

Apple A6 SoC outperforms Intel Atom in JavaScript test - chemcoder
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/19/apple_a6_soc_outperforms_intel_atom_in_javascript_test

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cubicle67
actual article [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6309/iphone-5a6-sunspider-
perf...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6309/iphone-5a6-sunspider-performance)

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Zenst
Very interesting and I look forward to a more detailed analysis of the new cpu
in the iP5.

I'd be interested in how they handle memory managment/interface and suspect
they have done alot of work on that front which would benifit graphics as well
as general processing. Might of added a large cache onchip and that in itself
will make alot of benchmarks whcih dont have much else running go alot faster
than you would expect. This may be the case, we just don't know.

Either way you look at it this has to be unique as far as apple phone releases
go with lots of people expecting lots and then still falling in love with what
is released and with this new one the general press are starting to lose the
glaze in there eye's and in parts poo pooing the new iPhone, which is funny as
this does actualy appear to be a good product release with perhaps alot of
understated features which do more than back up the claim of 2x faster. This
in a world were people are expecting any claim of x amount faster to be backed
up with small print outlining the conditions that claim is true. but from what
it appears as a whole this 2x claim is a very solid claim in many area's of
there new phone.

I'm not so sure apple have as some are indicating redesigned a whole ARM core,
but they certainly could of very easily replaced parts of it and expanded
other area's and in that adding cache is one area were mobile phone chips will
happily accept and get a good return. Also when you write the OS and have a
chip like ARM which you haeve more control to add and change things then
optimizing for your operating system by adding a few extra instructions of
tweaking the area's your profiling tools have identified as bottle necks and
you start to get something realy nice.

I'm more a Android chap and never owned a Apple product but this does not stop
me appreceiting there finer works of art and for me the iPhone5 has that gut
feeling of being a good solid design. OK so it has no NFC but Apple don't do
there own credit card, do they, currently - watch this space.

I noticied a few comments saying the A6 is dual and this intel is single core,
well there be quad cores and they still aint betean it, be looking forward to
some more hands on tests with details - especialy the memory interface and
amount of cache memory on that chip.

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EwanToo
Brand new chip outperforms slow chip from 10 months ago!

The Z2460 was launched back in January [1], though phones with it have been
very slow to appear.

1 - [http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697790/intel-details-
new-...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697790/intel-details-new-medfield-
atom-processor-announces-added-android-app)

~~~
mtgx
A6 still outperforms the new one:

[http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/motorolas-razr-i-
benchmar...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/motorolas-razr-i-benchmarks-
intel-2ghz-medfield/)

Also, it's important to note that JS engine optimizations play a huge role in
this test, so it's not all just hardware performance, but that doesn't
necessarily mean Intel has a disadvantage here. I believe Intel has been
working just as heavily to tweak the JS performance in the phones that shipped
with their processor.

Also, Intel is being misleading about having a "2 Ghz processor". The thing is
it will use that frequency when it's doing the benchmark, so you'll be like
"wow, great performance from this chip", but then in 99% of the situations,
you'll be using it at its "real frequency" of 1.6 Ghz (Anand says it's still
1.3 Ghz, Engadget may be in error there), so the real performance is probably
much worse than the benchmakrs make it look.

~~~
masklinn
> Also, it's important to note that JS engine optimizations play a huge role
> in this test

Running the bench on a 4S running iOS6 should fix that.

According to the article (and the original source on anandtech), the actual
insight provided by SunSpider is its stressing of the memory interface (this
was apparently Intel's original explanation for why Atom crushed A9-based SoC
in SunSpider even though the raw processing power was pretty similar), and is
a datapoint in support of the hypothesis that Apple's custom core design put a
high emphasis on on improving the memory subsystem (and much higher than the
stock ARM designs).

~~~
weiran
On my iPhone 4, iOS 6 is about 10% faster in the SunSpider test than iOS 5.1.

~~~
masklinn
So around 2000ms? I think we can pretty safely discount the improvements to
the JS engine for the 914ms of the iphone 5 then.

~~~
se85
Not quite, although your "probably" right.

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randallu
This is also JSC vs V8 (and V8's x86 backend is very mature and well
optimized; JSC's ARMv7 backend is pretty good, but nobody's ARM backend has
had the same time and effort poured into it as their x86 backends).

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cooldeal
The title is misleading because the Intel Atom is Medfield, which is a chip
(hurriedly) designed for mobile use from a laptop chip by Intel and hence low
power. Anyone know how it would do with a real laptop Atom processor?

~~~
madmaze
Also the medfield in the Lava XOLO X900(w/HT) is a single core processor and
not a dual core like the A6

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Never mind that Sunspider tests the JS engine (which isn't identical on either
device) just as much as the processor. Testing JS->engine->OS->processor is a
poor method of gauging performance of the processor itself.

That said, I'm surprised no one's attempted a port of Nitro to Android/NDK for
benchmarking purposes, to remedy this somewhat.

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Toshio
The article fails to mention that there are at least two contributing factors
in the technology stack, raw CPU speed and efficiency of the JS engine.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It baffles me that AnandTech, which is so good on so many of these tech topics
commits the double flaw of a) using the sunspider benchmark at all (as it's
the least meaningful of the various Javascript benchmarks) and b) continually
using it to compare devices running different javascript engines (or different
versions of the same engine over time) and implying it measures hardware
differences.

~~~
pervycreeper
For your second point, the same benchmark on a 4s with ios6 would serve as a
control for hardware. Also, considering smartphones are used for web browsing,
javascript performance is a valid thing to measure.

~~~
masklinn
According to Weiran, iOS6 on a 4S gets about 2000ms (applying a ~10%
improvement to the chart's 2200ms 4S score):
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4543358>

