Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Apple (Page 2 of 4)

The Story Isn’t the iPhone Xs – It’s What’s In It: the A12 Bionic Chip

iPhone Xs

Click on image to enlarge.

Maybe you heard there was an Apple event? And a new phone, the iPhone Xs? And I’m guessing you saw a gazillion media stories, too, about how darn expensive it was, right? That’s actually a major pet peeve of mine — the lamestream media just cannot let go of that same tired old line. Who can afford these things? How will people ever pay that much for a phone? Blah, blah, blah. Well, you know how it always turn out. Um, Apple does okay.

Three things make that lame media line pathetic. First of all, it isn’t just a phone — it’s a supercomputer. (Do you know what those used to cost? Meaning the equivalent computer power, not that long ago.) Second, it’s the computer you use the most, if you’re like most people. (And for some people, it’s their only computer.) From that perspective, the iPhone is downright cheap. Have you ever paid multiple times the cost of an iPhone for a computer? One that won’t fit in your pocket. I sure have.

And, third, hardly anyone pays for an iPhone upfront, anyway. Small monthly payments make it like a utility. Less money than what many people spend monthly at Starbucks.

So, now that I’ve totally destroyed that meme, I’ll get to the point of this post… šŸ™‚ Ā And that is this: not only is the iPhone Xs a bargain, but it is by far the best smartphone out there, ever, Ā because of what powers it: the A12 Bionic chip.

Here’s what some very smart journalists say on that subject:

Stephen Shankland, CNet (“A12 chip gives Apple big advantage over rivals“):

Click on image to enlarge.

The A12 is the industry’s first chip to be built using a 7-nanometer manufacturing process. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, so when Apple moved from the A11 chip’s 10nm process to the A12’s 7nm, it meant the company could stuff twice the number of circuit elements called transistors into the same surface area. In the case of the A12, that’s 6.9 billion transistors.

You don’t necessarily need to understand the nuances of transistor sizes or just how small a nanometer really is. The bottom line is that the advancement will let the iPhone XS and XS Max run graphics 50 percent faster than 2017’s iPhone X, while artificial intelligence software will work 8 times faster. And perhaps most important, your battery won’t get drained.

The A12 “is so far ahead of the industry that it will still be competitive with the best Android smartphones in two years, and massively more powerful than lower-end phones,” said Stratechery analyst Ben Thompson.

The real advantage of the 7nm process is that Apple can do it all without flattening your battery. “The lower power can extend battery life or allow Apple to push the performance up by 20 percent when the user needs the extra boost,” said Linley Group analyst Linley Gwennap.

The chip industry has been in a pickle for more than a decade as the previously steady progress in ever-faster processor clock speeds sputtered. That’s forced chipmakers to figure out other ways to try to make chips better, because no longer does the same software automatically run faster with each new chip generation.

5 trillion operations per second

Click on image to enlarge.

Special-purpose circuitry has been one primary coping mechanism. First came graphics processing units, or GPUs, which accelerate not just gaming effects like hazy air and gleaming chrome, but also physics calculations that make explosions look real. Apple’s A11 chip had three GPU engines called cores, but the A12 has four.

More recently, chipmakers have begun adding chip technology to accelerate artificial intelligence chores. AI — also called machine learning and neural networks these days — can let devices understand speech commands, take better photos and recognize unhealthy heartbeat patterns. The A12’s built-in AI circuitry can perform 5 trillion operations per second, an eightfold increase over the A11.

Apple is in a strong position compared to some phone rivals because it controls not only the processor but the operating system and other software like speech recognition and photo apps. The company can ensure all the parts of the system work well together.

——–

Om Malik, Partner, True Ventures, and Founder, GigaOm (a portion of his notes on the Sept 12Ā Apple Event):Ā 

That new shiny new A12 Bionic chip with more cores in its neural engine, ability to do way more with its GPU and CPU… seriouslyā€” this is the most impressive work…. this is some chip nerd nirvana. Here are some facts about the A12 Bionic. It has:

Click image to enlarge.

ā€¢ 6.9 billion transistors.
ā€¢ Two high-performance CPU cores deliver 15% more speed and 40% greater efficiency compared to the A11.
ā€¢ Four other CPU cores are 50% more efficient than those on the prior chip.
ā€¢ Six-core GPU designed by Apple. It is 50% faster than the block on the A11.
ā€¢ New neural engine sports eight cores, versus two in the A11, giving it a nine-fold performance bump vs. A11.
ā€¢ CoreML machine-learning framework can hit 5 trillion operations/sec, versus 600 billion ops/sec on the A11 using one-tenth of the energy.

What does all this mean? This is the first serious edge-computing device with more oomph than many laptops. The neural engine can now do a lot of those things Google does in the cloud ā€” on a device. When it comes to automatic video editing and stuff such as the identification of faces, we are going to see the power of this chip. The gaming demos and the ARKit 2 demos, should be enough of a clue as to what this new chip can enable… Ā there is something special about the iPhone Xs. And thatā€™s Bionic!

——–

James Vincent, The Verge (“A12 Bionic chip ā€˜the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphoneā€™):

The end result should be the same as ever: faster appsā€¦ More tangible, though, will be the new functionality enabled by this sort of processing muscle. Particularly apps that use the companyā€™s machine learning framework, Core ML, which the new A12 Bionic runs nine times faster than last yearā€™s chips.

——–

Rick Merritt, EE Times, in his report after the Apple event:

A12 Bionic chip. Ā© Apple Inc.

Click on image to enlarge.

The (A12’s) performance will speed a variety of operations, including unlocking the phone using Appleā€™s facial-recognition software. It also enables a new capability to group multiple Siri functions into shortcuts.

