
The iPhone XS and XS Max Review: Unveiling the Silicon Secrets - gok
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets
======
wintercharm
__Big takeaways: __

\- A12 has 8MB on chip “SoC cache”

\- Big core L1$ = 128kB; Little Core L1$ = 32kB

\- For the big core, L2$ is a whopping 128 instances 6MB per core/thread, 8MB
at 64KB/inst.

\- Little core L2$ is 32 instances, 1.5MB per core/thread, 2MB at 64KB/inst

\- A12 GPU uses memory compression!

\- A12 Big has 2.38 GHz base clock and 2.5 GHz 1 core boost

\- A12 Little has 1.538 GHz all core, and 1.562 GHz 2 or 3 core boost, and
1.587Ghz 1 core boost

\- A11 and A12 have a 7-wide decode (up from 6 on the A10) and 6Int ALU (up
from 4 on the A10)

\- Apple’s microarchitecture seems to far surpass anything else in terms of
width, __including desktop CPUs __

\- SPECint /fp Numbers show that it’s got 2x the speed of and any all other
mobile SoC’s. 3x perf/watt if you normalize speed / power consumption.

\- SPECint/fp numbers also show that the A12 is __faster than a skylake server
cpu __(in core-for-core IPC). Not a perfect comparison, but far better than
Geekbench

~~~
tgb
What does "in terms of width" mean in this context?

~~~
duhast
width in this context means number of CPU execution ports or how many INT/FP
operations CPU core can perform at the same time

------
jakelarkin
Apple CPU Architecture excellence is nothing short of amazing. iPhone XS A12
processors are 2x or 3x the speed of a Snapdragon 845 (Pixel 3) and have lower
power consumption. For these benchmarks they're approaching consumer desktop
CPU performance, which typically draw 40-50 watts, using only 4 watts in the
A12. [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-
re...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-
unveiling-the-silicon-secrets/4) …

~~~
wlesieutre
On the one hand I'm excited about Oculus Quest's promise for untethered VR. On
the other, it's built on the Snapdragon 835 (last year's flagship to keep
costs down) and I can't help but wonder what they could do if they had Apple's
hardware instead.

Of course Apple's only publicly interested AR stuff with their phone-based
ARKit, but media and gaming are huge markets for them. I don't think an Apple
VR headset is out of the question, and it would 100% be an untethered device
like the Quest is.

~~~
sundvor
I'm not at all excited by Quest for reasons of performance. I just want a high
DPI, wide FOV unit for use with my high end PC... so I'm holding off for the
foreseeable future.

~~~
jsemrau
I am holding off for more social reasons. But then I don't watch much TV
either.

------
matchbok
Crazy how far ahead the iPhone is over every single Android phone. I moved
over years ago because of the horrible hardware, lower-quality apps, and lack
of support. Seems like this trend will continue.

~~~
screye
I don't think that's a fair statement.

The processor is one of the only thing Apple has a clear lead in over Android
flagships. (Others being customer support and longevity)

Android hardware and software are fully stable now. Android phones have better
cameras and match apple in most other hardware metrics (display, speakers,
antennas, build, touch response)

Software wise, it comes down to preferences. Both have a few things they do
well, and others they stumble on. iOS12 is from what I have heard, smoother as
butter. However, top flagships from Samsung, Google, OnePlus all run Android
without any stutter at stable 60fps too.

All of my daily apps/usecases are at parity with their iOS. I don't know if
the app ecosystem complaints are valid in 2018. (Apart from snap chat, because
they have some wierd hate for Android)

I can respect your choice of wanting an Apple device. Especially if you are
invested in their hardware and software ecosystem. But to someone who isn't,
the iPhone does offer enough to switch from Android.

~~~
StreamBright
>>> The processor is one of the only thing Apple has a clear lead in over
Android flagships.

This is the only thing I do not give a shit about. A much slower CPU would be
just fine. The true advantage is the UX. Just try to disable automatic grammar
correction on both iOS and Android and count the number of items you had to go
through. It is insane how much crap Android has for every single thing.
Designed by engineers for engineers mentality is the root cause here. Apple
puts the user in charge how an mobile OS should look like or should behave and
this is the biggest differentiating factor between iOS vs other platforms.

~~~
hyperbovine
But I can't root my iPhone and use it as a Node.js server whilst
simultaneously sniffing 802.11 traffic at DefCon. Therefore it's useless to
me, and to everyone else who owns a phone as well.

/s

~~~
lern_too_spel
Unlike with iOS, you don't need to root your phone (or pay Apple a yearly fee)
to do those things and many more on an Android.

~~~
umanwizard
That comment was sarcastic. It was intended to mock common pro-Android
arguments by pointing out that the author doesn't care about doing that at
all.

