“We’re getting very close to the introduction of Apple’s new iPhones for 2018, and of course they’re certain to be powered by a new Apple-designed custom system-on-chip (SoC),” Jason Cross reports for Macworld. “In carrying on from past naming conventions, it will almost certainly be called the A12, along with a colorful descriptor (as in the ‘A10 Fusion’ or ‘A11 Bionic’).”
Cross reports, “By taking a look at the improvements made in previous Apple-designed SoCs and projecting forward to the current state-of-the-art in manufacturing technology, we can get a pretty good idea of what to expect from the A12.”
“The A11 Bionic found in the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X is produced using TSMC’s 10nm manufacturing process. The A12 will be produced with TSMC’s 7nm process—in fact, it should be the first widely-available consumer product made with a 7nm process, anywhere,” Cross reports. “if Apple were to produce the exact same A11 Bionic chip with the 7nm process, it could be roughly 40 percent smaller, and use either 40 percent less power running at the same speed, or run at a 20 percent higher clock speed at the same power.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s A12 will make the A11 look like a Qualcomm chip.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
A12 Mach?
A12 Ignition?
I think Samsung has the rights to Ignition… for Note, fridges and washing machines…
But how much smaller than 7nm can they go Spock? How… much… smaller?
AFAIK chip dimensions can’t go smaller than one atom which is about 0.3 nm, depending on the atom.
Hopefully, Apple will get the most out of that A12 by shipping iPhones with at least 4GB of RAM compared to Android flagship smartphones having 6GB and 8GB of RAM which is something I don’t quite understand. Does Apple use RAM which is more expensive (faster) than what Android flagship smartphones use? Android flagship smartphones having more than twice the RAM as an iPhone would seem to put an iPhone at a disadvantage when it comes to holding programs in memory unless the iPhone has better memory management than Android OS does. Apple would seem to be saving quite a bit more money by offering less RAM. I’m only questioning why Apple doesn’t feel there’s a need for much more RAM when usually each year they do add slightly more RAM.
I wonder if more system RAM does add to usefulness of a smartphone in average use and whether most smartphone users actually try to load a dozen apps at once on a daily basis.
Qualcomm is definitely going to try to keep pace with Apple when it comes to SoC processor design. It’s not as though Apple is going to be able to break Qualcomm or leave them in the dust. Qualcomm surely won’t give up. Whatever Apple does, Qualcomm will certainly follow. The Snapdragon 845 is even showing up on $300 smartphones, so there’s a decent market for high-end Qualcomm SoCs. Now, all Apple has to do is put a more powerful GPU in their iPhone to keep up with Qualcomm in terms of graphic capabilities/benchmarks.
It will be interesting if Apple does go ARM in a new MacBook Air. I’m sure Intel won’t be happy about that because I’d heard they begged Microsoft not to use an ARM SoC in the latest Surface product.
I think they’ve already left Qualcomm far behind. Part of the reason is that Qualcomm is designing for a broad audience whereas Apple is designing for itself. Having a narrower target makes it easier to make a great product.
It has to do with using a bloated core programming language (JAVA) that cannot properly take out the garbage
Think of it like a household that only goes to the dump once a month… gotta have that trailer out front with the bags of rat infested trash waiting for monday, takes up another parking space
That is android for you