Apple's A11 Bionic Chip In iPhone 8 and iPhone X Smokes Android Handsets In Early Benchmarks (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Many of the new releases of Apple's iPhone bring with it a new A-series SoC (System on Chip) and Apple is keeping that tradition with the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X. Each of those handsets sports a custom ARM-based A11 Bionic processor with six cores -- four high performance cores and two power efficiency cores. The two power efficiency cores will perform the bulk medial chores to maintain battery life, which Apple says will be 2 hours longer than the iPhone 7. However, for heavier workloads, the chip is capable of not only firing up its four high performance cores, but also all six cores simultaneously. If early leaked benchmarks are any indication, the A11 Bionic is going to be a benchmark-busting beast of a chip. A set of just-posted Geekbench scores reinforces that notion. Just prior to Apple announcing its newest iPhone models, Geekbench's database was updated with a new entry for an "iPhone 10,5" which we assume to be the iPhone X. Based on the scores recorded, in this one benchmark at least, the A11 CPU powering the iPhone X appears to be 50 to 70 percent faster than any Android handset on the market currently, even those powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 835.

Comments

eh geek bench bs

[serviscope_minor]

It's a geek bench result.
That means it's crap. They're closed source and completely unverified and always give insanely high scores to iOS, even compared to maxed out server cpus.

Non news.

Re:eh geek bench bs

[that this is not und]

Android doesn't run it's apps on a java interpreter.

Re:eh geek bench bs

[LiENUS]

Android doesn't run it's apps on a java interpreter.

Hell for that matter apple compiles its apps on llvm, guess what android compiles its apps on nowadays... llvm

Re: eh geek bench bs

[TheRaven64]

They're made in the same fabs, but they're not the same cores. Apple designs their own cores (they're an ARM architecture licensee, which means that they're allowed to build chips however they want as long as they pass ARM's architecture conformance tests). Their CPU design team was originally bought from PA-Semi, who designed low-power, high-performance PowerPC chips, and has been growing steadily for the last decade. Apple doesn't license these cores to anyone else.

Re:eh geek bench bs

[TheRaven64]

Hell for that matter apple compiles its apps on llvm, guess what android compiles its apps on nowadays... llvm

Nope. The initial versions of ART used LLVM, but the Google folk couldn't get the resource requirements down enough to run on the phone (no idea why they don't do the compilation on the app store and cache the results, rather than warming the planet), so they moved to a completely different infrastructure. Modern ART has two compilers (that they're trying really hard to unify). There's a JIT that runs when you first start an app. This collects profiling information, but doesn't do much optimisation initially. It will then generate optimised code for some of the hot paths. The profiling information is recorded and overnight (or at any period when the phone is plugged in but not used) the AOT compiler starts in the background and will generate optimised binaries. Unfortunately, the AOT compiler doesn't allow on-stack replacement and so the JIT can occasionally give better code for hot loops (it can perform speculative optimisations that are correct 99.9% of the time and then deoptimise in the case where they're incorrect, whereas the AOT compiler has to do the slower optimisation that's correct 100% of the time).

I think there's also an interpreter for fast start, but I lose track (the ART team keeps changing their mind about whether an interpreter is a good idea).

Re:eh geek bench bs

[Austerity Empowers]

Apple's CPU's belong to the ARM

Do you understand the difference between architecture and implementation? Two people can implement the same architecture and get very different performance.

Intel (used to) love flogging AMD for having the same architecture but significantly worse performance and horrible power. It was a little unfair in that Intel has a state of the art fab that is often the very best in the business, while AMD had to use legacy technology from a less top tier fab on an older process node, but that wasn't the entire source of the discrepancy. In this case, Apple's rivals absolutely do have access to the same top tier processes, originally Apple had its main rival fab its chips! The difference was purely implementation of the architecture.

The best example I can give you is that the architecture defines say, a 32-bit multiply instruction. It defines what the result will be for any given combination of multiplier/multiplicand, including edge cases, and overflow cases, etc. It says nothing about how you implement that instruction, only that you must be able to handle it, and it must produce a given result. You *could* implement it using an adder and a for loop like we learned in grade school. Even running at 1GHz on the very best process, you will have made the slowest multiplier in the industry, and this very much would show on any given benchmark that used multiplies in its tests (all of them).

