
Inside the iPhone 6s - shawndumas
http://www.chipworks.com/about-chipworks/overview/blog/inside-the-iphone-6s
======
jcdavis
Isn't 8mb of L3 cache a huge amount for a phone with 2 gigs of ram? A $260
Intel i5 6600 only has 6mb

~~~
Tloewald
Perhaps by comparison with desktop CPUs, but since the A8 had 4MB of L3,
presumably there are good reasons for Apple to include more L3 in the A9. It
may well be that Apple has found that a larger L3 cache contributes more to
overall performance (or power efficiency) than, say, faster clocks or more
RAM.

~~~
ju-st
Intel's L3 cache is for CPU only, Apple's is propably shared with the GPU.
Also some Intel CPU's have 128MB of "L4" cache to primarily speed up the GPU.

~~~
DiabloD3
It isn't for CPU only, Haswell and up GPUs can zero-copy their command buffers
out of it (thus making a large number of GPU compute situations "free"); they
can't usefully use such a small amount of L3 for texture and framebuffer stuff
(not like the highly optimized prefetch and caching systems in Radeons and
Geforces can; that is sometimes a work of art).

But yes, I highly suspect the bigger L3 on these serves the same purpose as
the L4 on Crystalwells.

------
chocks
Wonder why they have multiple power management/amplifier modules ? : 1\.
Apple/Dialog 338S00120 Power Management IC 2\. Qualcomm PMD9635 Power
Management IC 3\. Texas Instruments 65730AOP Power Management IC 4\. Avago
ACPM 7714 Multimode Power Amplifier 5\. Avago AFEM-8030 Power Amplifier Module
6\. Skyworks SKY77357 Power Amplifier Module (likely an iteration of the
SKY77354) 7\. Skyworks SKY77812 Power Amplifier Module

~~~
mbell
Well, the first three you mentioned are for providing power to other chips,
the last 4 are RF amplifiers, they aren't really related.

Why you need (or want) multiple power management ICs: they are likely powering
separate zones of the board which may have very different power requirements,
e.g. need different voltages, need to be able to power up or down separately,
or need particularly clean power.

Why you need multiple RF amplifiers: Almost all phone today run on many
different cellular frequencies and protocols, a quick look at the specs
indicates the iPhone 6 supports: 800Mhz, 850Mhz, 900Mhz, 1700Mhz, 1800Mhz,
1900Mhz, 2000Mhz, and 2100Mhz along with various different signaling schemes.
You can't handle all that in a single RF pathway.

~~~
samstave
> __ _need to be able to power up or down separately_ __

Need to be able to power on the Data, MIC and Camera per the Court Order
without waking up the rest of the phone :)

------
listic
> This year Apple did multi-country launches ... so no more driving down to
> the US and queuing for hours to be sure of getting one or two.

What is Apple's iPhone 6s release schedule?

Apparently, they have already released it in the countries other than the US,
but I still can't see any information online regarding where it was released
and where it's going to, next.

~~~
RockyMcNuts
Released in "Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New
Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK, and the United States."

[http://imgur.com/wvTtvNu](http://imgur.com/wvTtvNu)

[http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/24/iphone6s-launch-kicks-
of...](http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/24/iphone6s-launch-kicks-off-in-new-
zealand/)

~~~
listic
Thanks! Any info on the next wave of country releases?

~~~
glasshead969
Today's press release[1] announced Oct 9 as launch date for 40 more countries.
Expected to hit 130 countries by end of the year.

[1] [http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/09/28Apple-Announces-
Re...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/09/28Apple-Announces-Record-
iPhone-6s-iPhone-6s-Plus-Sales.html)

