After a series of lawsuits with Samsung, Apple has finally taken the long-awaited step of reducing its reliance on the Korean manufacturer for chip printing. After the iFixit team dismantled the new Apple smartphones, the same work was done by the Chipworks team, trying to identify the manufacturers of various components of the iPhone 6.
The publication itself is quite interesting and abounds in photographs of a mass of components, but the conclusions regarding the A8 processor are the most interesting. Experts are sure that the manufacturer is no longer Samsung. Chipworks employees believe that Taiwanese TSMC is most likely the new contract manufacturer, but they are not 100% sure about this. However, the gate dimensions are similar to those of Qualcomm's MDM9235 chip, which is also manufactured to TSMC's 20nm specification.
The A8 chip itself includes 2 billion transistors (twice as many as A7), but at the same time its area is 89.25 mm 2 (8.5 × 10.5 mm), that is, it is 13% smaller than A7 (102 mm 2) . Apple claims that the CPU is 25% more powerful and the graphics are 50% more powerful. At the same time, the chip in CPU tasks is 50 times more productive than the single-chip system used in the original iPhone, and 84 times more productive in graphics tasks. Finally, according to Apple, the chip is 50% more energy efficient than the A7, which should improve battery life.
The Chipworks team also confirmed that the A8 single-chip system is complemented by only 1 GB of DRAM, while many current flagship Android devices use 3 GB of RAM. Based on the code on a particular chip that fell into the hands of Chipworks, it was packaged only six weeks ago (probably in Taiwan), after which it managed to pass through Foxconn's production lines in China and appear on the shelf of a US store in Ottawa.
Introduced three new iPhones in which many of the features use machine learning. This would not have been possible without a specially designed processor for this. Unlike other gadget manufacturers, Apple designs its own chips. The Wired edition told how the company does it and how much money it spends on it.
How Apple makes processors for new iPhones
Anna SamoydyukA few years ago, engineers thought that the iPhone camera could get smarter with powerful new machine learning algorithms known as neural networks. They immediately shared their idea with Vice President Tim Millet.
Millett leads a team of processor engineers. In the iPhone X they added new portrait mode, which can adjust the lighting on people's faces and blur the background artfully. All this thanks to a new module added to the main processor of the iPhone - a neural engine, sharpened for machine learning. Thanks to him, the Face ID locking system appeared.
The fact that iPhone engineers were able to design the processor themselves to run features like Face ID shows the benefits of Apple's unconventional hardware strategy. Most computer and gadget manufacturers buy chips for their devices from semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel, Qualcomm or Samsung. Since 2010, Apple has been designing a processor itself, which is custom-made by a third-party company.
Apple unveiled three new iPhones last week. All devices run on a new processor called A12 Bionic, designed by Millet's team. More advanced technology was used to create it than any other equivalent chip in a mobile device. The size of the individual elements of the A12 transistors is 7 nanometers, which is 3 nanometers smaller than in the previous iPhone. So Apple was able to fit 6.9 billion transistors - 2.6 billion more than last year.
Thanks to this, the GPU is much more powerful, and the neural engine is larger. Last year, it could perform 600 billion operations per second, today - five trillion.
Millett says these updates have improved the portrait mode, which allows users to adjust the depth of field after the photo has been taken. In addition, augmented reality has become even more accurate and realistic. The neural engine is also now available to third-party developers to create even more AI-based applications.
Simultaneous work on software and hardware is especially valuable for Apple now, when iPhone sales have stopped growing. The company should come up with new features to encourage iPhone owners to update their devices. Samsung also makes smartphones and their processors, but the two industries don't intertwine like Apple does, and the Korean company sells its processors to other device makers.
Apple does not acknowledge who makes the new A12 chips. The industry is saying that Taiwanese company TSMC is doing this. At a TSMC event last October, Apple's COO was quoted as saying that TSMC is the sole supplier of new iPhone and iPad chips and praised it for producing 1.5 billion Apple chips in less than a year.
If this is true, then Apple had to spend a lot. "They're spending a lot of money to reserve manufacturing resources and be first in line," said Patrick Moorhead, semiconductor analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. Apple says its capital expenditures will be $17 billion by the end of the fiscal year. That's eight times what the company spent in 2010, when Jobs introduced the first Apple-designed chip in the iPhone 4.
Apple is the world's most valuable company, but chip designers will soon face an even greater force - the laws of physics. The industry is confident that 5nm transistors will appear in 2020. How to reduce them further is not yet clear. The long-term trend of exponential reduction in transistors, called Moore's law, has slowed down and likely stopped.
Apple's strategy may continue to work if or when transistors stop shrinking. Processor design could be the main way to get the most out of silicon chips, and Apple's full control over the iPhone will give it more flexibility.
Millett refuses to answer questions about the team's plans, although he notes that now the developers are thinking even more broadly. “It takes us several years to develop a processor from start to finish,” he says. Somewhere in the depths of Apple's headquarters in California, hardware is already being developed, thanks to which new features of the next iPhones will appear.
Released in September 2014, two models - iphone 6 and iphone 6 plus - made a lot of noise. They are equipped with an updated 64-bit single-chip system called A 8. This is a dual-core processor based on the proprietary Cyclone microarchitecture, whose clock speed is 1.4 GHz. The dimensions of the A8X die are only 12.5 mm by 10 mm, i.e. 125 mm 2 . Both models have one gigabyte of LPDDR3 RAM, which is integrated into a single case with the A8, which further saves internal space.
