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Message started by Oldfeller on 02/24/13 at 19:45:44

Title: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch up
Post by Oldfeller on 02/24/13 at 19:45:44

http://liliputing.com/2013/02/nvidia-tegra-4-android-benchmarks-faster-than-anything-on-the-market-yet.html (by a factor of 3-4 no less)

I mentioned that Apple gets an extra year to work on ARM stuff before it gets released to everybody else. Apple used to use this extra lead time this to pack lots of WOW into their yearly product releases.

Since Steve Jobs died, not a lot of WOW has been coming out of APPLE on a regular basis. Google is now WOW'ing us more than APPLE, and that seems to be a continuing thing now.

Now, the Nvida Tegra 4 chip is out and it was in test products and it was on test boards and the Tech reporter people at the World Mobile Conference at Barcelona Spain were allowed hands on time with the products where they were allowed to run whatever benchmarks they wanted to on these production level Tegra 4 SOC's.

And believe me, they did. Tegra 4 outperforms APPLE A6 .... that's bad news for APPLE and it means it's time to trot out the new big gun from APPLE ..... but where is it? (big silence from the APPLE folks)

http://liliputing.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/t4-quadrant.jpg

and I quote Brad Linder "The Tegra 4 chip, on the other hand, scores about as well as my desktop PC in the SunSpider test."

Folks, I done told you a long time ago this was a coming, but I got hooted at some. So, it's here (on one benchmark, anyway). There ARE phone chips that can perform on the PC level now.

So, what about APPLE? The only way for APPLE to WOW !!! anybody now this year is to actually uncork a next generation chipset (A57 level at 64 bits on a 20 nm process). They could do it, they have had the chipset specs for nearly a year and a half now and if 'ol Steve Jobs was around to push things you could bet they surely could/would do it.

But Steve is dead now, and so apparently is APPLE.

If APPLE loses their tech edge and gives up being the WOW company to folks like Nvida and Google then silly Chinese may well be giving us our next set of WOW products in a couple of years time.

Nvida and Google are the tech leaders right now, let's see how long this lasts.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Cavi Mike on 02/25/13 at 07:14:27

People don't buy Apple products because they are fast. I'm not sure Apple has ever had the fastest anything on the market. I'm probably wrong about the second comment but I'm definitely not wrong about the first.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 02/25/13 at 07:28:19

In this 2010-2015 iteration of computer change (the cell phone / tablet wars) APPLE has led the pack the whole way both in screen resolution and in ARM processor power.

No one has ever bested them on a tablet or a phone. We will see if this is changing now long term.

Yes, in PC space (now shrinking) APPLE never led processor power-wise. They were always stuck on IBMs Power PC platform at the first and they changed over late to Intel's products. Because they didn't lead, they suffered greatly as a company during this period.

You'd think they may have learned something over the years. Leadership in an industry MUST always be protected and that takes work to always be the first to innovate so as to stay on top.

And now that they are a creator/maker of ARM processors, they have to work to stay best at that too.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 02/25/13 at 08:07:25

http://liliputing.com/2013/02/intel-unveils-clover-trail-dual-core-chips-for-smartphones.html

Here’s a run-down of the new Intel chips:

Intel Atom Z2520 – 1.2 GHz dual-core processor
Intel Atom Z2560 – 1.6 GHz dual-core processor
Intel Atom Z2580 – 2 GHz dual-core processor

Clover trail isn't Intel's promised new super phone chip, that's Bay trail and it is still vaporware until late this year.

As the new ARM chipsets hit up at the 3 gigahertz level, Intel's Atoms/Medfields/Clover trail are up to 2 gigahertz now (with higher power consumption than ARM A15 quad cores that they have to compete against).

Intel still hasn't come up with a chip with the processing power AND the low power consumption needed to win in phone space.