------
MrBuddyCasino
_" What is quite astonishing, is just how close Apple’s A11 and A12 are to
current desktop CPUs. I haven’t had the opportunity to run things in a more
comparable manner, but taking our server editor, Johan De Gelas’ recent
figures from earlier this summer, we see that the A12 outperforms a Skylake
CPU."_

How do they do it?

~~~
aquadrop
I'm pretty skeptical of this. 3 W mobile CPU outperforms 165 W desktop CPU? If
it was the case, they would have those things in macbooks already, and would
boast tens of hours from one charge... If you go to the article that is
mentioned in "recent figures", they tested single-core performance. So it was
single core of a 28-core CPU (with boost though). It's still impressive, but
not unbelievable.

~~~
jonknee
The reason they don't have them in laptops is not because of performance, it's
because they don't have an OS. A laptop that only runs iOS is called an iPad
and it doesn't have the software I want to run.

~~~
aquadrop
My point was that if they had this abysmal advantage now, it means they would
see it coming several years prior and would work on OS and anything else it
needed.

But it's not the point, main point is that I think statement that current A12
is close (to whatever reasonable %) to top desktop chips is simply not true. I
didn't see any concrete evidence of it, and everyone just seem to like this
idea, that's why it was talked much lately. I'm all for great advantages and
all that, but I still must use common sense, 3-4W vs 150+ W - that's too much.

~~~
pertymcpert
People aren't comparing 3W mobile chips to 150W desktop CPUs. They're
comparing like for like in terms of perf/watt. Skylake isn't a particular SKU,
it's a micoarchitecture generation, from which Intel can scale the design from
low power 10W parts to power hungry server chips.

~~~
aquadrop
Article reference specific CPU - Xeon 8176. It has 165W TDP.

------
oflannabhra
> Overall the new A12 Vortex cores and the architectural improvements on the
> SoC’s memory subsystem give Apple’s new piece of silicon a much higher
> performance advantage than Apple’s marketing materials promote. The contrast
> to the best Android SoCs have to offer is extremely stark – both in terms of
> performance as well as in power efficiency. Apple’s SoCs have better energy
> efficiency than all recent Android SoCs while having a nearly 2x performance
> advantage. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we were to normalise for energy
> used, Apple would have a 3x performance efficiency lead.

Wow.

~~~
aw1621107
Wow indeed. I'm impressed that Apple has managed to create and maintain such
an insane lead in ARM performance for such a long period of time.

Does anyone know of more technical reasons for Apple's ARM processors
outperforming everyone else's by such a large margin, and for such a long
period of time? Seems like there's some fundamental difference in what Apple
is doing, and I'd love to read more about it.

~~~
mediocrejoker
Just speculating but surely it must have something to do with the entire stack
being designed under one roof, no? Having the kernel devs be able to walk
across the campus and ask the hardware guys what a register is for must speed
up development immensely.

~~~
pertymcpert
Once the CPU reaches peak frequency the OS shouldn't be involved for CPU
benchmarks. So it's more down to hardware.

~~~
ken
I can see how the compiler and stdlib (aren't things like memcpy implemented
in hand-tuned assembly?) could be highly relevant, though.

~~~
pertymcpert
They are, but that’s really low hanging fruit. If Android for example doesn’t
use optimised memcpy implementations then they don’t deserve to exist as a
serious OS.

~~~
astrange
That reminds me, when I read fast code in the 90s-2000s all the asm hackers
were into writing their own cool memcpy. Were they just showing off, or did
Windows actually never optimize their standard library?

People still seem to like writing their own cool malloc, but memcpy not so
much.

~~~
pertymcpert
There are some cases where it may make sense to write your own implementation,
if you have a niche microarchitecture that has unusual performance
characteristics that the OS doesn't provide optimized routines for by default.
But for most u-archs the default optimized routines should do a good job.

Things like malloc are quite a bit more complicated, and more workload
dependent so there's still some opportunity specializing an implementation
there.

------
modeless
I don't think people realize how important this story is. Apple is about to
take the single thread performance crown from Intel, who has held it nearly
uncontested for, what, a decade or more? And they're doing it in a _phone_!
Imagine what they could do on a laptop or desktop power budget. I'll bet you
won't have to imagine much longer either, as I expect an ARM Mac within a few
years.

~~~
SadWebDeveloper
> Apple is about to take the single thread performance crown from Intel

I believe they already have that crown have for mobile/low-power, but for
desktop/servers nop... not even close considering the microarchitecture their
processor are being designed they won't even be close to what intel already
does with a single instruction.

~~~
wintercharm
Those AVX instructions are quite costly though.

------
gm-conspiracy
_Indeed in terms of cellular connectivity, the new iPhones boast a significant
jump as we’ve seen an upgrade in download speeds to a gigabit for LTE
networks._

I would like to see this speedtest and know the location, please.

~~~
taf2
We saw 120Mb/s from our office in Maryland - Annapolis. Older iphones getting
only 20Mb/s

~~~
DenisM
I'm getting 120mbps on iPhone 6s in Seattle (T-Mo).

