Talk:Apple A11

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Die size and Imagination IP removal[edit]

@Jasonanaggie: I've removed your recent additions of an A11 die size of 96mm2, that the A11 eliminates the use of Imagination Technologies IP, and that this eliminates the royalty fee per phone that Apple pays to Imagination. For all three claims you cited Apple A11 Bionic Chip Has 6 Cores 4 Billion Transistors And 70% Faster Multi-Thread Workloads as your source, but that reference makes no claim about the die size and does not mention Imagination Technologies IP at all. You also added the 96mm2 die size claim to the Apple mobile application processors article, but there you used a different reference 2 Things You Should Know About the Upcoming A11 Fusion Chip -- The Motley Fool as your source. Unfortunately, I think you've misread that reference, the Motley Fool article says that is the size of A10X, not the A11: "in moving from the A9X chip...to the A10X Fusion...Apple achieved the following:...A major reduction in chip size (from 147 square millimeters to 96 square millimeters". That article makes no mention of the A11 die size and also no mention that the A11 eliminates the use of Imagination Technologies IP. On the other hand, I would not be surprised if Apple actually has removed all of Imagination's IP from the A11, but I don't know of any reliable source that has yet made that claim. Please let me know if you disagree with my removal of these sentences, I'm sure we can work out any disagreement (and other contributors might have a suggestion as well). —RP88 (talk) 01:13, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify my note a bit, I think what we know so far is that the A11 has an Apple-designed GPU rather than a GPU based on one of Imagination's PowerVR designs. We also know that Imagination told their investors last July that Apple told them at the end of March that Apple’s new products “at some point in 2018 or early 2019 would not contain our IP and therefore, they were not required to pay us royalties on it.” (see here). However, we don't actually know if Apple's GPU design in the A11 makes use of any any of Imagination's intellectual property. For all we know, Apple could still be licensing one or more of Imagination's patents for the GPU in the A11 (and maybe a later SoC will have an Apple GPU with no Imagination IP). I've only seen speculation at this point. We might get more information in a couple of weeks after someone like TechInsights/Chipworks decaps an A11 die and analyzes the chip floor plan. —RP88 (talk) 02:07, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

iPhone X DRAM[edit]

@Darius robin: A little while ago you updated this article to mention that the iPhone X, in addition to the iPhone 8 Plus, has 3 GB of LPDDR4 memory. However, you didn't add a citation for that fact, and the citation I used as a source for the iPhone 8 Plus having 3 GB of LPDDR4 does not discuss the iPhone X. What is your source for the iPhone X using LPDD4 DRAM, and having 3GB of it? —RP88 (talk) 13:16, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Location of TSMC[edit]

@Berting Li: A little while ago you updated this article to mention that TSMC is in Taiwan. Why do you want to include this? We are already linking to the TSMC page. Take a look at other microprocessor pages, and you'll see, for example, that Intel Core doesn't mention that Intel is in the United States and ARM Cortex-A15 doesn't mention that ARM Holdings is in the UK. I'm going to revert your change. Let us discuss it here if you disagree, perhaps other contributors might have an opinion as well. —RP88 (talk) 12:38, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@RP88: He’s not just doing it to this article, the iPhone 8 and iPhone X articles are being disrupted by him and his Taiwan addiction as well. Darius robin (talk) 14:21, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the pointer, I was not aware of that. I was hoping he had a good explanation; I hadn’t considered the possibility that it might be part of some larger quixotic effort. Maybe he will provide a convincing rationale. —RP88 (talk) 14:56, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@RP88:
Because many people Do Not realize the ABBR: TSMC’s ‘T’ is mean ‘Taiwan’.
Why do you think and expect everybody, all of people will click TSMC’s link from A11’s page ?
(The Intel or Qualcomm etc. are not an abbreviation. Therefore, there is no problem on it.)

