“When Apple announced that its iPhone 5s featured a 64-bit ‘desktop class’ architecture, the press focused intensely on the ’64-bit’ aspect of the chip design,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “While the move to ARM’s new, clean 64-bit instruction set certainly helped, the real ‘magic’ was actually in some of the extremely smart design choices that Apple made when architecting the Cyclone CPU found inside of the A7. Thanks to a deep investigation by Anandtech, we now have even more evidence that Apple blew away the competition.”
“In the vast majority of benchmarks, Apple’s 1.3 GHz Cyclone core offered performance that was roughly in line with a 2.4 GHz Intel Silvermont and meaningfully higher than the various ARM Cortex A15 and Qualcomm Krait-based processors per processor core,” Eassa writes. “Of course, Qualcomm and Intel are able to put four of these cores in roughly the same thermal envelope that Apple was able to put two of its cores, so the design trade-off was really ‘more cores’ versus ‘more performance per core.'”
“Given that the vast majority of mobile applications likely can’t make use of more than one core, let alone four cores, the design decision made absolute perfect sense. Indeed, it likely delivers the best user experience,” Eassa writes. “Additionally, while the Android handset vendors need to differentiate among themselves with whiz-bang marketing features, Apple need not get involved in that sort of thing, although the “64-bit” marketing point didn’t hurt. It can make the soundest technical decisions free from marketing constraints.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Apple’s 64-bit Cyclone microarchitecture detailed – March 31, 2014
There’s room to move inside that Cyclone.
When the iPhone 5S was released, a lot of people suggested that Apple had merely taken an off-the shelf variant of the ARM processor and packaged it under it’s own name. As is usually the case, the truth couldn’t be more different, Apple has created a unique version that is cleverly optimised for it’s particular purposes and which offers a sophisticated solution for the present and a solid foundation for the future.
Six months on, the competition hasn’t got anywhere close to catching up and Apple will probably be deploying the next generation A8 chip before rivals are selling true 64 bit operating system in their phones.
It remains to be seen whether American courts will finally prevent American intellectual property being copied by Samsung, but Apple is ensuring that whatever the courts do, Samsung won’t be able to copy future Apple devices so easily. Apple are incorporating advanced technology that Samsung will not have access to for it’s own products.
Its.
“It can make the soundest technical decisions free from marketing constraints.”
… Pastel colors?
Your comment makes no sense at all. iOS has no pastel colors in it. It has bright shades and a lot of solid color, but no pastels (soft shades).
Most likely a reference to the color choices for the 5C.
The Cyclone is smarter than that.
I’m almost certain the battery in an iPhone left in the sun, regardless of color, would drain as fast. The Cyclone is a fine example of Apple not sitting on its laurels, or that they’ve topped out in innovation.
iPhone is getting smart about who’s knocking at the door and so it doesn’t waste the time or resources answering the door.
Come on Ned, get in here for a hug and a cheek to cheek, before you run squat away.
Hey guys … just poking fun at the exterior SHELL colors, not iOS … on APRIL FOOLS DAY !!! … my bad (joke)!
regrets … boss standing behind me, need post fast, all windows shop, not in north america, first was Apple ][+.
…and now tsunami warning …
Magnitude 8.2 Good luck Ned
Apple has the luxury to push the shelf life of DC power. Their engineers are razor-focused on attrition and myriad ways to save molecules of power, as opposed to guessing, like Apple’s competitors love to do.
Why is our time being wasted with a derivative story??? This guy is just parroting what Anand said.
Just link to the orginal Anandtech story and don’t waste our time with fools. 😉
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchitecture-detailed
Yeah, I’d rather they write an article about how Apple is losing it’s edge…
/s
google’s best product in 2014 is a $1500 walking digital billboard saying ‘kick my ass’
Apple is doing great but don’t overlook the immeasurable lameness that passes for competition these days.
On iPhones, great vision is in the “i” of the Cyclone