------
jccalhoun
This may be obvious to many but I just noticed that the iphone's default
wallpaper is designed to hide the notch.(at least I assume the wallpaper in
this review is the default)

~~~
dandare
To me the screen notch and the camera bump are frustrating design
abominations.

We participate in a mass delusion where we pretend modern smartphones are edge
to edge screen - but they can not be used like that. You either bulk up your
phone with a protective cover or you inevitably break the screen. The super
tough "gorilla" glass is not suitable for the intended use: using your phone
every day in a real world environment. We all pay premium for thin, light,
glass/metal, all-screen phones with notches and bumps only to hide them in
second plastic bodies made in China.

~~~
count
I've not had a cover on an iPhone, and have owned every iPhone since the
original. I've broken 1 (and a case wouldn't have saved it..it got run over).
Not everybody is fucking gorilla handling their phones. Some of us can have
nice things...

~~~
smittywerben
I used to throw my blackberry at people. One time it missed and it skipped
over a natural slate floor like a pebble over water - no damage. Also dropped
it on cement many times. Never a scratch (sometimes had to pop the battery
back in)

Compared to my first iPhone 3G w/ rubber+shell case which I absolutely
demolished in my jeans longboarding my first time. I still feel bad about
that.

At some point phones became less durable than my own body. It's just
different.

~~~
saagarjha
> I used to throw my blackberry at people.

Is there any modern smartphone that would take this kind of abuse?

~~~
crehn
Is there any _person_ who would take this kind of abuse?

------
overcast
At this point I'm fairly confident that my XS is more powerful than my 2008
Mac Pro tower. How long before Apple goes full ARM for all of their future
products? Owning basically the entire hardware chain.

~~~
wintercharm
I'd give it 2-3 years. They need to implement Marzipan fully, first.

~~~
saagarjha
Why would Marzipan have anything to do with switching to ARM? All of those
apps are running on x86.

------
nimos
I wonder if Apple will ever get into the server market, even indirectly
through licencing their cores.

~~~
frou_dh
I've no idea if the following would make real-world economic sense, but if
their chip design truly is in a class of its own in terms of power efficiency
then there might be a competitive advantage to using them exclusively in their
own datacenters.

------
graphememes
Android isn't keeping up anymore.

------
codedokode
The iPhone prices are ridiculous. It can cost as much as 5 average Chinese
Android phones. Maybe they don't have such fast CPU but still are pretty
usable, and often have similar amount of RAM. Don't understand why people
choose to pay more just to buy a device to browse Instagram or Telegram.

------
whitepoplar
It seems obvious, to me at least, that within the next decade,
desktop/laptop/server makers will jump ship to ARM. Cheaper, faster, lower
power chips with fanless designs and longer battery life. I can't for the life
of me figure out why Intel's stock is valued so highly today. What am I
missing?

~~~
cprayingmantis
It's the same reason a lot of other tech dinosaurs are valued so highly.
They've been around forever and people are betting on things staying the same
rather than changing.

------
forapurpose
> Cellular ... UE Category 16 LTE (1Gbps) with 4x4 MIMO and LAA

Do cellular providers allow 4x4 (or even 2x2) connections? Do they provide
gigabit bandwidth to individual devices? I'd be surprised if they simply
handed out bandwidth to whomever could suck down the most.

~~~
fipple
Yes, because cellular providers now mostly bill by GB rather than unlimited.
If you can suck down a GB in 10 seconds that's a GB of bandwidth they sold in
10 seconds instead of 1 minute.

------
tempodox
That web site is so full of cruft, it has become unusable. Even the best
iPhone can‘t change that.

~~~
LaGrange
Funnily enough, even a 5S can, in fact, change that. For all its terribleness,
it doesn't seem to mess with reader view _at all_.

------
rajacombinator
Steve Jobs would never have allowed the UX regressions that have plagued the X
and XS iterations.

~~~
jrockway
Steve "you're holding it wrong" Jobs wouldn't let a product ship with a bug?

------
paul7986
iPhone X or Xs is no good and a UX step backwards...

\- No I don't want to take hundreds of accidental screenshots a day & upload
them to iCloud

\- In traffic jams I want to grab my phone with my thumb and have it open
right away as my iPhone 8 does. Not mess with it.. put it up to my face & push
up to open it. Why add a step?

Im taking this junk back today!

~~~
cycrutchfield
Why are you on your phone while driving?

~~~
slededit
Probably to find an alternate route.

------
itsreallyme
I’d love to upgrade to these epic new phones, but I won’t, because FaceID…

Removing the fingerprint reader ruined the usability for me.

~~~
xienze
I just upgraded and honestly FaceID is really nice. I loved TouchID but there
were plenty of times it didn't work because my fingers were too moist or
whatever. FaceID really doesn't have any issues other than using it too close
to your face.

~~~
dalyons
I wish you could teach it multiple faces, because it doesn’t work for me if I
have stuff on my head, like a bike helmet and sunglasses, or ski goggles, etc

~~~
kaokien
In iOS 12 you can set an alternate face. You know have two total faces you can
set for FaceID.

~~~
dalyons
Amazing. I did not know this, thanks!

