“Linley Gwennap, director of the esteemed chip industry research firm that bears his name, and editor of its newsletter, ‘Mobile Chip Report,’ Thursday offered up an engaging analysis of Apple’s ‘A10 Fusion’ processor, used in its latest iPhone, the iPhone 7,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“Based on some help from chip teardown experts Chipworks, Gwennap writes that Apple’s ‘Hurricane,’ which is one of the two different CPUs in the A10, ‘blows away the competition,’ citing Geekbench speed tests for some typical tasks compared to benchmarks for several other mobile processors used in phones,” Ray reports. “The A10 is notably faster than Samsung Electronics’s ‘Exynos 8890,’ Qualcomm’s ‘Snapdragon 820,’ and Huawei’s ‘Kirin 955,’ when compared using single-core instruction runs, writes Gwennap.”
“Interestingly, he finds, too, that ‘Apple’s new CPU actually compares better against Intel’s mainstream x86 cores,'” Ray reports. “The A10 can deliver ‘nearly identical performance’ to Intel’s ‘Skylake’ generation of ‘Core’ processors. The difference, of course, is that Intel PC chips don’t operate within the battery constraints of the A10.”
Apple’s CPU prowess is beginning to rival Intel’s. In fact, the new Hurricane could easily support products such as the MacBook Air that today use lower-speed Intel chips. — Linley Gwennap, Linley Group
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iOS devices and OS X Macs inevitably are going to grow closer over time, not just in hardware, but in software, too:
Think code convergence (more so than today) with UI modifications per device. A unified underlying codebase for Intel, Apple A-series, and, in Apple’s labs, likely other chips, too (just in case). This would allow for a single App Store for Mac, iPhone, and iPad users that features a mix of apps: Some that are touch-only, some that are Mac-only, and some that are universal (can run on both traditional notebooks and desktops as well as on multi-touch computers like iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and – pretty please, Apple – Apple TV). Don’t be surprised to see Apple A-series-powered Macs, either. — MacDailyNews Take, January 9, 2014
SEE ALSO:
It’s official: Apple sends invitations for ‘hello again’ event on October 27th – October 19, 2016
Get ready, Apple’s new Macs are finally set to arrive! – October 19, 2016
All-new MacBook Pro, refreshed MacBook Air and iMac, and more coming at Apple’s October 27th special event – October 19, 2016
Apple plans to launch new Macs at special event on October 27th – October 18, 2016macOS Sierra code suggests Apple could dump Intel processors in Macs for Apple A-series chips – September 30, 2016
The iPhone’s new A10 Fusion chip should worry Intel – September 16, 2016
Apple’s MacBook Pro not likely to sport Intel Kaby Lake processors this year – August 16, 2016
Mac sales to grow in enterprise with new Apple A-series-powered Mac – October 14, 2015
Apple is a semiconductor powerhouse; expect the first ARM-based Macs to appear in 2016 – March 31, 2015
Apple A-series-powered Macs are not only feasible, they may be inevitable – January 15, 2015
Why Apple dumping Intel processors would be disastrous – January 14, 2015
KGI: Apple is designing its own processors for Mac – January 14, 2015
Apple A9-powered MacBook Air? – December 16, 2014
Why Apple will switch to ARM-based Apple A-series-powered Macs – August 27, 2014
Intel-powered Macs: The end is nigh – August 4, 2014
Intel’s Broadwell chips further delayed; not shipping for most Macs until early-mid 2015 – July 9, 2014
Apple will inevitably drop Intel for their own A-series processors in the Mac – June 26, 2014
How long before Apple dumps Intel from MacBook Air? – June 26, 2013