@Darius robin:
Many people from global and American themselves, they just noticed their phone’s back just marked ‘made in China’, and may does not further to realize the CPU, the core, the heart of the phone is ‘made in Taiwan’.
Why do you think and expect everybody, all of people will click A11’s link from iPhone 8 / iPhone X’s page, and may further click TSMC’s link to realize this Fact ?
- Berting Li (talk) 15:40, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Berting Li: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a place to promote your country. We DO NOT list the country of each and every part of a device, if people want, they will visit the wikilink. Height of spoon feeding. Darius robin (talk) 16:45, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Darius robin:
Yes, right, and so, I JUST and ONLY wrote “by TSMC”. NOT “by TSMC, made in Taiwan” in iP8 / iPX’s infobox, OK ?! understand it ?! - Berting Li (talk) 17:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Berting Li: Nope, see the article of any phone or electronic device, the manufacturer’s name is never written. Of all Apple’s devices to date, the SoC’s manufacturer has never been mentioned. If people want, they can go to the A11 article through the wikilink and find the manufacturer. Darius robin (talk) 17:18, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Darius robin:
That’s just a “trandition” in many phones pages, But Not a WP:Manual of Style or WP:Policies and guidelines or any Standards / Rules of Device Infobox tell us you can not put the name of manufacturer. If you can find it out for me and for others. Tks. - Berting Li (talk) 17:55, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Berting Li: Sorry, but I’m not the only one opposing your edits, anyone will not approve this. Darius robin (talk) 17:57, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]


En... So, there are no any Excect / Accurate / Pricise standards or rules of device infobox on Wikipedia here, right ?

I spend time to check these pages:

Template:Infobox mobile phone, Talk page,
And WP:Do Not (1), WP:Do Not (2), WP:Do Not (3),
And WP:Dispute resolution, WP:Consensus, WP:Assume good faith, etc., and more ...

According to these pages, so, if anyone has the “objection” etc., PLESE create the draft first － “[[Template:Infobox mobile phone/Draft: Rules of the template]]”, and then achieve the consensus second, and then DO IT － Convince the everybody finally. That’s it, OK.
- Berting Li (talk) 23:00, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Berting Li and Darius robin, I appreciate you both taking the time to explain your positions. Berting Li, given that your original edit to this page was to add the "Made in Taiwan" country of origin appellation and your explanation above, it is clear you want the A11 article to specifically mention that the A11 is made in Taiwan above and beyond the mention that is made by TSMC. I've given your response some thought, and I think there are three separate issues to consider.

(1) First, would it be appropriate to link to the Made in Taiwan country-of-origin (COO) article from the A11 article? I think the answer is no, as all three of the teardowns linked in the references show that the A11 SoC has no COO labeling. It would be hard to convince me that this is a good idea.

(2) Second, would it be appropriate to mention that TSMC manufactures the A11 in Taiwan? This is a little trickier, as I think you are correct that TSMC manufactures the A11 in Taiwan. While you didn't provide a source for this and I don't have a source for this immediately to hand, I definitely think a source for this could be found. But there are many true things that are omitted from this article and we have to decide which to include without giving undue weight to any particular fact. As I mentioned above, if you take a look at other microprocessor pages you'll find that who manufactures a chip is frequently mentioned, but where the company that manufactures that chip is located is very rarely mentioned, presumably because it is rarely relevent to the article about the chip itself (but would be relevant to the article about the manufacturer, so, conversely, I think you'll find that every chip manufacturer's page mentions their location). I don't think Taiwan is being unfairly singled out and I don't think it is of particular relevance to this article, e.g. as you'll find that in the articles for other chips in the Ax series originating with Samsung, we don't mention they are in South Korea. Similarly, I don't think non-anglophone countries are being slighted, as articles like Intel Core don't mention that Intel is in the United States and ARM Cortex-A15 doesn't mention that ARM Holdings is in the UK.

(3) Third, you briefly mentioned that TSMC is an acronym, so would it be a good idea to to expand the TSMC acronym out to "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company" on its first use in the main body of the article? I admit, this gave me pause for thought. Unlike the other two cases, I am not immediately opposed to this idea. My main argument against doing so would be that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is known primarily by its acronym TSMC (at least in English), much like International Business Machines is much better known by its acronym IBM (maybe due to both making prominent use of their acronyms in their logos). As an example, the Power Architecture article makes frequent mention of IBM, but never expands this to "International Business Machines." I assume this is why the contributors to both the TSMC and IBM articles have chosen the acronyms for these article names instead of the full names.