Third-party developers showed applications using Appleā€™s CoreML and ARKit 2 frameworks to enable new features supported by neural nets. They included Homecourt, an app tracking six metrics of basketball performance in real time, as well as new features in mobile games using augmented reality.

“The A12 is a game changer,” said Tim Bajarin, a veteran Apple watcher and president of Creative Strategies…

The iPhone XS and XS Max include dual 12-Mpixel-wide and telephoto cameras…Ā (which) support a variety of features, including HDR10 and adjustable depth-of-field, relying on an image processor and the neural engine in the A12. “This is a new era of computational photography,” said Phil Schiller, Appleā€™s vice president of marketing.

——–

I didn’t need any more convincing than that, plus what I saw with my own eyes watching the live stream of the event. I ordered up an iPhone Xs Max as soon as I could, to replace my iPhone X, which I got in late 2017. I’m on the iPhone Upgrade Program, so the process is easy. I make monthly payments for my phone, automatically deducted from my business account, and I can upgrade to the latest model once per year. The net upcharge for me this time? Only five dollars more per month! …Ā to get all the amazing new features and performance of the iPhone Xs Max. (I also had to pay off a small balance on my previous contract, as I was two months shy of a year with the iPhone X.)

It was the No-Brainer of the Century for me! And my new iPhone arrives within about two weeks.

A New Optimization Game in the Age of Mobile

AppStoreIcons-VentureBeat

Graphic: VentureBeat

If you publish apps (and itā€™s hard to find a company these days that doesnā€™t), youā€™d better be up on the new science ā€” and art ā€” of App Store Optimization. Yes, say hello to another acronym: ASO. We all know about SEO ā€” itā€™s such common practice, we do it like breathing. But when the whole world has gone mobile, when everyone and their mother are publishing apps, if you arenā€™t into ASO – well, youā€™re falling behind. Itā€™s a major new focus for app developers and publishers, and a Minnesota firm is ready to take you to school on it.

ASO is the direct result of a phenomenon VentureBeat calls ā€œinvisible app syndrome.”Ā In a post today, it explains: ā€œWith over 1.5 million apps in each app store, itā€™s easy for apps to disappear and never be seenā€¦ App Store Optimization (ASO) can bring your app out of hiding, placing it squarely in front of the customers who need or want it, and keep them clicking through.ā€

Minnesota-based NativeX is an experienced player in helping app publishers NativeX-logooptimize for the app stores. ItĀ describes itself as ā€œthe premiere adĀ technology choice of top-charting mobile games and apps.ā€ It has an expert team of engineers, data scientists, account managers, and designers, and has been recognized as a leader in effective monetization and user acquisition. Continue reading

Mobile App Discovery Not Getting Easier; ā€˜Zombiesā€™ Gaining

[Note: This post first appeared earlier today at Minnov8.com, where I am a contributor. Image credit: Telegraph UK.]

appsBasically, app discovery is a bitch, and the App Store is no longer the answer. That is the gist of a report on ā€œ2015 App Store Competitionā€ published a couple days ago by an analytics firm in Berlin calledĀ Adjust. (PDF of the full reportĀ here.)

Minnesota developers are of course not strangers to this problem.Ā  Itā€™s especially painful for startups looking to get traction in todayā€™s ā€œmobile firstā€ startup environment ā€” and moreso if they donā€™t have Silicon Valley sized funding rounds.Ā  I asked a couple of experienced mobile industry players here in Minnesota for their reaction to this news.Ā  But first, more on the report.

Continue reading

Quantifying the Hype: A Data Analysis of #CES2015

cesThink of it as the morning after. Actually, it was the Monday following the week when 2015 International CES ended, on a Friday. I was scrolling through my email, trying to decompress ā€” feeling some pride in surviving multiple weeks of being blasted with hundreds (thousands?) of PR pitches from an absolutely cuh-razy variety of exhibiting companies, from all over the globe. The blisters on my feet werenā€™t hurting so bad anymore. Whew! Things were finally starting toā€¦ slowā€¦ down.

Part of this decompression process is always trying to form in my head my overall opinion of the show ā€” this after writing a couple of posts (and shooting a ton of photos), but no one person can ever really write enough posts to describe their entire experience at this thing. Which begs the question, how the hell do I summarize yet another year of this massive tech-product sensory overload? It is not easy netting it out!

Continue reading

Darn You, #CES2015 ā€“ You Made Me Buy a Pono Music Player

ponoI didnā€™t go to the CES show looking to buy anything. I was already spending enough money getting thereā€¦ and, um, making cabbies rich once I arrived. But the chance to listen to Neil Youngā€™s Pono music player at the Showstoppers press event at CES on Tuesday evening last week convinced me to open my wallet. The experience was just so amazing.

Understand, now, Iā€™m no audiophile or crazy-geeky music connoisseur. But I do know when I hear something thatā€™s like nothing else. So I decided pretty instantly ā€” yep, Iā€™m a buyer! At $399, itā€™s a bargain to be able to have on-demand music experiences that rise above anything else, as Pono does. And as I considered the cost, I figured, hey, how many people paid this much and more for iPods back in the day? (Even though I admit I didnā€™t.) So, price is especially relative in this case.

Compare your iPod to the Pono sometime, if you can find someone who owns one, or if you can find aĀ demo unit in a store. You will be convinced. Or compare it to the sound quality of any of the various modern smartphones out there today ā€” those sure havenā€™t improved music listening much at all since the iPod, in any way I’m aware of.

Continue reading

« Older posts Newer posts »