How much better is A12 than a11? A12 and a11 compete
4hw.com.cn: this year, Apple released three new phones at its new product launch in autumn, namely iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR. These three mobile phones use the same A12 chip. Many friends know that last year's a11 was already a monster level processor. How much better is the performance of A12 than that of a11? Let's have a look.
Is there a big performance gap between A12 and a11? How much has it been improved?
Like a11, A12 also takes "bionic" as the suffix, which can be understood as the whole of a11. Specifically, A12 bionic processor adopts the latest 7Nm process, which is also the "first" 7Nm chip in the world. A12 has not only CPU, but also GPU, neural network engine, image signal processor, depth engine, security barrier, video processor, video encoder, memory controller and so on. Some people may have opinions. Isn't the first 7Nm processor Kirin 980? Let's just say that the Kirin 980 has just been released, and it hasn't been installed, let alone put on sale. A12 is the first 7Nm chip that we can buy, so there's nothing wrong with Apple's statement.
The new A12 bionic processor, like a11, adopts a six core design. Among the six cores, there are two high-performance cores and four low-energy cores. According to the actual needs, the system will schedule the core in real time, while ensuring the performance and endurance. Apple says A12's CPU performance is 15% faster than a11's. In addition, with the 7Nm process, the power consumption of A12 CPU is 50% lower than that of a11. A11 is a 10nm process and A12 is a 7Nm process. Why is the power consumption reduced so much? In fact, 7Nm means that the smallest wire in a chip can be 7Nm in size. By reducing the distance between components, the capacitance between transistors will also be lower, thus increasing their switching frequency. Because the dynamic power consumption of transistors in switching electronic signals is proportional to the capacitance, they can achieve faster speed and more power saving at the same time.
Like a11, the GPU of A12 is independent of apple, which is composed of four cores. In addition, the GPU of A12 chip also adopts the new fourth core and lossless memory compression technology, which brings significant improvement in graphics performance for games, video editing and apps that need a lot of visual effects, up to 50% compared with a11. At the press conference, apple demonstrated the powerful graphics processing ability of A12 using the mobile game ancient scroll. We can see that the whole demonstration process is very smooth, and the overall lighting effect is also extremely excellent. It seems that Apple's insistence on developing its own GPU is still effective. It is also worth mentioning that thanks to the powerful image processing performance of A12, the new iPhone can have intelligent HDR function, which can process more data from the camera sensor. This will result in a wider dynamic range, clear dynamic effect and excellent low light noise reduction performance. Even the iPhone XR with a single camera can shoot portrait mode, thanks to the powerful A12 bionic processor.
In addition to GPU and CPU, as a bionic processor, the AI performance of A12 has also been improved. Poppur has learned that A12 adopts Apple's newly designed neural network engine and 8-core design. This engine is the most advanced and the world's first real-time learning AI engine. It can perform five trillion operations per second (a11 is 60 million). In addition, Apple will also open the neural network engine to core ml, which will enable the machine learning ability of A12 chip to be increased by 9 times compared with before, while the energy consumption will be reduced to one tenth of the original. Thanks to the new neural network engine, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR equipped with A12 have faster recognition speed and higher recognition rate.