s looks like the best phone for games right now; at least in terms of hardware performance.)
The fact that I can't load it up with hundlebundle mobile games, emulators, and so forth still counts against it though.
I try to avoid exposing my kids to freemium ad-ridden crap.
Now the sunspider (javascript) win is more interesting to me, but I'm pretty sure it's just showing that a faster core is faster at single threaded operations, and the A9 is a dual core with 2 faster cores vs Samsung which is octocore but the cores are slower.
That's not particularly interesting by itself; although it does hint at valid question -- is fewer faster cores better or worse than more slower cores a better strategy in a smart phone?
Real world use will answer that... benchmarks not really.
So the upshot... Apple 6s has better graphics performance than a phone released 6 months ago. The new CPU is good... better at single threaded than anything out right now due to faster cores, but it still lags in multithreaded due to only having 2 cores despite them being faster, and I don't know which core strategy ends up being actually better.
How does the battery compare? I was happy with an iphone 3GS years ago, then I was disappointed with my S3 battery, but am quite happy with my current S5. I expect I'd be happy with the battery on an iphone 6s.
And at the end of the day, benchmarks don't matter. Choosing apple vs samsung isn't about benchmarks. Its about ecosystems, and deciding which one you want: apple or android. Myself, I have no intention of ever returning to IOS due to the overly restrictive walls on the garden. But that's just me.
After ten years in the same studio apartment in the heart of Silicon Valley, I'm thinking about moving to a different place. However, I fail to see how having an iPhone has anything to do with my living situation. Please proceed.
IIRC, didn't Apple crow about increasing the CPU - RAM bandwidth by a fair bit?
There's a great article covering just that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not sure where you live, but I hardly see how an extra $10-20/mo would cover half of the rent provided by a roommate...
To the 3party developer house that made this for apple.. congrats.. I know there must be a 3rd party entity somewhere.. Because the product seems to work..
Sorry. Apple did the R&D on this themselves.
I also find it interesting how those surface with the "shiny look in their eyes" Ohh New Apple product "pretty, pretty, pretty" without truly understanding the premise of what they are getting into..
What in the Hell are you even blathering-on about? is your Apple Hatred so strong that you can't speak; or are you just incapable of composing a sentence?
Much like the Lisa, the Newton, and the i-ball, this too will pass. "like a wet fart in an elevator"
The Lisa was a wonderfully-engineered machine, built (and priced) for business; with an integrated Office suite, Suspend/Resume for all open Applications and Documents, the first consumer-ready GUI, and much more; the Newton was a game-changer; but suffered from bad management at Apple at the time; WTF is the "i-ball"?
Congrats Apple on your new adventures..
I also find it funny that up-untill recently, Samsung made the apple chips.. Now that they are out of the loop.. lets see what happens..
thanks
Samsung NEVER Designed Apple's CPUs; they were (and are now again) Apple's "Fab House" for CPUs. BIG Difference.
TSMC was briefly the Fab House for the A8 SoC; but Apple went back to Samsung after that experiment. Actually, I think that Samsung was even listed as a "Second Source" Fab for the A8, and I'll bet that TSMC is listed as the "Second Source" on the A9.
Such is the way when it comes to custom IC manufacturing.
There's no decrease in battery life from the old 6 to the new one (from multiple reports and my own personal experience verifies).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>In Geekbench, the iPhone 6s Plus performed second only to Samsung's newest Galaxy models
So it came in second! Yay!
I'm not sure where you got your figures (since there is no citation, Yay!); but this article claims that the iPhone 6s "Obliterates" the competition. And the GeekBench 3 scores in that article would tend to support that claim.
I got my figures from the article. I see a headline proclaiming product A to be the best and I scroll down and the first figures I find are of product B being better.
4996, 4952, 4824 and 4799 are all bigger numbers than 4379, yet they put the 4379 first in the chart, whereas all the other entries in that chart are ranked by geekbench score. This was not an objective exposition of the data. Tufte would been spinning in his grave if he was dead.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Honestly, there was only a 100 year period where synchronous direct speech audio communication was the norm. In 1900 with a population of almost 80 million, only a few million had a telephone. By the year 2000, we already say a generation that was reverting back to the way humans had communicated through much of history, writing and sending asynchronously, such as one does with texting and email. The paradigm shift, so to speak, that made the smart phone a success, was the realization that for most people synchronous verbal communication was not of primary importance. Sure, a lot of people might want to make a video for later use, but I wonder how many people who can use Facetime or the like really use it. Furthermore, he rise of the answering machine tells us that the phone as a critical mode of communication is not all it was cracked up to be.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'm struggling to understand how apple get away with not announcing any info about the codes, the cache size, memory bandwidth etc. Surely on a mobile device with limited power, optimisation of applications is a priority. How do people manage this without any idea of the physical architecture of the machine they are developing for?
