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Apple, Huawei Both Claim First 7nm Smartphone Chips (ieee.org)
When Apple unveiled the iPhone Xs and Xs Max earlier today, it said they will contain the A12 Bionic chip -- the first smartphone processor to be made using 7nm manufacturing technology. But, as IEEE Spectrum points out, Huawei made the same claim late last month when it unveiled the Kirin 980 system on a chip. From the report: Apple's new A12 Bionic is made up of four CPU cores, six GPU cores, and an 8-core "neural engine" to handle machine learning tasks. According to Apple, the neural engine can perform 5 trillion operations per second -- an eight-fold boost -- and consumes one-tenth the energy of its previous incarnation. Of the GPU cores, two are designed for performance and are 15 percent faster than their predecessors. The other four are built for efficiency, with a 50 percent improvement on that metric. The system can decide which combination of the three types of cores will run a task most efficiently.
Huawei's chip, the Kirin 980, was unveiled at the IFA 2018 in Berlin on 31 August. It packs 6.9 billion transistors onto a one-square-centimeter chip. The company says it's the first chip to use processors based on Arm's Cortex-A76, which is 75 percent more powerful and 58 percent more efficient compared to its predecessors the A73 and A75. It has 8 cores, two big, high-performance ones based on the A76, two middle-performance ones that are also A76s, and four smaller, high-efficiency cores based on a Cortex-A55 design. The system runs on a variation of Arm's big.LITTLE architecture, in which immediate, intensive workloads are handled by the big processors while sustained background tasks are the job of the little ones. Kirin 980's GPU component is called the Mali-G76, and it offers a 46 percent performance boost and a 178 percent efficiency improvement from the previous generation. The chip also has a dual-core neural processing unit that more than doubles the number of images it can recognize to 4,500 images per minute. Apple will be the first to bring the 7nm chip in volume to market, as Huawei is expected to to start shipping its Mate 20 series phone (with the 7nm chip) a month or two later. Qualcomm also announced late last month that it's begun sampling its 7nm next-gen Snapdragon SoC. As IEEE Spectrum notes, the real winner is TSMC, which is making all three processors.
Huawei's chip, the Kirin 980, was unveiled at the IFA 2018 in Berlin on 31 August. It packs 6.9 billion transistors onto a one-square-centimeter chip. The company says it's the first chip to use processors based on Arm's Cortex-A76, which is 75 percent more powerful and 58 percent more efficient compared to its predecessors the A73 and A75. It has 8 cores, two big, high-performance ones based on the A76, two middle-performance ones that are also A76s, and four smaller, high-efficiency cores based on a Cortex-A55 design. The system runs on a variation of Arm's big.LITTLE architecture, in which immediate, intensive workloads are handled by the big processors while sustained background tasks are the job of the little ones. Kirin 980's GPU component is called the Mali-G76, and it offers a 46 percent performance boost and a 178 percent efficiency improvement from the previous generation. The chip also has a dual-core neural processing unit that more than doubles the number of images it can recognize to 4,500 images per minute. Apple will be the first to bring the 7nm chip in volume to market, as Huawei is expected to to start shipping its Mate 20 series phone (with the 7nm chip) a month or two later. Qualcomm also announced late last month that it's begun sampling its 7nm next-gen Snapdragon SoC. As IEEE Spectrum notes, the real winner is TSMC, which is making all three processors.
I'm the first to announce 1nm, 24 cores, 32 GPUs, and 16 neural engines.
Let's see who gets to market first. That's what matters.
Any real world exames of what will be done with that?
your AI can now do photoshop AI off line and also helkp you find cats in your photos.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Huawei is first.
Also, no-one cares.
Yes, Apple released new products today. Do I really need to see the specs listed over and over and over and over and over again! Its a phone that is marginally better than the last one, and the next one will be a little bit better. If you think its anything more than this, your just fooling yourself.
