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Ratsaremyfreinds

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 12, 2019
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im still shocked at the power of the 2018 iPad pros cpu. My fav desktop I ever built had a amd Fx 8120. It was so crazy fast for its time. But it had a super crazy loud cooler.and this iPad cpu is way faster.so do we really need faster?
 
Things come in cycles though right. Think back to the capabilities of original iOS devices in terms of hardware and then the software that ran on them. As processing power and efficiency increases on the hardware side the software/applications can advance as well. Conversely advancements in applications drive the need for hardware improvements. Win win for consumers either way.

Not saying these ipads aren’t fast - just saying there’s no reason to stop development just because they are. So to answer the original question, yes we do need a faster cpu so that the platform as a whole can continue to evolve and improve.
 
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Sorry but calling the FX 8120 crazy fast makes the premise flawed. It had about half the per-thread performance of its competition and couldn’t beat its own predecessor. Clearly you haven’t seen crazy fast :)
 
i can see going more eficent but this ipad is so crazy fast
So was the 286 when released, the came the 486, app became more heavy and could do more, then the Pentium came and boy we never tought we needed more.... then Pentium II showed more demanding app required the power, but sure again Pentium 4 came along, and we could do thing we ever dreamed the 286 could ever achieve.

Long story short, what is fast now it'll be DOG SLOW in less than 5 years, app are becoming increasingly heavy and more power hungry, on the other hand they can do a lot more.

Heck immagine loading a web page from the 80s now, then try doing a page from today on an 80's computer.. even the web has became heavy!
 
Sorry but calling the FX 8120 crazy fast makes the premise flawed. It had about half the per-thread performance of its competition and couldn’t beat its own predecessor. Clearly you haven’t seen crazy fast :)
mine was at 5ghz
 
i can see going more eficent but this ipad is so crazy fast
This comment, on top of your opening comment, is said in a different way but carried the same mindset: Who needs more than four computers in this world?.

Only one year, you are gonna complain how slow this iPad is and wonder why it could not be made faster at the start, which is where we are right now.
 
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I agree, the need for a better CPU is not a high on the must haves at this point. Apple has pointedly marketed the cpu raw processing power of the Ax processors for many years but that horsepower is not needed. In the iPhones, we don't need all that processing power, and even in the iPad there's been little app needs that would require. I'd rather see improvements in other aspects of the iPad, but that being said, what else can Apple improve? I think we're at a point in the lifecycle of the technology that there's things have stabilized and we'll not see much changes.
 
I think the move to faster CPUs will be a life changing transition for all of us soon. Since more and more processing will be done by AI on remote servers for example Google Stadia is a cheap $100 box. But it gives you high end PC Gaming.
 
It should be noted that during the last 7 or 8 years desktop CPU's have seen little increase in raw power. Now with the 3rd gen AMD Ryzen chips things are once again interesting. There's been a fairly stable situation as far as horsepower required to perform most tasks, so it's not unreasonable to argue that for most things the very powerful A12X should suffice for quite a while, just as an Intel i5 2500K was (or maybe still is) fine for many years.

But in the end there is always a need for better chips, so bring on the A13X/A14X :)
 
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But in the end there is always a need for better chips, so bring on the A13X/A14X :)

I think the nuanced response is that we don't really need faster mobile CPUs for our needs today, but we need development of CPUs to continue on its inconsistent trajectory of progress so that we will have the CPUs that we will need for tomorrow. We might end up stagnating for a number of years like we've seen with desktop CPUs where every new release was a modest bump after years of torrid improvement that made 2 year old computers feel old. Eventually, those years of bump ups got us to the point of seeing notable gains again in recent years.
 
The CPU doesn't seem to be the bottleneck. RAM, threading, and the GPU seem to be the biggest bottlenecks on my iPP 11" when I really start pushing it. The biggest things holding it back are still software. Not just desktop caliber apps but software that is properly threaded to take advantage of the 3-4 performance cores.

If the CPU improves I hope it is single-core performance. My iPad never hits all the cores—rarely uses more than two. Improving the multi-core speeds, unless such a benchmark comes from improved RAM and/or threading, is marketing at the expense of experience.
 
... Not just desktop caliber apps but software that is properly threaded to take advantage of the 3-4 performance cores.

If the CPU improves I hope it is single-core performance. My iPad never hits all the cores—rarely uses more than two. Improving the multi-core speeds, unless such a benchmark comes from improved RAM and/or threading, is marketing at the expense of experience.
How can you check how many cores are used by apps?
 
Always! Soon, 8K video and higher-MP cameras will be here, along with Photoshop for iPad, and more demanding apps. Games will keep improving and hopefully moving towards console quality... all this stuff needs power!
 
I think the nuanced response is that we don't really need faster mobile CPUs for our needs today, but we need development of CPUs to continue on its inconsistent trajectory of progress so that we will have the CPUs that we will need for tomorrow. We might end up stagnating for a number of years like we've seen with desktop CPUs where every new release was a modest bump after years of torrid improvement that made 2 year old computers feel old. Eventually, those years of bump ups got us to the point of seeing notable gains again in recent years.
Have you worked with files with many objects in Affinity Designer? If you had (just try the sample lion file that comes with the program for example) you would realize there is still plenty of room for faster processing.

Until applying video effects are instantaneous, CPUs are too slow. There are still tons of processes that take real time to complete (minutes, not seconds).
 
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How can you check how many cores are used by apps?
I use an app called "Status" which works a lot like activity manager on a Mac.
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Have you worked with files with many objects in Affinity Designer? If you had (just try the sample lion file that comes with the program for example) you would realize there is still plenty of room for faster processing.

Until applying video effects are instantaneous, CPUs are too slow. There are still tons of processes that take real time to complete (minutes, not seconds).
But how much of that is caused by other bottlenecks like RAM (shuffling memory pages on and off the SSD) or poor threading (not fully utilizing the speed of the current processors)? Not saying that is 100% to blame but with a closed system there should be more room to optimize—and if poor threading is already a problem, better multi-core performance won't do a thing.

EDIT: When I get a chance I'll play with that Lion sample file.
 
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