Maybe i'm just old school, but knowing what hardware you are targeting is almost the first bit of info which informs an efficient use of the resources available.
Ah, you must be nearly as old as I!
Nowadays, that stuff is almost always left up to the Optimization "pass" of the Compiler. These young whippersnappers wouldn't know how to code tightly in Assembly if their life depended on it.
And have you ever coded in ARM Assembler?!? Talk about an instruction set that is optimized for Compilers, not humans!!! I did do some stuff in ARMv7 Assembly; but I wouldn't have enjoyed coding a bunch of stuff in it (and I LOVE coding in Assembly Language!).
And as far as "efficient use of resources" goes: Again, that is largely a consideration of the past. These systems have SOOOOO much available, well, everything that, in a lot of use-cases, you can just code as if the sky's the limit. Because it usually is...
You mean I should be like my brother who doesn't own an iPhone? He lives in a large house that he bought at the height of the real estate market, has an underwater mortgage, pays both the mortgage payment and the loan payment from his wife's 401K for down payment, and can't retire because he can't sell the house. On top of that, he buys $180 designer blue jeans from Macy's and leases a new car every three years. He's living the American Dream — and paying the price for the privilege.
I gave up the American Dream years ago by living a frugal lifestyle. The iPhone is the only "luxury" item that I own. Although my brother looks down on me for being "poor," I'm far more happier than he is since my money isn't tied up in competing with the Jones.
Is that a euphemism for masturbation?
I have a private office with real walls and a door. Nobody sits next to me.
There's a guy down the hall with a private office with real walls and a door. We can all tell when he's on a call using his speakerphone because we hear him all the way down the hall.
It would bother me less if they just put it on speaker.
And it would bother more people even less if they heard neither side of the call.
The single-core figure is listed in first place because it's the most relevant predictor of phone performance. Very few applications are written to be parallel--they're mostly games with physics simulations and the like. Even then, you have to remember that Samsung packs 8 cores into those phones and the A9 only has two and is clocked lower. That means that not only is the A9 more efficient per tick, it's also significantly more efficient per core. That means better output for less power draw.
So yes, the multi-core scores are lower, there's no doubt. The only thing that means is that in that one artificial benchmark, the bar is shorter for the A9 than for the other phones. In nearly every other benchmark--and most importantly, in benchmarks meant to simulate real-world situations--it outperforms the other CPUs by a wide margin.
Under the Sprint iPhone Forever program, the monthly lease is $22 per month for the 16GB iPhone 6s. (The 128GB iPhone 6s+ probably has a higher lease payment.) Since I've been a Sprint customer for 20+ years, I get a loyalty credit that reduces my lease payment to $5 per month until I upgrade to the next iPhone. I also get a 10% discount on my monthly bill for being a AAA member, which cancels out the lease payment entirely. In short, I get the current iPhone for FREE!
http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/sprint-customers-can-upgrade-their-iphone-anytime-included-in-their-monthly-rate.htm
That's not particularly interesting by itself; although it does hint at valid question -- is fewer faster cores better or worse than more slower cores a better strategy in a smart phone? Real world use will answer that... benchmarks not really.
My first question was, is the phone software rigged to identify benchmark code and execute it faster? (E.g., lower precision math, pre-configured answers, etc.) Like the VWs ...? Will the iPhone 6s emit scads of nitrogen oxides in your face while you use it, unless you're running a benchmark on it?
Many years ago, I recall hearing about the GNU C compiler, I think it was, that recognized when it was compiling one of the standard benchmark packages and highly optimized the output because it knew what it was supposed to be.
http://techrights.org/2013/08/...
https://groups.google.com/foru...
Apple's 'bloatware' is most irritating for the screen space that it takes up more than anything else. It's otherwise generally useful software if you don't already have a favourite app to do that thing. The Podcasts app on the iPhone is, apparently, basically the most used podcast listening app there is. The power of defaults is really strong, and a lot of those applications get used more than you'd expect. In terms of space, it takes up around 100MB, last I checked, which is a pretty trivial amount, even on a 16GB unit.
