Next-Gen iPhone & iPhone Nano Speculation

[ltcommander.data]

Apple have updated GPU drivers with 7.0.3, which has resulted in a decent ~10% boost to both T-rex and Egypt HD scores. The drivers were listed as 27.10, and are now 27.11.4, but no mention of OpenGL 3.0.

http://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx27&D=Apple iPhone 5S

OpenGL ES 2.0 Apple A7 GPU - 27.11.4

https://developer.apple.com/library...GLESContexts/WorkingwithOpenGLESContexts.html

You need to check for and explicitly call an OpenGL ES 3.0 context before making use of it. The last update to GFXBench was from before the iPhone 5S was released so it wouldn't be aware of such things.

That's really interesting! I didn't know that apple updated hardware drivers like that inbetween major OS releases...

Apple also updates the GPU drivers in minor iOS x.y releases as well as major iOS x releases, but typically not for bug fix iOS x.y.z releases. Of course, before Apple always introduced new hardware alongside at least a minor iOS release, but they aren't doing that anymore, so I guess Apple is loosening the synchronization between big hardware and software changes.

 

[tangey]

https://developer.apple.com/library...GLESContexts/WorkingwithOpenGLESContexts.html

You need to check for and explicitly call an OpenGL ES 3.0 context before making use of it. The last update to GFXBench was from before the iPhone 5S was released so it wouldn't be aware of such things.

Apples recent entries in the opengles conformancy list for the iphone5s are for 1.1 and 2.0, nothing for 3.0

 

[mavere]

Overall, the 5s with the new drivers on the 2.7 bench, get 8% improvement off-screen, and around 5% on-screen.

got over 12% improvement in the 2.5 offscreen bench too.

Comparing my 3DMark Unlimited results to the ones from AnandTech's review, GT1 improved by 4.3% and GT2 improved by 8.4%. Physics score remained unchanged.

Futuremark guys noted on their forums that 64bit compilation bumped Physics by 4%, and they're still looking into how to handle their physics library's inability to leverage Cyclone's IPC increases.

 

[Alexko]

Is there an ETA for Open GL 3.0/4.0 (non ES) support for the iPhone 5S / iPad Air?

 

[Lazy8s]

I don't think they have any intention at this time.

 

[mavere]

A guy was trying to replicate iOS7's built-in blur effects in his image filtering library and posted some performance numbers. I thought they were interesting:

 

[Grall]

The numbers for the 5S are pretty crazy, especially compared to the 4... Ugh. Somewhere between over 220, up to almost 300 times faster for the 40 sample test, depending on how the 5S numbers are rounded.

 

[Lazy8s]

Even over the previous iPhone, the 5, the 5S's new generation GPU architecture apparently provides a massive boost.

That GPU is a break from the others, with some operations on it being 10-100 times faster than the one in the iPhone 5.

This makes for a particularly well-suited performance benchmark of its new GPU considering it's a rendering function which could actually be useful to its processing of the OS.

Another interesting observation in the article is how Apple's blur implementation manages a processing time that's fairly independent of the number of sample radii which was scaling up the workload proportionately in the author's implementation.

 

[pcchen]

Another interesting observation in the article is how Apple's blur implementation manages a processing time that's fairly independent of the number of sample radii which was scaling up the workload proportionately in the author's implementation.

I guess Core Image's Gaussian blur is based on some MIP map like algorithm (probably the "multi-level" patented algorithm mentioned by the author).

 

[wco81]

So how close will console ports come to PS3/360 on the new iPads?

That's the question people will have about Rogue.

 

[silent_guy]

Another interesting observation in the article is how Apple's blur implementation manages a processing time that's fairly independent of the number of sample radii which was scaling up the workload proportionately in the author's implementation.

In the comments of that article (thanks for the link, BTW, excellent Sunday morning read!), somebody provides another link to code that does downscaled blurring in constant time.

