Apple's business model is that A-series chips are designed and digested by themselves and are not sold to the outside world. In other words, they are not making profits by selling chips directly, but by designing powerful chips to create selling points for iPhone/iPad and make iPhone/iPad profitable.
In this case, Apple must pile up the A-series chips. Only by piling up strong performance can the iPhone/iPad have a selling point. Simply put, the software ecosystem is the "meat" of the iPhone/iPad, and the A-series chips are the "bones" of the iPhone/iPad. Only when the "bones" are hard can strong muscles be connected, and the iPhone/iPad can be competitive in the market.
Therefore, Apple can pile up a series of materials, including giving up the ARM common kernel, designing its own kernel compatible with the ARM instruction set, and increasing the cache capacity (cache can reduce the delay of CPU reading data, but the disadvantage is that it is expensive, and sometimes the level of CPU depends on the size of cache under the same architecture).
Designing chips is like feeding pigs. Being willing to pile up is like being willing to use good feed. If the feed is good, pigs will certainly grow fast. Qualcomm's business model is completely different from Apple's. The phrase "sell baseband and send chips" is very vivid: baseband is the ballast stone of Qualcomm, and how much patent licensing fee Qualcomm can collect is basically linked to how much baseband it can sell.
As for CPU, GPU, ISP and other cores, they exist only to enhance the market appeal of baseband. This can be found in Qualcomm's financial report. In the fiscal year of 20 18, the revenue of Qualcomm Chip Division (QCT) exceeded1700 million US dollars, but its net profit was only 3 billion US dollars, while the revenue of Qualcomm Patent Licensing Division (QTL) was 5 1 00 million US dollars, accounting for 30% of the chip business revenue, and its net profit was 3.5 billion US dollars, which was 500 million US dollars more than the chip business.
Therefore, it is understandable why after Apple doesn't use Qualcomm's baseband, Qualcomm wants to fight with Apple desperately: cutting off people's financial resources is tantamount to murdering their parents, and people are of course in a hurry!
Since the chips were "sent" to mobile phone manufacturers by Qualcomm, of course, they can't be piled up like Apple, otherwise it will be a big loss if it is too expensive: the CPU core is better than the ARM public version (also known as "magic"), but it is not as good as the Apple that directly designs the core!
The cores such as CPU and GPU are Apple's basic disks, because Apple is an Internet company. Qualcomm, on the other hand, is a communication company, whose basic business is communication, reflecting that its products are baseband, and its R&D investment, which accounts for 20% of its revenue every year, is basically invested in the field of communication R&D. ..
In the final analysis, due to different business models, Apple's chip design focuses on CPU, GPU, NPU and other cores, making its chip performance the strongest in the mobile phone industry. I am honored to answer this question. As we all know, the manufacturers of mobile phone chips are mainly Apple, Huawei, Samsung, Qualcomm and MediaTek, among which Apple, Qualcomm and Huawei are the best. Among them, the performance of the CPU chip of Apple mobile phone has been ahead of other CPUs in the same period.
Then what is the reason?
First, the ecosystem of Ios is relatively closed. There are only a few versions of the operating system itself, and the same CPU needs to support fewer system versions. In addition, Apple's mobile phone applications must be reviewed by Apple to confirm compatibility and compliance with Apple's regulations. Android phones, on the other hand, have various versions of Android and more deeply modified system versions. This has caused Apple's CPU to need special optimization, and the CPU used in Android phones must give priority to ensuring better compatibility, rather than considering performance first. For example, Apple is like driving on a highway, as long as there are few factors to consider. The CPU used in Android phones is like driving on a national highway. Pedestrians, non-motor vehicles, villages and schools should all consider it, and a beast will appear from time to time. Of course, the same car can drive faster on the highway.
Second, Apple phones pay more attention to single-core performance, while Android phones need stronger multi-core performance because of multi-background strategy. But in the foreground, all we can perceive is the running speed of a single software. So no matter how you feel or actually run, you can feel that Apple's performance is stronger.
Third, the price is higher. Because the price of Apple mobile phone is much higher than that of Android mobile phone, the technology, materials and design used can be used at a higher cost. Manufacturers of Android mobile phone CPU need to consider the price of chips and the acceptability of mobile phone manufacturers. It is impossible to be a CPU that can't be sold anyway.
To sum up, the CPU price of Apple mobile phone is higher, the system optimization is better, the software ecology is more controllable, and the team is strong, so it is naturally strong. Here, I hope that the CPU of domestic mobile phones will become stronger and stronger, surpassing Apple!
