[HN Gopher] iPhone 14 Pro faced 'unprecedented' setback leading ... ___________________________________________________________________ iPhone 14 Pro faced 'unprecedented' setback leading to removal of new GPU Author : tosh Score : 67 points Date : 2022-12-23 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com) | spoonjim wrote: | Amazing that with all this drama it never made it to the customer | facing side or had any impact on the success of the launch. Truly | an outlier among high performing companies. | CharlesW wrote: | Exactly my thought. Another was: Because Apple shares | technologies between platforms, I wonder if this GPU | development hiccup had any bearing on the apparent delay of | refreshed MacBook Pros and the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. | GeekyBear wrote: | I wonder how much TSMC pushing back 3nm plays into this? Weren't | they projecting 3nm risk production to start at the tail end of | 2021 originally? | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | Question: If even most PC gamers are pretty take it or leave it, | on the whole real time raytracing thing in AAA PC games, it being | more of a flex rather than a must have, then what's the point of | having this tech on a phone for iOS games? | | I don't game on my phone, so am I missing something wild here | where seeing raytraced reflections on a six inch screen would be | the ultimate game changer and have everyone rush out to upgrade | their phones? | bpye wrote: | I wonder if they might be applications for accelerated | raytracing in augmented reality applications? There have been a | handful of publications suggesting it for a while, such as | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6297569 . | | This demo video is pretty convincing: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2MEwVZzDaA - looks like it was | part of a PhD thesis | https://www.peterkan.com/download/kan_phd_thesis.pdf | Larrikin wrote: | Machine learning and AR are far more interesting applications | of the GPU than high resolution traditional games on a tiny | cell phone screen. | Pulcinella wrote: | In my mind it would basically be UI skeuomorphism 2.0, this | time with photo-realistically rendered materials, lighting, and | shadows. | klausa wrote: | You're missing the fact that Apple uses the same building | blocks for their chips across all of their devices. | | The M1/M2 are "just" a bunch of the same CPU cores found in A14 | and A15. | | They do the same with the GPU blocks -- the GPUs in M1/M1 | Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra (and presumably M2/3/4 etc. iterations of | those chips) also have the same GPU cores, "just" more of them | (and probably clocked differently, not sure on that). | | So missing the RT hardware for iPhone 14 Pro is probably not a | huge deal. Missing it for A16 tape-out, which if the pattern | holds, means it'll also be missing in M3-generation of chips, | is a much bigger one. | turpialito wrote: | FTA: 'Apple engineers were "too ambitious"'. Yeah, right. I'm | sure management had nothing to do with pushing unrealistically | time-framed specs down to engineering. | Waterluvian wrote: | And then later the article says: | | > The error resulted in Apple restructuring its graphics | processor team and moving some managers away from the project. | | Not suggesting this is or isn't it, but the manager thing cuts | both ways. I've had managers who push overly ambitious goals, | and managers who defer to the overly ambitious engineers | because they seem confident enough and the manager has failed | to understand the engineer's capabilities. | | I've experienced many engineers who are waaaaay too ambitious | and really do not comfortably understand the true development | cost to everything. They deliver the first 80% on time and the | second 80% puts the project six months behind. | simy wrote: | But then they deliver 160%. Sounds good! | vouaobrasil wrote: | This seems like an odd use of 'unprecedented'. It's in the same | category as "I made an unprecedented dietary decision today and | decided to drink chamomile tea instead of mint". Yes, it might be | unprecedented because I've never done that before, but it's also | super boring. Who cares? So they tried to put too much graphics | power in the iPhone and it didn't work. And it's not exactly a | setback either. So they had to have a slightly less powerful | phone. Whatever. | | Sometimes these article titles are ridiculous and I'm quite tired | of this hyperbole, especially in tech. What about "iPhone | engineers tried a powerful GPU but had to use a less powerful | one". | colechristensen wrote: | Yes this is the engineering equivalent of putting too much ham | on your plate at Christmas dinner. Unprecedented amounts of ham | go uneaten! | | Early specs of engineering project don't match final specs, oh | the humanity!, more at 11. | | News content is frequently very stupid. | [deleted] | tiffanyh wrote: | Mac Pro | | I wonder if this was a bigger setback for the Mac Pro than | anything else. | tinus_hn wrote: | Sounds like a great opportunity for a desktop machine where power | usage matters much less. | exabrial wrote: | You know what'd be better than a new GPU? USB-C with full speed | USB 3.2/3.1 and Thunderbolt 3. | alx__ wrote: | This yearly upgrade cycle is terrible. Their phones are | fantastic, and now they're stuck in some sort of spiral to push | things every year. They could stand to chill out | | I got the new 14 Pro, but only because I wanted the mag charger | feature. Before that, the 11 Pro was still a solid phone and did | everything I wanted and more. Won't be upgrading at least 3 years | theshrike79 wrote: | The thing is the "yearly upgrade cycle" isn't something people | need to follow. | | People (usually from the Android camp) complain that Apple | never innovates on brings anything new, which is kinda true if | you only take the delta between the two latest devices. | | But they fail to take into account the person going from a | phone that gets dropped by the latest iOS release (5+ years | old) to the latest and greatest. The leap in features is | staggering. | dilap wrote: | yeah, I went from a 12 to a 14, and honestly you could swap it | back and I wouldn't even notice or care. | | maybe this is what we should expect, though, as the tech | matures -- like cars: there's a new model every year, but only | significant upgrades every half decade or so. | endisneigh wrote: | I disagree. A consistent yearly upgrade cycle is actually a | good thing. It allows staggered upgrades for people who do not | want to upgrade yearly, but still create the necessary | incentive for incremental improvement. | | A new iPhone every 5 years for example, would be dumb. Ignore | the hype and marketing and just pick the one you'd like if and | when