 

[offall]

Here someone leaked ipad air mainboard and A7 dissemble photos.

From the size of the die and layout of the A7 chips in air, is there a cue to suggest whether the Ram size is increased? it certainly looks bigger than iphone 5s A7, so i guess the higher frequency is confirmed at least.

Also not sure where are the chips in the last 3 pictures

the original pictures were first leaked on Weibo (Chinese twitter) post here

The ~4MB of SRAM sandwiched between the GPU block and one of the memory interfaces could somewhat compensate for a loss of memory bandwidth compared to A6X, depending on how it is utilised.

 

[ltcommander.data]

Apples recent entries in the opengles conformancy list for the iphone5s are for 1.1 and 2.0, nothing for 3.0

http://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#opengles

CPU: ARM64
OS: iOS7
API Pipeline:
GL_VENDOR: Apple Inc.
GL_RENDERER: Apple A7 GPU
GL_VERSION: OpenGL ES 3.0 Apple A7 GPU - 30

iPhone 5s A7 OpenGL ES 3.0 conformance is up. Interestingly it's a separate driver version number (30) than the OpenGL ES 2.0 and ES 1.1 drivers (27.11). Apple's always kept the driver versioning in sync before.

 

[RudeCurve]

All of the numbers are impressive but very Boring...

Show me some everyday usable software that takes full advantage of the increase in graphics power instead of stupid shit like Garage Band, Pages, Numbers etc...

Show me a reason why I should go out and buy a Ipad Air...

 

[wco81]

Like games?

Which are closer to consoles than ever before?

 

[Grall]

Show me some everyday usable software that takes full advantage of the increase in graphics power

Games was mentioned. I can imagine painting, graphical design and photo editing software for example will be updated to take advantage of the new, more powerful GPU hardware. Right now productivity software might be somewhat slim in the pickings, but anything running on the CPU will of course be faster. Educational software often has a lot of graphics that might run faster and smoother too - like Night Sky 2 for example.

Then there's Apple's own Maps app for example...

instead of stupid shit like Garage Band, Pages, Numbers etc...

Many people like garage band. What's wrong with garage band anyway? Yeah, it's not a professional music package but shit, if that's what you need, then go buy that instead...

Show me a reason why I should go out and buy a Ipad Air...

It's pretty much the best pad money can buy right now, but if you have an ipad3 or 4 already, or don't really need a pad, then there's no reason you should do so. ...Unless you have $500 burning in your pocket that you don't know what to do with, of course...

 

[wco81]

I may bite on the iPad Mini Retina. Don't like the higher price but like the fact that it's getting the A7 instead of last year's SOC and the additional LTE bands it's getting.

Just have to see if the Nexus 5 will support as many LTE bands. There's even rumors of a Nexus 8, an LG tablet, though I played around with the Nexus 7 a bit and Chrome is pretty poor.

 

[silent_guy]

All of the numbers are impressive but very Boring...

I find this kind of stuff incredibly exciting, just the opposite from boring! No practical uses required.

Show me a reason why I should go out and buy a Ipad Air...

The fact that it's full size 10" screen yet only ways 1 pound is a really good one. That makes earlier plan of buying an iPad Mini Retina suddenly much less obvious.

 

[Mike11]

So how close will console ports come to PS3/360 on the new iPads?

That's the question people will have about Rogue.

I would guess that you could kind of port (remake) 360's GTA4 to the iPad Air and have it look almost identical, if you target the iPad Air exclusively and throw millions at a talented team and give them at least a year... Probably not worth it for any publisher...

 

[wco81]

Well what do you suppose the installed base of the iPad Air and Mini Retina will be a year from now, compared to the X1 and PS4?

Of course, a GTA5 port would only be purchased by a much smaller percentage of the iPad installed base. But it wouldn't be inconceivable that these 2013 iPads will sell an order of magnitude more than the next gen consoles over the next year.

Combined.