As we all know, Apple's A-series chips are much better than other mobile phone chips of the same generation, such as Qualcomm Snapdragon and Huawei Kirin, which can be said to have been in the leading position.
Why is the chip of iphone always ahead? 1, strong R&D force
Long before the launch of Apple's first self-developed chip a4, a world-class chip R&D team was set up, and a large number of top R&D talents in the world gathered to ensure that Apple's A series processor chips were ahead of the ARM architecture chips in the same period.
Thanks to the support that Apple earns the most profits in the mobile phone industry all the year round, Apple has the courage to adhere to chip research and development on a long-term scale and invest heavily in core technology patents. In the development process, Apple acquired famous chip research and development companies and semiconductor design companies, and used its own gpu after a 1 1 chips, which can be said to have made a decisive lead.
2, deeply customized ios system
Thanks to Apple's extremely powerful software development team, Apple's processor chip can be said to be highly compatible with the ios system. The unique operating mechanism of ios system makes A series chips very efficient in the daily use of system applications. In contrast, Android system will be modified by different mobile phone manufacturers, and software development may not necessarily follow the same specifications. The background running mechanism of Android system is not as good as Apple's tombstone pseudo-background mechanism, which is also one of the reasons that affect fluency. The performance difference of processor chips through the system is also the reason.
In fact, the iphone has been far ahead of the chip since the iphone4 10 years ago. A chip research and development team was established here very early in the Steve Jobs era, and A4 chip was the first achievement. Because Apple has invested heavily in introducing many chip design talents, the factors of being far ahead, starting early and having a high level in the field of mobile phone chips are very significant, including many technical talents from Intel and AMD who have worked in Apple.
In addition, Apple is different from other manufacturers in chip design concept. A series chips focus on single-core performance improvement. No matter the number of transistors or cache, the single-core specification of A series chips is much higher than other chips in the same period. Today, most APP applications are not optimized for multi-core, and the actual performance of Apple chips is significantly higher.
The performance of the chip is inseparable from the cooperation of the system. Because Apple has been using its own IOS system, it can be optimized and polished in a closed software and hardware environment, thus exerting stronger performance. However, the hardware configuration and system environment of Android phones are varied, so even if the chip itself is powerful enough, it is difficult to play its full performance.
As we all know, Apple's A series processors can be said to be the overlord of mobile phone processors at present. Even the old A-series processors may have better performance than the latest Android processors. At present, the best Android processors Kirin 990 and Snapdragon 865 are not as good as the A 12 processor released by 20 18.
In the initial stage of A-round processing through acquisition, Apple set up a special chip design team. In order to rapidly expand its chip design team, Apple acquired P.A.Semi and Intrinsity. These two companies are also chip design companies, and they are also very famous chip design companies in the industry. With the joining of these two companies, Apple's A-series processors have developed rapidly. While acquiring other companies, it also increased its influence in the chip design industry and attracted many talents to join the company.
Unlike Huawei and Qualcomm, Apple only needs to design one mobile phone processor every year, while Huawei Hisilicon and Qualcomm need to design many mobile phone processors every year, so the workload of Huawei and Qualcomm is much larger than that of Apple.
Apple only makes high-end processors, while Huawei and Qualcomm design low-end, mid-range and high-end processors together. In most industries, only high-end areas are profitable, so compared with Huawei and Qualcomm, Apple is more profitable, so it is more capable of developing new processors.
Apple mobile phone is more expensive. Apple mobile phones are all high-end mobile phones, which are more expensive. When designing chips, Apple can stack materials at all costs, which will increase the cost and the price will go up. However, there are still many people who can accept the high-priced Apple mobile phone.
Qualcomm is different from Huawei. When designing chips, you can't just pile up materials. If you pile up too many materials, the overall cost of mobile phones will go up, and many consumers can't afford this price.
The fluency of mobile phone in IOS system is not only related to the processor, but also related to the system. Apple's A-series processors are all used on Apple phones. IOS is inherently smoother than Android. Although the fluency of Android system has improved a lot in recent years, there is still a certain gap with IOS. If you put the A-series processor on an Android phone, the performance will be greatly weakened.