you upgrade. | | A tangent: | | Personally, I wish more things had yearly upgrades and the | backwards/forward compatibility Apple devices generally have. | It's a different model, but it would be nice if game consoles | had improved iterations yearly. The once a half decade model | creates too much of a boom/bust cycle imho. If the Switch had a | new, better version every year that was both forward and | backward compatible within a "software generation" a lot of | games like Pokemon wouldn't look and perform absolutely | terribly. | Aloha wrote: | Perhaps, but a new better one every two years might be pretty | compelling. | | They sorta do a tick-tock cycle now, generally, its form | factors on the 'tick', and significant hardware refresh on | the 'tock' | anikom15 wrote: | A new iPhone every five years means you'll have a harder time | getting one, like whenever a new video game console gets | released. | senderista wrote: | Welcome to publicly traded companies and stock-based executive | compensation. | grishka wrote: | Even stupider is their OS yearly release cycle. Apple OSes are | feature-complete. They have been for quite some time. They do | need iterative updates to add new APIs for new hardware, but | that's really it. | ladberg wrote: | I like to stay on older OSes because I agree they're feature | complete and I don't want to lose battery life to the newest | ML hotness I probably won't use and won't run efficiently on | my old phone. | | I've praised Apple for allowing me to do this by continuing | to put out security updates for older phones, but the most | recent set of pretty important security updates (15.7.2) have | artificially been restricted to only devices that don't | support 16. This is incredibly frustrating because all the | work has been put into making my older device secure without | having to update to the latest OS, Apple won't let me have | the update and I have to go to 16 instead. | andy_xor_andrew wrote: | I'm curious what software features were planned that depended on | the high-power GPU, which I guess must have been scrapped. | | Usually Apple does not ship a new hardware feature without some | software feature that showcases it. | | At one point Apple seemed all-in on using dot-matrix projections | to scan 3D spaces. I wonder if this GPU would have enhanced that | capability somehow. Or perhaps it was simply supposed to be the | icebreaker for a future M3 chip of some kind. | retskrad wrote: | The M1 was such a groundbreaking chip. I don't expect Apple to | wow us again until the M4 or M5. This is a good time for Apple to | pause, look at what Qualcomm, AMD and Intel are doing and see how | they can attract the same class of talent that gave birth to the | M1 again. | crazygringo wrote: | I wouldn't expect another M chip to be groundbreaking in the | same way ever again. Instead I just look forward to incremental | improvement year after year, the same with the A chips. That's | more than enough. | | Something similarly groundbreaking would requite a similarly | radical redesign. Maybe there will be one another couple | decades from now, but I can't even begin to imagine what it | would be. Maybe something related to ML if anything. | epolanski wrote: | > That's more than enough. | | Sure but..already the second gen didn't show gains _that_ | impressive over the first one. | | If M1 successors will start showing Intel 2010s gains gen | over gen, it's not gonna do great. | KyeRussell wrote: | How well the M series will do over time would be based on | its comparative performance. For all the "not that | impressive" gains of the M2, there still seem to be plenty | of people that historically wouldn't buy an Apple computer | but are 'begrudgingly' buying Apple laptops due to M series | performance. Have we seen anything that delivers a | comparable value proposition, let alone a better one? | | It seems natural that M series chips won't forever be | _uniquely_ positioned ahead of the pack. I don't think that | anyone besides Apple actually wants that in the first place | though. I have every expectation that they'll keep up with | the pack, or simply move back to third party chips, even if | that means changing architectures, which Apple is not | scared of doing. | dan-robertson wrote: | Aren't most hardware teams typically very old in terms of | having lots of people with a lot of experience who have been | working together for a long time? It feels to me like it's not | as simple as attracting talent. | rektide wrote: | M1 is notably possible because of the much tighter integrated | ram & cpu, providing a huge boost in memory throughput. | | It's definitely possible with stacked chips we see a similar | mind of process-and-packaging driven boost. | davidf18 wrote: | [dead] | Pulcinella wrote: | I wonder if this was planned to use the PowerVR ray tracing | solution. I believe Apple and Imagination Tech quietly buried the | hatchet some time ago. | | I also wonder how this will work for the Metal API. Metal | currently does have support for accelerating ray tracing via | acceleration structures and a few other things that require GPU | hardware features not present on older GPUs that are not specific | to ray tracing only. It doesn't not have support for ray tracing | specific hardware acceleration like in NVIDIA's RTX and AMD's | RDNA2 chips. This means you can buy a 6000 series AMD GPU, stick | it in an Intel Mac Pro, and not actually be able to use the RT | acceleration hardware! | my123 wrote: | Metal does have that support on the API side afaik. | | Just that they didn't implement the raytracing support in the | AMD driver side... | fleetfox wrote: | Metal API. I can not understand why they did not just go with | Vulkan. | sbuk wrote: | Because Vulkan didn't exist when Apple developed Metal. | Pulcinella wrote: | Metal predates Vulkan by almost 2 years. | chamwislo wrote: | It predates the name change from Mantle to Vulcan by almost | two years. Metal was built using Mantles ideas. When AMD | gave it to Khronos, they changed the name to Vulkan. | | Here is a comment from 2016 from a person already tired of | explaining this to people. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11112078 | GeekyBear wrote: | Mantle beat Metal to the press release stage, but Metal | shipped before Mantle did. | | Mantle morphed into Vulcan even later than that. | acdha wrote: | That has no citations and is pretty ranty. Given the | timing, it seems more likely that all of the people in | the industry working on similar problems identified the | same problems with the previous generation APIs and since | they all work with the same major developers they're | going to be coming up with similar solutions. | grishka wrote: | Anyway, MoltenVK is a thing. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-23 23:00 UTC)