1. Javascript benchmarks are a real-world test, since these phones are constantly executing javascript when you use the browser. What you say is true, though--Apple has an advantage because it has both the best processor and best engine for executing javascript, so it's not showing exactly how powerful the CPU is. But that's what the synthetic benchmark is for.
2. The display on the iPhone isn't 'low res', it's just a lower resolution than the one on other phones. But that's a relevant trade-off, because it means that Apple can push those pixels faster, for less battery cost than other phones. It's a calculated trade-off, because nearly nobody can tell the difference. The games on the iPhone will look just as good or better. Don't blame Apple for not throwing pixels at a problem that doesn't exist.
If you go into settings and turn on "Reduce Motion" it will get rid of all the annoying animations and the phone will feel twice as fast. I have no idea why Apple won't let the stupid transitions go.
While you may disagree whether the A9 is the best chip, it's a fact that Apple designed it. Denying it shows your disillusions. As for "buying" other companies and the putting their name on it, you merely don't want to acknowledge Apple has actually built things. Like many other companies they buy smaller ones for their tech, patents, people, etc. But they also spend years after the purchase making things.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If you're a developer, you sign up for the program and learn the ecosystem. If you're a consumer, you don't care about the hardware specs and want a good user interface experience.
Because 99% of humanity doesn't even know what any of that stuff means. They just want to know if it's fast and does what they want it to do. Just like most people don't give a shit how many valves or overhead cams their car has. They just want to know if it's fast and reliable. That's what the tech world will never understand about Apple. It's not for the 1% comprising the tech community.
And yet they fiddled the rank sorting. That's a VW move.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Spoken like a true apple shill. Apple use ARM CPUs, an open CPU design.
While the ARM CPU architecture itself is essentially "Open", Apple, like Qualcomm and Samsung (and VERY few others) are actually licensed to "roll their own" ARM Designs, IIRC.
And, BTW, do you know who has more years of ARM design and development knowledge than pretty much everyone besides the Acorn Group?
They've been using other to design and fab them for most of their iThing history, only changing after they bought an entire fucking corporation company that did it. So spare us your zealot bullshit.
Are you talking about PA Semi? They bought that Fabless Design Company for its designs that Apple hoped would get them to a Mobile PowerPC chip, not for its ARM expertise. PA Semi never could have done any "Fab", and as far as Design, I am pretty sure that is actually Apple. Apple has been in the custom chip design business for a few decades now; so spare us your hater bullshit.
Buying a complete company and sticking your logo on the outside doesn't mean they're the ones doing the work. Just wait until the existing plant needs retooling, that'll cost them billions and they'll go back to China fab plants expecting Samsung & Co to make them once more.
Again, you are sadly misinformed, brother hater.
Apple used Samsung to Fab (only!) its SoCs. Then, when they suspected Samsung of ripping-of elements of Apple's Design, and because of the Apple v. Samsung v. Apple v. Samsung v... lawsuits, they tried to "uplift" their second-source supplier, TSMC. That must not have worked out as well as Apple hoped; because for the A9, they seem to be back to Samsung for the Fab work (probably with TSMC as an alternate-source).
So by your logic, Lenovo doesn't make PCs, and Google doesn't make Android or smartphones? Apple has never fabbed their own chips, and they still don't. They design them in-house. Yeah, they bought companies to get the resources to do that, in 2008 (P.A. Semi) and 2010 (Intrinsity). I think that 5 to 7 years is enough time that you can now consider Apple SoCs to be "in-house".
They started out by using off-the-shelf designs (licensed ARM cores) in their own SOCs (the A4 and A5) to build experience, and then graduated to a custom CPU (licensed ARM instruction set) with the A6. They're now on their fourth-generation custom processor, so it's not like they are new at this.
Did you use the A9 processor?
LOL! Good one!
To be fair, some people still think the new Apple TV should have been 4K capable even though most TVs, services, and content do not really support it yet.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So the upshot... Apple 6s has better graphics performance than a phone released 6 months ago. The new CPU is good... better at single threaded than anything out right now due to faster cores, but it still lags in multithreaded due to only having 2 cores despite them being faster, and I don't know which core strategy ends up being actually better.
Past two well-designed CPU cores (which apparently the A9 has), it is largely just a dick-measuring contest.
