“According to a rumor, Apple’s next processor should bear the name ‘A10’ and it may come with as much as six-cores,” Vanja Kljaic reports for VR. “It would be manufactured using a 14 nanometer production process and it would be produced by either Samsung in Texas or TMSC in Taiwan. Original rumor mentioned 10nm process node, but that just goes to show that original source should be taken with a kilogram of sea salt… These two companies would be competing for orders, the Weibo source said.”
“Their devices currently run on chips with a dual-core setup. This means that with this six-core rumor, the leap would simply be a major one for the device maker. It would also mean that the addition of four more cores would greatly impact battery life,” Kljaic writes. “Their focus has always been on performance, speed and usability, something that requires tried and tested hardware installed in the devices. While Apple may explore hyperthreading or some other, performance increasing options, the addition of more processor cores seems unlikely. For now. We may see a quad-core solution coming up in the forthcoming years, but going further than that would require a major shift within their goals.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Seems specious.
And each core will be as deadly as the first.
Being able to count from 9 to 10 does not make you an analyst.
Really! What a freakin’ rumor…the SoC following the A9 just might be the A10. Perhaps Apple will call it AX instead? Or the Pu-234 Explosive Space Modulator? Who knows?
Uh, Samsung and 14 nanometer: Where have I heard that before?
Could be but seems unlikely. The A9 is already really fast and single core performance is more important than adding cores. Maybe they would add two cores but why add four? I would think they would rather use the extra silicon for some sort of custom or dedicated purpose.
Maybe they prototyped a six core chip for research purposes and someone got wind of that?
Concur – Apple goes for the balanced approach, CPU/GPU.
Yes if there is anything in this at all i suspect it would be for something other than phones.
Idling cores should not greatly effect battery life. It would be just like a four-barrel carb. Running at low speed only two barrels are used. Accelerate and the other two barrels open on demand. I’m sure Apple will use such a technique for six cores. These people need to understand how processors can be tailored for operation. It’s possible Apple wants those cores to run at even a slower clock speed. Anyway, it sounds pretty sweet to me. I trust Apple not to go crazy with added cores just the hell of it no matter how many they finally end up with.
What puzzles me is how much processing power does a smartphone really need if it’s not going to be used as a gaming device. I would think Apple would be going for battery life over peak processing power. How much time does the average smartphone run at near 100% processor speeds? Very rarely, I’m guessing.
I think this source “should be taken with a kilogram of sea salt” too. Tripling the number of cores sounds like an Android desperation maneuver.
It’s for the next MacBook.
Or for Apple’s Hybrid 2-in-1 as mentioned here;
Id bet they’d first put the A9X into the new iPhone. An A10 iThink would completely overcompensate for the nimbility it already has. Although it is in Apple’s nature to plan far ahead, implimentation of plans are usually far off in the future. An A10 processor would more likely see a iPhone7S. I think the iPad pro now sets their standards of fastest iOS device as MacPro sets the standard for fastest OSX device. 🙌🏻