Figuring out clever ways of implementing that instruction that are fast, low power and consume low silicon geometry is what logic designers/computer engineers spend their days on. It makes a huge difference, and what you should read here is that Apple has beaten its competitors pretty thoroughly on implementation of ARM, and that implementation is entirely owned by Apple and requires significant investment from its competitors to keep up with.

The message to customers is the A11 chip is the best out there, the message that investors won't want to hear is that in-house design is beating the shitty ODM model to small bits. Google and Microsoft are both looking at Apple and thinking they need to design their own chips too, that Samsung, Huawei (Chinese for "state sponsored spies and world-class fuckups") etc. are not invested in their products.

Re:eh geek bench bs

[TheFakeTimCook]

Back then, phones were severly limited by their CPU. This isn't the case anymore, so nobody cares.

When the power is there uses will be found. Like good AR, and like 4K HDR video at 60 fps. That's something that until now was found only in high end professional gear, and certainly not in a phone.

Saying phones are "fast enough" is like sticking your head in the sand.

I wholeheartedly agree!

And anyone who watched the Keynote the other day, and saw what Apple is capable of doing with ARKit and the facial-mapping (Amimoji Poop notwithstanding!), has just GOT to stop and think, as I did, "In REAL-TIME? On a PHONE?!?"

Start watching at time-index 1:32:00

https://www.apple.com/apple-ev...

Even the stupid Animoji stuff is pretty cool, though, from a technical standpoint.

Watch the Cat Animoji accurately track and display Craig's "Angry Face", squinching up it's cheeks and eyes just like he was doing, and, the Unicorn Animoji, accurately tracking and displaying the "lip-flapping" thing that horses do, again in real-time.

Yes, as Craig rhetorically asked when showing-off the Animojies and the "Face Mask" stuff, "So, whaddya do with the world's most sophisticated face-tracking system?", these are admittedly silly applications of some pretty cool technology; but the point is, they also clearly show just how good that technology is.

And. On a PHONE... It's just plain amazing.

Of course it is....

[MikeDataLink]

New iPhone is launched:
Apple Fanbois: New iPhone is faster than the Samsung!
Android Fanbois: It doesn't matter. So many other things are more important the processor speed!!!!

New Android phone is launched:
Android Fanbois: New Samsung is faster than the iPhone!
Apple Fanbois: It doesn't matter. So many other things are more important the processor speed!!!!

Re:Of course it is....

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW your second case does not happen very often.

Like it or not, Apple's single core performance usually kills anything on the market running Android, and typically the multicore performance of Android phones has not been enough to match the interactive speed of iOS either; responsiveness and smoothness usually lag behind.

I speak as someone who would actually be happy if this was not the case. And if Android vendors were remotely as focussed on end-user security. There's no way I'll purchase a Samsung thing for my house for a while.

Captcha: Paranoia. What this isn't.

Re:Of course it is....

[dreamchaser]

Here I thought he was talking about a bundle of firewood.

Re:Of course it is....

[Kjella]

Well, just recognizing that Apple does some innovative hardcore engineering seems to be hard for some. There are always those that claim Apple's business model is wrapping things others have created in white plastic, marketing it to hipsters and selling it at double price. Which is occasionally true but they do have some pretty impressive home brew like the CPUs, Secure Enclave (when the FBI whines they've done something right) and they've fronted some technology like high DPI displays and fingerprint scanning making it mainstream. By the time it's passed through Apple's marketing machine nerds seem to hate it no matter what.

Re: Of course it is....

[that this is not und]

Apple has hated nerds since the Mac introduction in 1984. The Mac was purpose-built as the anti-nerd computer. Jobs made a big deal of that at the time. They were in the process of killing the Apple ][ culture.

Re:That nice...

[MikeDataLink]

How many professional uses do you use your Android for?

Forget multi-core - single-core is where it smokes

[JoeyRox]

The most impressive aspect of Apple's ARM chips is in their single-core performance, which is arguably a more useful, real-world metric since many common tasks in apps are principally single-threaded. By that measure Apple is more than 2x faster than Samsung's S8.

Re: That nice...

[clonehappy]

Did you just arrive out of the DeLorean, doc? Android and iOS are the only two competitors in the phone/tablet space. If iOS is unsuitable for the GP's uses, the parent poster wanted to know what he's using Android for, since that's the only other option when it comes to mainstream supported mobile devices other than laptops. And since the A11 Bionic chip doesn't power a laptop, the reason the question was asked is plainly obvious.