============

Aside on Linux and the kernel

Linux has adopted into the kernel all of the major programming innovations that made Android light and fast. The Android/Linux merge is complete at this time. Linaro (the clearing house that moves new ARM stuff into the kernel and provides the uniform drivers, etc for ARM SOC chipsets) has been backflushing all the innovative stuff from Nvida, Google, Asus, Samsung, etc etc back into the Linux kernel on a monthly basis for several years now.

What has changed quietly is your mainstream Linux distro as it picks up and uses the new items that it sees as improvements to what it used before.

Think of Linux as a supermarket and your distro as your shopping cart. New stuff moves from the shelves to the cart all the time. You have Android and Chrome and Canonical and Firefox and Tisen all stocking the shelves now with new fast light technology bits and pieces that fit ARM processors that are free for anyone to use.

Now you have this year's ARM processors that clearly outperform the old Atom level of processors and are now going past the old Celeron processor power levels.

...... and are small enough to make a computer in the glasses a real product.

Next year you get 64 bit processing power and a huge boost in addressable memory space on top of 2-3 gigahertz quad core processors.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 02/25/13 at 08:33:53

Salt on Intel's wounds

Nvidia's Tegra 4 was bad enough, but Samsung's Exnos Octa core was worse yet. Now here come the oriental phone vendors, buying up ARM liscenses and cooperating to build state of the art 20 nanometer fab plants in China.

http://liliputing.com/2013/02/renesas-introduces-ape6-8-core-processor-for-phones-and-tablets.html

That's two oriental companies that will be fabbing Octa core A15/A7 big little SOCs starting this year.

The supply level of powerful chips has increased this year compared to all previous years.

Anybody can be their own private Intel now-a-days it seems ..... just buy the license and buy a share in a new fab plant that is being constructed.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by verslagen1 on 02/25/13 at 08:47:00

salt applied by shotgun?

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 02/26/13 at 05:23:15

What Intel hopes will happen is that the fastest ARM SOCs will start to draw more power and waste more heat. Then Intel can start to claim "equivalence" or "superiority" to ARM again.

With Big/Little configurations, ARM has beaten this equation as it runs off the small chipsets most all of the time, only revving the big guns when doing something that requires them.

And what sprinkles the salt on Intel's wounds is that when the big guns and the little guns are all firing at the same time (WFO) the current crop of ARM SOCs still draw less current and waste less heat than Intel's most efficient set up.

But Intel claims that will all change once everybody gets below 20 nm. They have made similar claims at 48, at 32, at 28 nm but it hasn't panned out yet.

==================

What will be the 12 gage loaded with rock salt?

When ARM goes to 64 bits next year at 20 nm (A57) and suddenly Intel has no lithography advantage to base their claims off of at all. Parity at 64 bits, ARM at 20nm and Intel at 22nm, with Intel costing at least twice as much per SOC, making more heat and costing more battery time.

By then Tegra 4 will be dirt cheap as Tegra 5 (64 bit) will be the hot new SOC. The oriental companies octa core A-15/A7's will be the bottom of the fishbowl price-wise because "64 bit shift" thinking will have gripped everybody.

Nobody buys a 32 bit SOC when the 64 bit stuff comes out and the software begins to shift to 64 bit. If they do, the price has to be compelling enough to get them to do it "against their better judgement".

AMD will be shifting to their new life as a 64 bit ARM SOC builder (assuming they survive the next winter) and HP will still be reinventing itself as an ARM hardware supplier.

Intel and MS will still be pushing out new versions of Windows 9 or 10 but it will be to a still smaller shrinking market.

It is very hard to compete against "free software" when it is as good or better than what you are offering. When business begins to accept non-office file structures as normal stuff, it is all over for MS.

Google will be busy playing out Google Fiber (100 times faster than anything internet that is now being piloted in Kansas City) as the GF technology is cooked now and the costs are low enough for Google to just go "do it".

This key competency falls in line with "ad revenue" and Google's main mission which is to quietly sell ads while providing associated data and services. And like the Nexus 7, Google will make a small profit while doing this "public service". But they will quietly rake in a big profit off the little ads that will ride along with the show.

