By: Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar), September 16, 2022 10:04 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
anonymou5 (no.delete@this.spam.com) on September 16, 2022 5:15 pm wrote:
> > N4 has a 22% power reduction at the same performance vs N5, so I'm skeptical
> > they are getting much of anything from A16 beyond what the process gives them.
>
> So Sky-Kaby-Coffee-Amber-Whiskey-Cometlake laughter is in 🍊rder? /s
I'm not sure Apple was trying to do a different core. We'll have to see now that people can poke at things what real differences there might be, but if A16 is basically a shrunk/tweaked A15 that might have been the plan all along.
When the M2 came out using the A15 core I was pretty surprised, I had assumed they would use the A16 core since it was only launched a couple months before iPhone 14 and given their very conservative iPhone SoC tapeout schedules been ready in time had they wanted to use it. But if A16 is basically just A15 on a different process then the question becomes moot.
As to why, who knows but we can guess. They have obviously had to put a ton of resources into getting Apple Silicon ready. While that's probably done now, the final product of it - i.e. the new Mac Pro - is yet to be seen. Having lost GW III and some other top guys right as they were ramping up their Apple Silicon plans probably didn't help, so they might not have had enough bandwidth to do that work plus serious development on yearly core iterations (or even if they did they figured it was more important to prioritize the Apple Silicon work and put any major core changes on the back burner until that was complete)
> > N4 has a 22% power reduction at the same performance vs N5, so I'm skeptical
> > they are getting much of anything from A16 beyond what the process gives them.
>
> So Sky-Kaby-Coffee-Amber-Whiskey-Cometlake laughter is in 🍊rder? /s
I'm not sure Apple was trying to do a different core. We'll have to see now that people can poke at things what real differences there might be, but if A16 is basically a shrunk/tweaked A15 that might have been the plan all along.
When the M2 came out using the A15 core I was pretty surprised, I had assumed they would use the A16 core since it was only launched a couple months before iPhone 14 and given their very conservative iPhone SoC tapeout schedules been ready in time had they wanted to use it. But if A16 is basically just A15 on a different process then the question becomes moot.
As to why, who knows but we can guess. They have obviously had to put a ton of resources into getting Apple Silicon ready. While that's probably done now, the final product of it - i.e. the new Mac Pro - is yet to be seen. Having lost GW III and some other top guys right as they were ramping up their Apple Silicon plans probably didn't help, so they might not have had enough bandwidth to do that work plus serious development on yearly core iterations (or even if they did they figured it was more important to prioritize the Apple Silicon work and put any major core changes on the back burner until that was complete)
