The Power of Apple's new A11 chip

[LG Fanatic]

If this article is accurate, Apple's new A11 processor that will debut in the iPhone 7/7s/8 is a performance monster that pretty much crushes all the best that Android has to offer currently.  And most importantly for dolphin emulation, it is very strong in single core performance.  Just imagine if we could get that chip running android!  I'm practically drooling over the performance possibilities with dolphin!

What do the veteran dolphin programmers think about the A11?  Do you guys think it's powerful and efficient enough to run most games at near or full speed?

[Helios]

CPU, yes.

It's GPU, while still ridiculously fast, is kind of useless without a metal backend. Apple's GL ES implementation is slow for our use case. Fine for most app devs who don't want to use Metal, but Dolphin is special.

[zxcvbad]

(09-13-2017, 01:09 AM)LG Fanatic Wrote: Just imagine if we could get that chip running android!  I'm practically drooling over the performance possibilities with dolphin!

Don't be too excited, there won't be significant sustained performance on A11 just as on A10. Dolphin needs minimum 2800 gb4 single-core, and CPU to maintain maximum workload for hours sustainably. It's more likely we'll see something like this from ARM and Qualcomm on 5nm or 4nm

[LG Fanatic]

(09-13-2017, 01:35 AM)zxcvbad Wrote: Don't be too excited, there won't be significant sustained performance on A11 just as on A10. Dolphin needs minimum 2800 gb4 single-core, and CPU to maintain maximum workload for hours sustainably. It's more likely we'll see something like this from ARM and Qualcomm on 5nm or 4nm

I've read that Samsung and Qualcomm are developing 7nm chips that could be ready early next year.  We are so close now.  The dream of Gamecube and Wii games on our phones is just a year or two away!

[Servlet]

Too bad dolphin did not have any release for IOS, at least without jail breaking it, unless I hear it wrong.

[JonnyH]

(09-13-2017, 11:56 AM)Servlet Wrote: Too bad dolphin did not have any release for IOS, at least without jail breaking it, unless I hear it wrong.

I believe iOS doesn't allow JITs. Try playing on a top-end 140w intel chip with the interpreter and see how the experience is :/

[Nintonito]

[quote='zxcvbad' pid='452563' dateline='1505230551']
Don't be too excited, there won't be significant sustained performance on A11 just as on A10. Dolphin needs minimum 2800 gb4 single-core, and CPU to maintain maximum workload for hours sustainably. It's more likely we'll see something like this from ARM and Qualcomm on 5nm or 4nm.

A11 peak is 4000 gb4. It would have to sustain 70% of that which basically all Apple SoC's ever have been able to do.

[zxcvbad]

(09-13-2017, 01:17 PM)Nintonito Wrote:

(09-13-2017, 01:35 AM)zxcvbad Wrote: Don't be too excited, there won't be significant sustained performance on A11 just as on A10. Dolphin needs minimum 2800 gb4 single-core, and CPU to maintain maximum workload for hours sustainably. It's more likely we'll see something like this from ARM and Qualcomm on 5nm or 4nm.

A11 peak is 4000 gb4.  It would have to sustain 70% of that which basically all Apple SoC's ever have been able to do.

A10 got about 35-40% of the peak after profiling it, making it worse in GB4 than E8895 after same workload scenario. What makes you think A11 on 10 nm will get 70% of the peak? we shouldn't expect anything more than same numbers with A11. I'll get iPhone X when it comes out and profile it

[Nintonito]

(09-13-2017, 10:58 PM)zxcvbad Wrote: A10 got about 35-40% of the peak after profiling it, making it worse in GB4 than E8895 after same workload scenario. What makes you think A11 on 10 nm will get 70% of the peak? we shouldn't expect anything more than same numbers with A11. I'll get iPhone X when it comes out and profile it

Simple, I don't really consider the A10 indicative of apple's direction, nor do I think 40% is a remotely accurate stat. The A8 and A9 were tested and found to have nearly zero throttling in CPU bound situations, and the A10 is merely a clock speed bump of the A9. So there's not a lot of evidence to suggest that that the A10 would be somehow unable to sustain the performance level of the A9. The A9 btw nearly hitting that 2800 stat by itself. The A9 I profiled myself directly as I've had a device on hand for a couple years now and frankly the stats are fairly on the nose. The A10 absolutely did introduce throttling again, but the baseline would logically be the thermally stable A9 rev of the similar design. With a new node it's not hard to imagine that the issues have been resolved, especially when Apple claims to have reduced the GPU TDP significantly.

[zxcvbad]

CPU bound situations only (GB4) aren't really good indicator of actual thermals, especially GB4 tries to avoid throttling by pushing short scenarios with pausing between them. Also keeping in mind Dolphin won't use CPU only. CPU + GPU scenario/workload more realistically triggers actual thermal throttling. I'm quite opposite thinking that A10 was indicative about Apple's direction and A11 is an expected and logical transition from A10 with it's hexa-core design and with increase of all the cores frequencies. Smaller node allowed Apple to squeeze more space for the extra cores (likely keeping Monsoon cores at the same size as the Hurricane) + higher peak frequencies for all of them. A8/A9 were limited by the node size hence clocked low winning by the huge IPC. I'm not too optimistic about A11