Why is the CPU chip of iphone always ahead? The core of the main question is why the CPU core of iPhone is always ahead. In fact, for us, this problem can be analyzed from two aspects. The first is the industry model, and the second is the advantages of independent research and development and core design. Let's talk about it in detail:
1. In terms of business model. In fact, many people will ignore the fact that why Apple's A-series chips are so strong can be explained from the hardware, but Qualcomm and Kirin can indeed stack hardware, but why are they not as strong as Apple? That's the problem of positioning. Apple's A-series processors are all self-developed, but only for their own mobile phones, and their own Apple mobile phones are really expensive, so there is enough money to stack and configure them in the processors, but why not Qualcomm and Kirin! To put it simply, Qualcomm's chips are from abroad, so we should consider the positioning of various manufacturers. Just like the price of Xiaomi is below 3,000 yuan every time, the price of Samsung is 6,000 yuan. If the chip price is high, Samsung can accept it, but it is really unacceptable for domestic models that take the cost-effective route. It can only be said that it is a compromise. Kirin is also involved in this aspect, thinking that he also has a series of glory of taking the cost-effective route.
2. From the aspects of design and hardware. From the design point of view, although they are all based on ARM design, the licensing methods are different, so both Apple and Qualcomm are self-developed. Apple does have money, not only buying more well-known chip manufacturers, but also being more willing to use materials than Qualcomm and Kirin chips in terms of cache. Moreover, according to Johny Sluggi, head of Apple's chip business, Apple generally started architecture design for each generation of chips three years ago, just like Johny Sluggi himself joined Apple in 2008.
Conclusion: Of course, adaptation is also mentioned here. The running speed of ios system and the coordination of processor tuning are relatively incomparable to Android phones. After all, Qualcomm really only manages production, but the adjustment actually depends on each manufacturer. The UI of each vendor on the Android side is different, so it will have different effects, which is indeed one aspect. Apple chips are only for their own use, and the ios system is exclusive, so this is also the reason why Apple chips are strong.
Answer over
Apple is a company that pays special attention to dominance and user experience, so the main components will be developed by themselves, and the core intellectual property rights and dominance will be mastered. The reason why Apple's A-series CPU can always lead is nothing more than the following:
First, the accumulation of Apple over the years. Jobs understood the importance of being a chip master before he started making mobile phones, so through his own formation and acquisition, Apple had a top chip design team very early.
Second, because Apple is the biggest customer of Samsung and TSMC. Therefore, these two manufacturers will cooperate with Apple in particular and always give Apple the most advanced technical support.
Third, Apple's chips are for its own use. IOS system is also self-developed, so the cooperation between software and hardware is unparalleled, which can give full play to the maximum efficiency of the chip.
Fourth, Apple is not poor in money, willing to waste, and has always pursued the ultimate. Therefore, the performance of the chip can't be compromised, and it can't be done twice, twice and three times until it reaches the target. This high standard and uncompromising spirit have created the ultimate high performance. The other company went bankrupt before the chip came out.
Therefore, the above main reasons make Apple's main chip always stand at the forefront of performance. However, Huawei's R&D is more efficient. I believe Huawei will surpass Apple in this respect in three to five years at most.
What the subject said is true. The A 13 chip of iPhone is very strong, but the chip of iPhone is not leading everywhere. In the field of 5G, the chip of iPhone is also relatively backward. The topic here should be the leading performance, right? Personally, there are several reasons why the performance of the main A 13 chip is ahead:
The reason why advanced technology chips are so strong every time is because the iPhone can always use the most advanced production technology, and TSMC's big orders are indispensable for Apple. In recent years, every advanced technology always gives priority to the production of Apple chips. The A 13 chip was the first to use the 7nm process, which also ensured that Apple's chips could be stacked, regardless of energy efficiency.
Apple's chip development takes a long time. It can be said that every chip of Apple is an earlier ideal, which allows Apple enough time to adjust and stimulate the maximum potential of the chip, thus greatly improving the energy efficiency ratio and making a more optimized design scheme.
R&D is well funded and Apple is rich, which is also the guarantee of the above two items. I have enough funds for chip manufacturers to give priority to the production of our chips, and I also have enough funds to support any profligacy of the R&D team. Making chips is very expensive. A chip scheme that is not satisfied with whether it is disconnected may cost hundreds of millions and need huge financial support.
In addition, Apple will spend a lot of money to acquire other chip manufacturers every year. Only you have the technology, which is useful for my chip. You have to spend a lot of money to buy this chip company. It can be said that Apple chips were bought and grown up all the way to buy buy.