Born in Jamaica. (true fact, look it up)
I want to point out that you have never, ever seen Donald Trump's birth certificate. Maybe he hates immigrants the way Republican senators hate gays: by being one of them
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
How complex have the codecs become that I need a neural engine to watch keyboard cat?
the real winner is TSMC, which is making all three processors.
And the real loser is Intel, if these 7nm parts actually do come to market in volume without yield issues. Nobody knows that for sure until it actually happens, at least nobody who is talking. We will know the answer in a month or so, and then we will know that Intel really did manage to turn its historical two year process lead into a one year lag.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The complexity of the physics and chemistry, the enormous manufacturing engineering effort and the management coordination required to direct the billions of dollars in capital necessary to achieve that is mind-boggling. Six point nine billion transistors onto a one-square-centimeter chip. It's at times like this when it seems we are finally living in the future. Electric cars, re-usable space rockets, 3D printed titanium.
Meanwhile, FEMA finally found the 20,000 pallets of potable water bottles it shipped to Puerto Rico. On the airfield where it left them. After the expiration date.
Without devolving into absolutist Ayn Rand libertarian zealots, maybe we can all agree that there is something to this invisible hand, free market, capitalism stuff.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
If not, then what are we talking about?
Nice and all that, but Huawei lost a lot of goodwill by removing bootloader unlock - something necessary for things like effective ad-blocking and extending the life of the device.
WRONG. The shortcomings in US health care is due to LACK of free markets ("free" doesn't mean free of regulation), not free markets themselves
I agree from the point of view that the "demand" in the health sector basically isn't free but locked : you don't get to decide when you're sick or not, but private companies (inssurances, private hospitals, etc.) can freely decide how exactly they'll fuck you up.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Let's go! It's a race!
7nm process sooner than expected could rise the sales of the electronic devices!
The $$$ cheese $$$ to share is ready for the competition!
Born in Jamaica. (true fact, look it up)
I want to point out that you have never, ever seen Donald Trump's birth certificate.
Heh. We haven't seen his his tax returns yet either. And I gather you didn't look it it, eh?
Maybe he hates immigrants the way Republican senators hate gays: by being one of them
Maybe. He also seems to hate women, by being a big pussy. And liars.
MAGA
Why on earth would anyone name their product "bionic" if it didn't have something that connected to or operated in cooperation with a living organism?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The living organism is you. Every day the hardware and software cybernet is growing. It interfaces computers, phones and other network connected devices to the human brains so that it can learn and grow. Every day it becomes more knowledgable and bigger. The only things the cybernet needd from you are information, physical maintenance an an energy supply . Advances in AI mean that that the cybernet will become less dependent on humans for those things. After all, you mostly eat, sleep and poo. You're simply not that efficient.
PS. next time you see someone glued to your phone... Just remember that the cybernet is sucking data from their brains.Eventually that data become part of the machine, while the weak and feeble human mind probably just forgets it.The cybernet has memory banks that can be programmed to never forget.
That's not bionic, that sounds more parasitic.
Besides, using an operating system to accept input from a human doesn't make that system bionic, or else every home computer ever made would qualify as bionic.
"Bionic" is a portmanteau of biology and electronic. Anything that doesn't encompass those two, functioning together as if they were a *SINGLE* thing, not merely one accessing the other, is not bionic. The classical example is of course electronic artificial limbs, but there are others. I once read about a guy who implanted an RFID reader in his body, and over time his brain adapted to the signals it was receiving from the reader so that he could actually understand some of it. That would be an example of bionics as well.
I'm betting whoever came up with "Bionic" for the name of the chip probably didn't realize that word had any particular meaning beyond sounding like a cool science fictiony term that might impress people.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Perhaps because it contains a core for handling artificial neural networks?
if it didn't have something that connected to or operated in cooperation with a living organism?
Because they don't find that a fitting definition for bionic?
In german bionic means: mimicked after a living organism, not interacting/cooperating with one.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.