Or are you just being obtuse?

Re:No Surprise

[baker_tony]

Cheap toys outsell expensive toys, what's your point?
If you're trying to suggest that everyone who buys a cheap Android phone chooses to do that because they don't want iOS rather than can't afford an Apple phone, I'd say you're incredibly incorrect.

Actual results

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Can be seen here. And here's a comparison with the Intel Core i5 2500 which is still considered a wonderful desktop CPU.

Re:Actual results

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Mind that the x86 CPU in this comparison has 95W TDP, while the Apple A11 consumes less than 5W. Now, that is real progress. Intel should be ashamed.

Re:Actual results

[guacamole]

1. Sadly, the improvement of Intel chips since the Sandy Bridge was ridiculously slow. Barely anyone owning a Sandy Bridge i5 wanted to upgrade to a Haswel or Ivy Bridge. They all have the same single core scores, barely improving 5-10 percent year after year.

2. We're talking about single core scores. The performance of a single Apple _mobile_ core is basically comparable to that of a single desktop Intel i5 core that consumes 5 times more power. Intel should be ashamed. I think this is the result of lack of the competition in the desktop CPU market for many years until AMD Zen arrived.

Re:New phone should be faster.

[Anubis IV]

No, it doesn't. Several Android handsets are ahead of the iPhone 7's scores at this point. Which I know, because I just looked them up in the interest of fact-checking myself before making the exact same claim you just made.

That said, it did take Samsung quite awhile to pass it.

Re:No Surprise

[Njorthbiatr]

I mean, that's cute, but you're wrong. That CPU will crush the iPhone's new fancy processor in a way that isn't even a competition. You should really stop trusting Geekbench scores, as they intentionally take TDP out of the equation.

The i7 chip can go forever without really thermal throttling in most laptop setups, even under high stress. The iPhone sleeps the CPU in between clock cycles to intentionally let it cool down. Further, the iPhone is running highly optimized software with very specific limitations. It doesn't need to be good at general tasks in the same way the i7 does. Sure it can do cool 4k video stuff... With how many codecs? Yeah, that's what specific hardware gets you, very fast specific things.

It's a great phone processor, but any i7 is going to leave it in the dust in any respectable comparison that doesn't artificially alter benchmarks to make things seem better than they are.

Re:No Surprise

[dreamchaser]

My Pixel XL was not cheap and blows the doors off the iPhone 7 it replaced. Smoother and more useful. That's just my particular opinion and of course anecdotal, but you are in error if you think all Android phones are 'cheap toys'.

Re:No Surprise

[baker_tony]

Can't you put 1 and 1 together?
The reason why there are a shit load more Android phones out there are because there are a shit load of them that are cheaper than Apples, just like there are a shit load more toys (like plastic kids toys) out there than expensive kids toys.
Do you have stats showing the proportion of phones that are Android from a certain manufacturer vs iOS that are priced the same as Apple's phones? I bet it's a lot closer than comparing every single Android phone from every single manufacturer in the world that makes them to just Apple.

Re:No Surprise

[zedaroca]

Of course not everyone, that's a strawman. But to try to imply that a significant portion would rather have iOS is also incredibly incorrect. Most people who buys cheap Androids are either fine or would rather have an expensive Android. People who really want an iphone are buying 4s and 5s iphones now. I know a bunch of them, it's sad.

Can't we just be amazed at this tech?

[MyDixieWrecked]

I see a lot of comments on here calling these benchmarks artificial and fake or whatever, but can we take a moment to think about the power of these devices that we have in our pockets? They're pushing more pixels and flopping more teras than our top of the line gaming pcs were 10 years ago. And they fit in our pockets. Couple this with the fact that these devices are getting faster and smaller and battery life is still improving generation over generation.

Slashdot has always been a tinkerer's haven and relatively anti-apple, but their year over year feat of pushing the envelope is impressive. Honestly, all the competition really needs to get the lead out. There's more engineers not at apple than at apple and they're sitting on ass.

So stop blaming Apple for taking the talent or improving on what's there. And stop treating this shit like some religious war. You don't need to bash something to make yourself feel better about what tech you use. Different people value different things. Chill the fuck out and be happy you're around for all this amazing tech, from Samsung, huawei, apple, and the future underdogs that wil become the next number one. Shit is only gonna get better, maybe you can be a part of it. Do your best work and make the world a better place.