In fact, it is very easy to develop an Apple R&D department. Apple only releases one flagship model every year, and there are no low-end products. Therefore, they only need to develop one chip each year. Last year, A 12, this year, A 13 and next year, A 14 greatly reduced the pressure on the R&D department. All they need to do is make a chip carefully.
The two chip makers, Qualcomm and Kirin, are different. They have to take into account the high-end, mid-range and low-end mobile phones with different prices and produce different chips, which has invisibly caused great pressure on the R&D department. Maybe the R&D department will never give up this plan after the defective chip comes out. First of all, its energy is limited, and second, its funds are limited, which causes the gap in R&D results.
In short, Apple's achievements are nothing more than four points: light tasks, good technology, long research and development time and abundant funds, which have also created Apple's current situation, but in the end it is still rich.
Usually, whenever Apple releases a new iPhone, it will also release a new IOS system, and this year may be no exception. Inevitably, Apple's latest SoC will be compared with the latest products of Qualcomm, Samsung and Huawei every time. Every time the benchmark data comes out, Apple is the winner.
So why does Apple's SoC always seem to beat its competitors? Why does the processor used in Android seem to be far behind? Is Apple's chip really that good? Then let me explain.
Apple A 1 1 Bionic Apple designed a processor with an ARM 64-bit instruction architecture. This means that Apple's chips use the same underlying RISC architecture as Qualcomm, Samsung and Huawei. The difference is that Apple holds the architecture authorization of ARM and can design its own chip from scratch. Apple's first internal 64-bit ARM processor is the Apple A7 used by the iPhone 5S. It has a dual-core CPU with a main frequency of 1.4 GHz and a quad-core PowerVR G6430 GPU.
Fast forward four years, and Apple's latest product, A 1 1, has a six-core CPU and uses heterogeneous multiprocessing (HMP) and internal GPU (after Apple decided to stop using Imagination GPU).
The six CPU cores consist of two high-performance cores (code name monsoon) and four energy-saving cores (code name Mistral). Like Apple A 10, Apple A 10 also has a high-performance kernel cluster and an energy-efficient kernel cluster, while A 1 1 can use all six kernels at the same time.
Apple claims that two high-performance cores are 25% faster than those in A 10, while four high-efficiency cores are 70% faster than the energy-saving cores in its predecessor. A 1 1 is manufactured by TSMC on the processing node of 10 nm, and the chip contains 4.3 billion transistors. The chip size is 89.23 mm2, which is 30% smaller than A 10.
According to our internal test using iPhone 8 Plus, the device got 4260 points in the single-core test of Geekbench and 1022 1 point in the multi-core test.
Apple A 1 1 and Xiaolong 835 Apple A 1 1 adopt the same manufacturing process as Xiaolong 835. A 1 1 is a six-core CPU, and 835 is a eight nuclear chipset. A 1 1 bionic can now schedule processes by core, 835 can be completed, and A 10 can't. Although the specifications are similar, the single-core Geekbench score of A 1 1 is twice that of Xiaolong 835.
On the surface, the multi-core performance of six-core A 1 1 is 50% faster than that of eight nuclear Xiaolong 835. But as mentioned above, Geekbench did not test other parts of the SoC. DSP, ISP and any AI-related functions will affect the daily experience of any device that uses these processors. However, as far as the original CPU speed is concerned, A 1 1 is undoubtedly the winner.
Prior to this, both Apple and Qualcomm have been providing 32-bit ARMv7 processors for mobile devices. Qualcomm leads this field with its 32-bit Opteron 800 SoC. It uses the internal Krait 400 kernel and Adreno 330 GPU.
When Apple suddenly announced the launch of the 64-bit ARMv8 CP, Qualcomm got nothing. At that time, one of its executives called the 64-bit A7 a "marketing tool", but Qualcomm quickly put forward his own 64-bit strategy.
In April of 20 14, Qualcomm introduced Snapdragon 8 10, which has four Cortex-A57 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores. The core of "Cortex" series comes directly from ARM (Custodian of ARM Architecture). But in the same year, Apple announced its second-generation internal 64-bit CPU A8. It was not until 2065438+March 2005 that Qualcomm was able to announce its first-generation internal 64-bit CPU Xiaolong 820 and its customized Kryo CPU kernel.
In September of the same year, Apple released the iPhone 6S equipped with A9 processor, which is Apple's third generation 64-bit built-in CPU. Suddenly, Qualcomm was two generations behind Apple.