Google has enough money to create a new market or to correct old constipated markets (like cable internet). And they are quirky enough to just go do it.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 03/01/13 at 08:42:02

A keyboard with every tablet .....

http://liliputing.com/2013/03/fujitsu-develops-virtual-tablet-keyboard-that-tracks-your-fingers-with-a-camera.html

http://liliputing.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/fujitsu-camera-keyboard.jpg

Dual you facing cameras can track your eyeballs and let you type by looking (old trick developed for Stephen Hawking by the science crowd).

Now Fujitsu is inventing the virtual keyboard. You just make the finger motions against a table top and their dual camera rig recognizes the finger motions and puts the letters up on the screen.

http://liliputing.com/2013/03/fujitsu-develops-virtual-tablet-keyboard-that-tracks-your-fingers-with-a-camera.html

I think Google's voice typing is the quickest/best option, just speak it in. Whole words instead of doing it by the individual letters.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Cavi Mike on 03/01/13 at 16:07:37

Virtual keyboards have been around for decades. They were a gimmick then and they're a gimmick now. The real world still needs to look at the keyboard when typing because we're not all stenographers. Voice typing is prolly the only thing that will be of any use - as long as you're then only one within earshot.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 03/02/13 at 14:01:54

Look at the tablet display, the letters are "ghosted in there" along with a icon version of your hand over a keyboard so you can see which key is where. Visual typers are pretty well covered I think.

I can see "speaking in" text for a post to get quickest input, then correcting the errors using the virtual keyboard (or the on screen keyboard, whichever was easier).

Point being, tablets seem to be heading more towards being able to do your main stream real uses than they were a year ago. No where near cad yet, but word processing and spreadsheet, yup, getting closer.

Definitely past the stage of being just a purty toy like they were 2 years ago.

And, they are $100 cheaper than they were 2 years ago and about 4 times as powerful.

Getting ready to double up on that power again just this year, with prices still drifting down a bit by year's end.

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Serowbot on 03/02/13 at 16:34:27

Geez,.. it's not like I don't have enough trouble with typing,... now they expect me to do it upside-down and backwards!...

T!hIIIss wil nowt g0o wlll... :-?...

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 03/02/13 at 20:09:45

Your "right side" up display is in the bottom left corner of the tablet. Inverting the entire visual image isn't hard for a computer to do either -- so they could show your a virtual keyboard right side up on the display too if folks really asked for it.

For clumsy folks like us, Google will let us just say it clearly and it pops up on the screen.

Fact is, touch typing is a skill many do not have. For me, I think the words and the letters just appear on the screen -- but it took years of jr high and high school typing classes (required) and lots of fiddling around and practising and typing posts to get that way.

And still too many words show up with red underlines, which means my spelling isn't up to snuff yet either.

eh ....

I will always have a full keyboard and a full size monitor because I like it. This will brand me as a dinosaur in the eyes of the kids coming up.

I try to type in full sentences and that is useless to them too.

Oh well ....

Title: Re: APPLE misses WOW window, must now play catch u
Post by Oldfeller on 03/02/13 at 20:25:43

Look forward 3-4 years ....

Computer fanboys will be bragging on their custom handled 64 bit "suitcase supercomputers" and will keep track of their little carry case expandable "sea of cores" ego toys in teraflops. Normal users will be happy with mere gigaflops ....

Hint: you can buy lots of tablets and phones today that outdo the second generation Cray 2 Supercomputer for straight out performance.

And some person will build a ultra-realistic game that takes MORE, so you have to add some processor cards to your backbone.

(and yes, this graph suggests that the Tegra 4, Snapdragon 800 and the Exnos octa core (and the chinese octa cores) will come out this year at about the Cray 3 level of performance)

And I can remember when I thought a supercomputer was really something unique and different.

:)

http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=0x2012&image=apple_ipad_cray_show&w=960