“When Apple took to the stage during its September 12 event, the focus was on the introduction of iPhone X where it was announced that it would ship with a 6-core A11 Bionic chip,” Paul Morris writes for Redmond Pie. “We expected improvements in comparison to older hardware, but not to this extent.”
“The Geekbench scores for Apple’s new device, as well as older devices that it essentially replaces, and other hardware that the company has on the market, clearly show that Apple’s iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and their internal A11 Bionic chip offers the improvements and performance gains that the company promised and [for which it] is known,” Morris writes. “The A11 Bionic chip significantly outperforms the A10 found in iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus and even surpasses the performance offered by the A10X Fusion chip in Apple’s other flagship hardware, the 2017 iPad Pro models. Not just that, it’s even on par with the latest 13-inch 2017 MacBook Pro.”
Morris writes, “There is no guarantee that this actually translates perfectly to real-world performance when devices have apps, documents, data, and other information stored, but it’s a wonderful early indication that we can expect blistering performance on iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Only Apple.
Sleep tight, Intel.
I predicted it! A11 SoC in a MacBook is coming!
ARM Macbooks is the Apple-community equivalent of the Year of Linux.
And just how many PCIe lanes does that A11 chip support?
How many TB3 ports?
How many USB 3.x ports?
How much RAM?
How many gigabit Ethernet ports?
Does it have a support chip that integrates directly with a 3rd party, dedicated GPU?
etc.
etc.
etc.
The list of deficiencies of an A11 chip that must be corrected before being a viable Mac chip (even a pared down laptop like the MacBook) are just too long to make the A11 a viable chip for a Mac laptop.
It is NOT just about speed based upon a single, synthetic benchmark.
Huh??? The number of ports of “This, That and The OTHER” don’t need any “special hardware” in the processor as such.
It needs to be FAST enough to handle the data I/O. So wether it is TB3 or USB3.x or GigaBit Ethernet or any other beast……it doesn’t matter. The only consideration is, “is it fast enough”. Well the answer is YES.
How much RAM, you say. Well it is a 64 bit processor. How much RAM do you want?
Does it integrate with a third party GPU? You say. Well it used to with Imagination. If Apple want it to….it will.
Yes speed is the most critical thing. Everything else is an after thought.
When Apple can engineer the Processor, PCIe slots etc is hardly of any concern. You should know that. Its like talking about Nuts and Bolts in an Engine assembly.
Honestly for my work I really don’t care if Intel or Apple are inside, as long as I have a fully funcional Mac capable to compete or surpass the best desktops available.
The A11 Bionic is definitely a beast of a processor. It’s quite fortunate Apple was able to figure out how to design such a powerful processor. Now Apple just needs to work on some battery tech that can outperform all other batteries for a reasonable cost.
Fortunate? Good Luck? No, this has been in planning for years.
If they have a chip that requires less and less power per generation, then the need for a better battery drops. And, while the laws of physics are against EVERYONE as far as batteries are concerned, there’s still more efficient chips to be designed. That’s likely where they will focus.
For fun, I used to run benchmarks written in C to demonstrate how much faster a Macintosh SE was than a $600,000 VAX 8600 from Digital Equipment Corporation.
I left out the part about the 100 or so background processes being handled by the VAX and the 120 interactive users currently connected.
My point was to demonstrate that I could distribute tasks to 120 Mac SEs for slightly less than half the cost of the 8600, and to demonstrate that when the computer crashed, only one person would be prevented from working.
I convinced one major bank at the time, Security Pacific Bank, to invest heavily in Macs. There were other value added aspects, as this branch of the bank was responsible for institutional custody and the investment accounts of really rich individuals. Mac people could prepare far superior tailored reports for those people using the desktop publishing capabilities of the Mac.
Still, the benchmark portion of my demo was a bit of prestidigitation.
I would love to be able to go back in time and remove the giant VAXes from the massive computer room and replace them with an iPhone sitting there out performing them.
side comment
Aapl shares taken a hammering last few days.
Reading the analysts I find that few take into account the Watch improvements (first step into a ‘wearable’ computing future ) etc. or the strides of Apple;s chip, processors that can give Intel. samsung AMD etc a run for their money. Imagine if Apple’s chip division was a SEPARATE non-Apple business, Wallstreet would be praising it no end giving it lofty valuations, but as a part of Apple it’s nearly ignored.
Does anybody know if the iPhone X has more RAM than the 8/+?