apple a15 GPU wows geeks
1 year ago
Published September 16, 2021 by

Apple A15 GPU wows geeks. No brain drain there.

From Julie Clover's "iPhone 13 Pro Offers Significantly Improved GPU Performance Compared to iPhone 12 Pro" posted Wednesday on MacRumors:

Just a day after the iPhone 13 models were announced by Apple, the first Geekbench score has already surfaced. Someone has benchmarked the GPU performance of the iPhone 13 Pro, and there's a significant performance increase compared to the prior-generation iPhone 12 Pro.

The ‌iPhone 13 Pro‌, or iPhone14,2, earned a Metal score of 14216, a 55 percent increase compared to the 9123 Metal score earned by the ‌iPhone 12 Pro‌...

Apple has called the A15 chip with the 5-core GPU in the Pro models the "world's fastest smartphone chip," and says that it delivers "up to 50% faster graphics performance than any other smartphone chip." Given the difference demonstrated in Metal scores, that appears to be accurate, with the A15 in the Pro models outperforming the A14.

My take: For whatever reason, Apple this year put its extra cores into GPU (for graphics and machine learning) rather than CPU (arithmetic, logic, i/o, etc.).

See also: Apple’s A15 CPU fails to impress. Is a brain drain to blame?

8 Comments

  1. Fred Stein said:
    Reasons to prioritize GPU might be image processing (still and video), video streaming, and gaming, all featured heavily in an event called “California Streaming.”

    Apple made an audacious claim to compete with Hollywood studio filmography; And backed up it.

    GPUs play a role in AR and AI, which Tim deservedly brag about, also.

    As Tim likes to say, we”re “just getting started,.”

    3
    September 16, 2021
  2. Fred Stein said:
    Speaking of ‘drain’, this monster drain LESS power.

    2
    September 16, 2021
  3. Fred Stein said:
    But the real brain drain is in the movement of brilliant people in all fields to Apple’s ecosystem to create content of all forms. Some will be monetized through iOS as Apps or free. And, more scientists and researchers will use high-end Macs for super high value niches (just my guess).

    5
    September 16, 2021
  4. Robert Paul Leitao said:
    Maybe… Just maybe… Apple knows what it’s doing. Now there’s a story!

    5
    September 16, 2021
    • Kirk DeBernardi said:
      @ Robert Paul Leitao —

      “Stickin’ to the Knittin’” seems to have always been the story, especially when Tim Cook took the helm and introduced a lot more “Knittin’”.

      How many times have we seen the written media and the talking heads all pontificate that Apple has “lost its way” — “lost its innovation” — “lost its focus” — “is not what it used to be” — blah, blah, blah.

      Have a North Star.
      Innovate and iterate.
      Rinse and repeat.

      0
      September 17, 2021
  5. Jerry Doyle said:
    And all for the same price as last years models! I wish the contractor doing my home renovations circumvented inflationary costs as well as Apple does. Had a bid from him in January but when it came time to commence the project in August that bid had to be renegotiated and settled for a 27% cost increase over the initial January bid; due to inflationary costs in materials, supplies and labor. And here is Apple giving us more new and innovative features without raising of prices. 🙂

    5
    September 16, 2021
  6. Gregg Thurman said:
    here is Apple giving us more new and innovative features without raising of prices

    It comes down to control of the supply chain, and the incredible architecture of Apple silicon. As Apple incorporates more mor functionality into its proprietary silicon, it reduces its reliance on 3rd party suppliers

    The only biggie remaining to be incorporated into Apple silicon are the cellular radios Apple gets from Qualcomm. Liberation from that ball and chain will happen in less than 4 years.

    1
    September 16, 2021
  7. David Drinkwater said:
    I think the updates in GPU foretell significant plans for image processing, which I am going to guess are focused on the receiving/interpretation end, kind like the view they scoped out down the mountain into the valley by the hiker. It’s a piece of the AI/AR plan.

    2
    September 16, 2021

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