The advanced A8 processor is equipped with a powerful and highly efficient six-core PowerVR Series6XT GX6650 graphics chip. The A 8 is also equipped with the M8 motion coprocessor. It allows you to more effectively determine the parameters of all iphone 6 and 6 plus sensors: from the barometer to the time and location of the smartphone. At the same time, the M8 processor significantly reduces the energy consumption for reading and processing constantly updated data.
For models 6 and 6 plus, the A 8 processor was manufactured by the Taiwanese company TSMC, which specializes in the production of modern semiconductor products and microcircuits. In the future, cooperation with Samsung is planned.
Among the undeniable improvements that the iPhone has received through the use of A 8 include:
Firstly, the A 8 processor shows higher performance and speed than its predecessors, as it is manufactured using a modern twenty-nanometer process. It makes it possible to use an incredible number of transistors in chips - about two billion. It's hard to even imagine, let alone develop and successfully implement!
As you can see from the benchmarks below, the overall performance of iphone and iphone plus is not the highest on the market, but you are guaranteed uninterrupted operation of devices in any conditions. And in the process of finalizing iOS 8, performance will only grow.
Secondly, energy is spent much more efficiently, and this despite the fact that the enlarged screen (in the 6 plus model, especially) consumes much more of it. Those. At first glance, optimization is not very striking, but in fact it is essential. In the test for battery life with a Wi-Fi connection, they showed one of the best results.
Thirdly, with it, graphics performance has improved significantly. In addition, the developers have created Metal technology, which greatly enhances the capabilities of the A 8 processor and iOS 8 system for processing graphics in 3D. It helps to achieve high realism and detail in images. For fans of games with complex visual effects, this is an indisputable plus.
Fourth, it allows you to maintain an enviable level of high-speed work in browsers.
Among the shortcomings, iOS 8, which has not yet been properly developed - under the capabilities of the device, stands out. It does not allow you to fully unlock the full potential of iphone 6 and 6 plus. But this is fixable - during the development and installation of updates, which, in fact, programmers are successfully doing.
Also, the very modest sizes of RAM are clearly losing. Although the developers surprisingly managed to achieve good results in performance, it is not inferior to more powerful, in technical terms, analogues from competitors. But still, there is room for growth in this direction, and it is possible that RAM will be increased in new models.
As can be seen from the comparison tables above, the A 8 processor did not significantly improve the performance of the new models compared to its predecessor, the A 7. An independent benchmark of models released by Apple over the past few years showed such performance dynamics.
As you can see, there is no cardinal separation from the previous device. Although the manufacturer presents its own dynamics of increasing the performance of the processor of the entire released model range:
But still, the iPhone 5s can still compete with the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. Indeed, in fact, there is nothing fundamentally new in them - the characteristics of the A 7 processor were improved and honed, only for a large diagonal and the corresponding requirements for graphics and power consumption.
Summing up, we note that, despite not the most advanced individual characteristics, the iPhone, like no other device, will provide you with enviable reliability and stability. All existing problems are mostly software, which means they are easily fixed by high-quality software. And no test can adequately assess the convenience and coherence of these wonderful gadgets.
09/22/2014, Mon, 13:09, Msk , Text: Sergey Popsulin
Apple abandoned Samsung and entered into an agreement to supply processors for its new iPhones with the Taiwanese company TSMC, the world's largest contract chip manufacturer. The reasons for the decision are unknown, but Apple has been waiting for such a move since 2011.Apple has changed the supplier of processors for its smartphones. The chips for the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are supplied by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) using a 20nm process, Chipworks reports.
One of the proofs is the distance between the contacts of transistors in the microcircuit, which is 90 nm. Exactly the same distance is inherent in the Qualcomm MDM9235 chip, which is also manufactured by TSMC and according to the same process, experts say.
Speculation that Apple would abandon Samsung's services and turn to TSMC in 2011. The desire to change suppliers had at least two explanations. First, Samsung has been and continues to be Apple's main competitor in the global mobile device market. When releasing processors for Apple, the Korean company, at least, was aware of the plans of the "apple" vendor or even had access to its drawings and developments.
Secondly, since 2011, a legal dispute has flared up between Apple and Samsung. Apple accused a competitor of copying the design of its mobile devices, and Samsung in response - of patent infringement. Apple needed a fallback if Samsung suddenly refused to produce chips for it. Although most analysts did not consider this option plausible, since Apple is a major client of its semiconductor business (in 2010, total purchases of electronic components amounted to $ 5.7 billion).
Feb 2014 supplier change speculation. But this time it wasn't due to a disagreement between the two companies. According to sources, Samsung itself needed additional capacity - which was occupied by Apple - to release processes for its own devices.
Apple A8
Having examined the Apple A8, specialists from the California laboratory Chipworks also indicated that the marking of the processor has changed. All previous generations were designated with the suffix 98, i.e. APL0498 in the case of A5, APL0598 - A6 and APL0698 - A7. The new chip is designated as APL1011. Although experts do not consider this evidence of a change in supplier.
The experts also noted the presence of three rows of solder balls instead of the usual two. This trend started with the A7 and is due to the increased amount of heat that needs to be removed from the processor due to the use of a more powerful graphics controller.
When announcing the A8, Apple said that the new processor is 25% faster in general computing and 50% faster in graphics, while consuming 50% less power than the A7 and 13% smaller than this chip in size.
The A8 chip, the number of cores in which the company did not increase and limited itself to the previous two, is equipped with smartphones of the new generation iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. It is expected that the new chip will also appear in the new generation of iPad.
The company began equipping mobile devices with processors of its own design with the iPhone 4 in 2010. Over the past 7 years, Apple has acquired at least two developers of energy-efficient chips: PA Semi in 2008 and Intrinsity in 2010.