The reason being that, almost NO mobile software is actually designed to take advantage of "relatively-massive" parallelism. And even with something like Apple's GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) (which I am pretty sure iOS doesn't support) to automagically dole-out threads to multiple CPU cores, the point of diminishing returns with multiple cores happens pretty quickly. So, in most cases, the extra cores are either at idle, or kept alive just enough to eat some extra battery life.
How does the battery compare? I was happy with an iphone 3GS years ago, then I was disappointed with my S3 battery, but am quite happy with my current S5. I expect I'd be happy with the battery on an iphone 6s.
Well, if it is anything like my iPhone 6 plus, the battery life will be stellar. I never get less than three days' use, and most often, about 5 days.
And since this is a "die-shrink" to 10 nm, I would expect even better battery life, since the battery-eating Miller-effect (charging and discharging all those tiny little junction capacitances). THAT's what actually consumes battery in a FET-based CPU topology. And the smaller the junctions, the smaller the junction-capacitance (which also helps with speed and heat-dissipation; because during "Miller Time" (as we used to call it at one job), the FETs are actually in a LINEAR state.
Apple designed it. The same way I design a meal if I go to the buffet and load up my tray.
Like Qualcomm designs Snapdragon (custom core and custom GPU, manufactured by Samsung or TSMC or whoever, etc). Like NVidia designs Tegra (stock core, custom GPU, manufactured by Samsung or TSMC) . Compared to A9 (custom core, stock GPU, manufactured by TSMC or Samsung). Which of these facts would you like to deny?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Why is this modded troll? I use PCs with every interface possible, Linux, BSD, OSX, Windows, OS/2 (yup!) and have used Blackberry and iPhones since they were launched, now have iPhone, Android (nice dual-SIM Chinese generic) and a Nokia Windows phone (not bad, not great)
So I guess pretty neutral here, and maybe slightly experienced..agree with OP that iPhone interface is going backwards...and as others more loquacious than I have noted, same seems to be true of various desktops and browsers.
Different =/= better. Either improve it or leave it alone, especially if you don't understand why it was done that way in the first place...
But then you'll get me going about that twat Poettering...
The reason being that, almost NO mobile software is actually designed to take advantage of "relatively-massive" parallelism.
I'm sure I'm not running anything individually that needs 8 cores. But I'm running a hell of a lot more than 2 threads. I agree the benefit drops off pretty rapidly... but I'm not convinced 2 is really the ideal number either; and I think the best solution is probably some sort of asymmetric solution, where the foreground interactive app is running on a couple fast cores, while the rest of the system lives on lower power cores...and it doesn't have to wake up a fast core just to stay in contact with the cellular network, do tower handoffs, and receive SMS messages, email...
Or not. Maybe the extra complexity of that loses you any advantages. I don't think its really a settled question.
Well, if it is anything like my iPhone 6 plus, the battery life will be stellar. I never get less than three days' use, and most often, about 5 days.
Yeah, that would be fine. Successive generations of iphone/ios have not always been an improvement on their predecessors though. But I expect the 6S to be good... adequate performance has been with us for a while, and the focus on efficiency has been everyone's priority lately.
"Apple is also claiming a level of gaming performance on par with dedicated game consoles"
Which is just one more reason I can't understand why they didn't put this in the new Apple TV, and instead put in the older A8.
The resolution of the iPhone is basically 1080p, and according to the benches, the A9 can drive it to (as they put it) "console level performance".
The A8 can't. And since that's what's going into the ATV, that means the games on the new ATV will *not* have "console level performance".
WHY?!?!
No, don't say it's production quantities. Apple will sell 20x iPhones and iPads as ATVs (or more), this is a rounding error.
Form factor changed too, so if you needed more room for heat or power, that's not an issue either.
I strongly suspect OS X already runs on ARM and is doing that as we speak.
I wonder if Apple would ever consider moving OS/X away from Intel and over to ARM, allowing them to use their A series CPUs? If not, why not?
Other people have asked whether Apple will switch Macs to an ARM processor...
But at this point an iPhone 6s is powerful enough that with a bluetooth keyboard and video output it could be turned into a reasonably powerful desktop computer at minimal cost. Or they could build a laptop shell with keyboard, trackpad and display and a slot to push in your iPhone to power it; no idea how much this could be built for.
And even with something like Apple's GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) (which I am pretty sure iOS doesn't support)
What's your next guess?
GCD has been on iOS since iOS 4. We're up to iOS 9 now.
Any iOS app that uses AVMedia, the UIKit, Core Animation, and the rest of the standard frameworks benefits from GCD.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."