In 20 16, Qualcomm provided ARM products again, but it was different. ARM has created a new authorization plan, which enables the most trusted partners to access their latest CPU design as soon as possible, and even make some customization. The result is the Kryo 280 CPU kernel. According to the specification table, Xiaolong 835 uses 8 Kryo 280 cores, but it is generally considered that it has 4 Cortex-A73 cores (adjustment) and 4 Cortex-A53 cores (adjustment). For Xiaolong 835, Qualcomm changed the announcement from spring to winter, which means that 835 was released after Apple A 10 and iPhone 7.
What's the difference between Apple's CPU cores? There are several important understandings about Apple's CPU core.
The CPU of 1 64-bit ARM has a leading position.
First of all, in terms of CPU based on 64-bit ARM, Apple is almost ahead of everyone. Although ARM itself announced Cortex-A57 on 20 12 and 10, the suggested timetable is that ARM's partners will deliver the first batch of processors on 20 14. However, in 20 13, Apple was equipped with a 64-bit ARM CPU. The company has been using early leaders since then, and new CPU kernel designs are produced every year.
2. Apple's SoC work is closely related to the release of mobile phones.
It is difficult to design a high-performance mobile CPU. For Qualcomm, because R&D is really difficult, it takes a long time every time. Cortex-A57 was released in June 20 12, but it didn't appear in smartphones until April 20 14. This is a long delivery time, but the current delivery time is changing.
For example, Kirin 960 in Huawei Mate 9 was released only eight months after ARM Mali-G7 1 GPU was delivered to Huawei. There is a saying that because Apple does everything internally, close ties can shorten the development cycle by several valuable weeks.
Apple's CPU is very expensive
According to a report of Linley Group 20 16, the hurricane kernel in Apple A 10 is "about twice as large as other high-end mobile CPUs". Even the smaller Zephyr core is much larger than its low-power core, "almost twice as large as Cortex-A53". The key point here is that Apple sells smartphones, not chips. Therefore, it has the ability to raise the price of SoC and recover funds from other places, including the final retail price.
4. Apple's CPU cache is very large.
The cost of silicon is very high, and for some chip manufacturers, the profit margin can only save 0.5 square millimeter of silicon. Like the third point above, Apple can make a larger chip (in terms of silicon chip cost), which includes a large cache.
Before Cortex-A75, ARM's Cortex processor did not support L3 cache. But since A7, Apple has been using a large L3 cache. Apple A7 and A8 have 1 MB L2 cache and 4 MB L3 cache. A9 and A 10 have 3 MB L2 cache and 4 MB L3 cache, that is, the total cache is ***7 MB. According to Geekbench, A 1 1 has 8 MB L2 cache and no L3 cache. Although Cortex-A75 now supports L3 cache (it can also support up to 4 MB and 4 MB L2 cache (0.5 MB per core)), chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm can decide how much cache to include.
5. Apple produces wide pipeline processors at a lower frequency.
Broadly speaking, SoC manufacturers can make CPU cores with narrow pipes, but they can run pipes at high clock frequency. Or use a wider pipe, but the clock speed is lower. Just like water pipes in the real world, you can pump high-pressure water through narrow pipes or low-pressure water through wide pipes. In both cases, the same throughput can be achieved theoretically. ARM happens to fall in the narrow assembly line camp, while Apple falls in the wider assembly line camp. The highest frequency of Cortex-A75 can reach 3 GHz at 10 nm, while the highest frequency of Apple A 10 can reach 2.34 GHz.
At present, CPU occupies a very important position in Apple's product line, such as Mac series, iPhone series and iPad series, which all need the support of CPU, and Apple itself is a product, so it is easier to find the pain point to optimize CPU performance by knowing more about everyone's needs on the technical side and product side. Of course, it is mainly because Apple has strong R&D capabilities that it can support such a time-consuming CPU development.
Then why do you think the CPU chip of iPhone is always ahead? Welcome to chat and discuss in the comment area. Let's learn and discuss together.
Yes, Apple is indeed far ahead in terms of chips.
Now Apple's A 15 large core has exceeded 3.2G, but in the power-saving mode, the double large core is reduced to 1.5, and the small core is full of blood. Even if locked in this case, A 15 can still run at the original image quality for 30 minutes, with 60 frames in the whole process, and the power consumption is 3. 1 watt.
The strongest Android player, Snapdragon 888, can't maintain the feeding intensity of 60, and the power consumption is as high as 5.8 watts.
The reason why there is such a big gap is because Apple's architecture design is really invincible. In this regard, I can only say that Apple is really rich, and the architecture team invites elites!