Dalvik == java interpreter, parent should be -2

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible to compile objective c as android ndk (native apk) same as C/C++, but usually most coders wind up depending on many system java functions anyway because android is inherently a java-based OS upon a Linux kernel

Re:That nice...

[brantondaveperson]

I get what you're saying, but if I have a colleague who insists on sending me compressed archives of word documents, I'm going to tell them to stop, and use google docs, or something similar, instead. If there's a worse way of collaborating than email, I'm yet to find it.

I stopped caring about scores past

[guacamole]

I stopped caring about scores past when iPhone 5s or Snapdragon 800+ android phones hit the market. There is plenty of performance there to do any task that +95 percent of users need on their phone. 99% of the time, your smartphone is still just a fancy messenger and a web browser (because most mobile apps are just a wrapper around a web site).

It's of course nice that Apple gives you so much performance, but these days Chinaphones that cost under 250USD and carry the specs that are sufficient for most uses out there are just too seductive for a lot of people

That's wonderful

[DrXym]

So if I drop a stupid amount of money on a phone it can be one which packs a CPU way in excess of anything required of it. Great.

Re:Forget multi-core - single-core is where it smo

[guacamole]

I gotta say, this was a truly uninformed comment. For one, Apple devices use memory far more efficiently than Android. Let's not start again the discussion about all the pros and cons of Java applications, but the truth is that Java runs slower and devours more memory than native built apps. An apple device with 2GB of RAM can perform just as fine as an Android phone with 4GB. On the other hand, an Android phone with only 2GB of RAM can barely multitask. True story.

Re:Forget multi-core - single-core is where it smo

[guacamole]

And PS: you're dead wrong to say that single-core performance is not that important. It's probably still the MOST IMPORTANT metric. That's because there are whole lot of algorithms that inherently are impossible to run in parallel. Moreover, even if your algorithm can be parallelized, there is a limit to how much multiple cores can be useful. To find out, look up the concept of Amdahl's law on wikipedia. This is why for the past decade or so, four core Intel chips smoked AMD's eight core chips, and Intel's two core chips smoked AMD's four core chips. Simply, AMD had poor single core performance, and throwing there more cores wouldn't help.

Re: No Surprise

[jeremyp]

With the current Xcode I can target any version of iOS back to version 8. I think that's the one that introduced 64 bit. So I can write an app that will use the latest shiny stuff if it is available but will also run on older iPhones. If you want to continue to support older versions of iOS you do have to keep older versions of Xcode around which means keeping an older version of OS X around. Unfortunately for people with phones that can't run iOS 8 there aren't many of them so I guess they do get shitcanned.

More importantly, I can write an app today that targets iOS 11 which is not released yet and know that a pretty sizeable percentage of my market will be on iOS 11 by the time I release the app. The culture is that most people upgrade because it's very easy to do so. Unfortunately, the Android model makes it extremely difficult to emulate that because most of the manufacturers don't really give a toss.

Re: I don't give a fuck about artifical benchmark

[cayenne8]

For anyone paying attention, Apple is famous for selling overpriced gear

Well, they seem to have a good idea of the maximum $$ they can sell their products for, and that, after all, is the main reason for a business, right?

And, its not like a person can go out and build their own phones from parts from NewEgg, right?

Apple is the go to brand for people wanting a status statement instead of just a computer or a phone

I dunno about that....phones (even smart phones) these days are pretty much a commodity possession, they really aren't a fashion or status symbol or statement. Nobody really notices what phone or computer someone is using....unless they are wanting to steal it.

Also, if anyone have been paying attention, people with no clue about computers tend to prefer Apple products.

You did hit the nail on the head with the one.....and that actually is a positive I think, apparently Apple knows how to make user friendly products for the masses that aren't tech inclined as their primary interest.

I say use the right tool for the job....I work mostly with Linux and OS X at home. I do like OS X in that for common uses, it is easy to use with the GUI, but when I want to, it is easy to pull up a command line and do some real Unix style work.

It is for everyone? No...

But obviously the company is doing something right. And if you can't afford their products, nothing wrong with getting something similar somewhere else.

Not everyone can drive a Porsche either, right?