[HN Gopher] iPhone 14 Pro faced 'unprecedented' setback leading ...
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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.
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