Other Apple A12 vs A13 NPU

[ediks]

I have a question. Isn’t the neural engine in A12 more powerful than the one in the A13 since it can perform 5 trillion 8bit operations per second compared to the 1 trillion of the A13?? It’s also bigger in size(4,64 vs 5,79) .It looks like a big downgrade to me. Could it be the reason the XS series had mediocre battery life?

source : iPhone XS and 11 keynotes

 

[imp3rator]

It is only physical size of block in chip. Check GPU Core - it is same size as A12 and it is 20% faster.
You can put more transistors to same or smaller size of chip or make that unit or core faster in the same or smaller size.

 

[ediks]

It is only physical size of block in chip. Check GPU Core - it is same size as A12 and it is 20% faster.
You can put more transistors to same or smaller size of chip or make that unit or core faster in the same or smaller size.

Yeah but still , the number of operations per second is lower. 600 billion/sec on A11, 5 trillion/sec on A12, 1 trillion/sec on A13. I just think it’s strange that the number went down yet the NPU is 20% faster (not talking about GPU)

 

[Tekguy0]

Yeah but still , the number of operations per second is lower. 600 billion/sec on A11, 5 trillion/sec on A12, 1 trillion/sec on A13. I just think it’s strange that the number went down yet the NPU is 20% faster (not talking about GPU)

Its possible that Apple decided that it was overkill, and that they could save a bit of power and die space by shrinking it.

 

[imp3rator]

Yeah but still , the number of operations per second is lower. 600 billion/sec on A11, 5 trillion/sec on A12, 1 trillion/sec on A13. I just think it’s strange that the number went down yet the NPU is 20% faster (not talking about GPU)

Where did you get 1 trillion for A13 ?
From Apple event "The A13 Bionic uses the same eight-core neural engine design as the A12 but is up to 20 percent faster and uses 15 percent less power."

You can't be faster and do 5 times less operations...

EDIT : Yes you can, as I posted below

 

[ediks]

Where did you get 1 trillion for A13 ?
From Apple event "The A13 Bionic uses the same eight-core neural engine design as the A12 but is up to 20 percent faster and uses 15 percent less power."

You can't be faster and do 5 times less operations...

View attachment 911727

It was shown just minutes before this slide

I included the old ones too

 

[imp3rator]

Yeah I found it before you posted it but "That efficiency boost is despite fitting a record 8.5 billion transistors inside and upping performance by roughly 20 percent across the board — and Apple says the chip now has the most machine learning (ML) performance, too, with an eight-core neural engine that adds “6x faster matrix multiplication.”

Probably make 6x more or faster matrix multiplication in one operation - so it is equivalent to 6 trillion operations with 1 matrix multiplication in A12 and 20% faster makes sense...

 

[ediks]

Yeah I found it before you posted it but "That efficiency boost is despite fitting a record 8.5 billion transistors inside and upping performance by roughly 20 percent across the board — and Apple says the chip now has the most machine learning (ML) performance, too, with an eight-core neural engine that adds “6x faster matrix multiplication.”

Probably make 6x more or faster matrix multiplication in one operation - so it is equivalent to 6 trillion operations with 1 matrix multiplication in A12 and 20% faster makes sense...

That makes sense. But i’m wondering why they didn’t use the same metrics and write 6 trillion. But the wikipedia states that the speed is for 8bit operations for all of the chips.

 

[imp3rator]

Because they are quite truthful when comes to numbers of performance or battery and because it is 1 trillion.
If you have 10 operations but one operation is adding
and have 10 operations but one operation is multiplication... For 6x6 result you must do 6 adds or one multiplication.
So yes number of operations is lower but you should trust that it is 20% faster overall (or 20% faster for machine learning or other camera or image processing (deep fusion, potrait mode, night mode etc..)

 

[ediks]

Ok , thanks for the clarification.

 

[Motionblurrr]

So basically the A12 Bionic is still insanely powerful in 2020?

 

[nordique]

So basically the A12 Bionic is still insanely powerful in 2020?

Yes. It will be powerful next year too

Even the A11 is still very powerful in 2020

the old chips don’t suddenly get slower because of apples marketing hype machine