So, in summary, I don't think it makes sense to add to the A11 article either the "Made in Taiwan" COO or that the country in which TSMC is located is Taiwan. However, I might be convinced that it is a good idea to expand the TSMC acronym out to "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company" on its first use in the main body — although, for consistency sake, if we chose to do that we should also do it for the other articles in the Ax series which mention TSMC. —RP88 (talk) 01:19, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. En... There are two parts:
One, I agree that no need to put the COO in the infobox. (The first edit just a mistake, ok.)
Two, I consider that it is important in the text and introduction. That’s all.
- Berting Li (talk) 02:13, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@RP88 and Berting Li: I don’t think the full word of TSMC should be written. This is why there is something called a wikilink, where people can get all the info they want about the company. Darius robin (talk) 08:39, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
En... There are two parts:
About the abbreviation, no one has to click like AMD / IBM / NASA... page to study what’s the meaning for. TSMC as well. No Duty (for every reader).
About the importance of CPU manufacturer, I think that the other parts of a smartphone / computer device are not the KEY point. Those parts are not comparable to the Core - Central processing unit.
- Berting Li (talk) 15:49, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Berting Li: The manufacturer of CPU is key to you but not necessarily to the majority of consumers of the device. If a reader wants to find out more information about the manufacturer, they can follow the link to TSMC and learn more than just the single fact that was made in Taiwan. sikander (talk) 19:29, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Siqbal: Exactly. Berting Li, It just doesn’t make sense to give priority to the CPU, every part of the phone is important, not just the CPU. And anyways, Apple is the one who does the main work, designing the chip, TSMC just manufactures it. Darius robin (talk) 11:22, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My 50 cents: It's not noteworthy to state that the A11 is manufactured in Taiwan since most what TSMC manufactures is done in Taiwan. If they were to manufacture in an unusual place, like if they had a fab in a non obvious place, say at their WaferTech plant the US, then it would be noteworty. Case in point: Intel and GloFo have foundries in different parts of the world, and it _is_ noteworthy to state where Intel's, AMD's and IBM's stuff are manufactured, since it could be Israel, Singapore, USA, Germany, or China. -- Henriok (talk) 19:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X[edit]

There appears to be some conflicting information about whether the A11 uses LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X memory. LPDDR4X is identical to LPDDR4, except that the I/O voltage (Vddq) is reduced to 0.6 V from 1.1 V, so they are easy to confuse. The iFixit iPhone 8 Teardown originally identified the memory as LPDDR4, but has subsequently been updated to identify the memory as LPDDR4X. However, the iFixit iPhone 8 Plus Teardown has not been similarly updated, it still says LPDDR4. The TechInsights iPhone 8 Plus Teardown also says LPDDR4. Looking at the actual memory parts numbers:

  1. The iFixit iPhone 8 Teardown says that the A11 in that unit is using SK Hynix H9HKNNNBRMMUUR memory. According to the SK Hynix part numbering guide the M in the 10th position of H9HKNNNBRMMUUR indicates it is "LPDDR4X, 1.1V/0.6V". Which agrees with iFixit's update to change the teardown to say LPDDR4X instead of LPDDR4.
  2. The iFixit iPhone 8 Plus Teardown says the A11 in that unit is using Samsung LPDDR4 memory, but they don't show the part number, so I can't look it up.
  3. The TechInsights iPhone 8 Plus Teardown says the A11 in their unit is using Micron MT53D384M64D4NY memory, which they describe as LPDDR4. According to the Micron DRAM Component Part Numbering System the MT53D prefix decodes to (MT = Micron Technology, 53 = LPDDR4, D = 1.1V Vdd / 0.6V Vddq) and as LPDDR4X is identical to LPDDR4, except that Vddq is reduced to 0.6 V from 1.1 V, this actually appears to be LPDDR4X.

This is obviously all original research on my part, so by policy shouldn't be used directly. I've sent an email to TechInsights pointing out the discrepancy in their teardown, so maybe if they update their teardown we can resolve this. In the meantime, do you think we should leave the article as is (i.e. saying it uses LPDDR4), update it to say LPDDR4X, or maybe update the article to somehow describe the discrepancy? I'm leaning towards leaving the article alone for a while, and hopefully TechInsights will also make a correction. —RP88 (talk) 09:16, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good news, the TechInsights analyst agreed with me, and they've updated their teardown report. Now that both the iFixit iPhone 8 Teardown and the TechInsights iPhone 8 Plus Teardown agree the A11 is using LPDDR4X, I'm going to update this article. —RP88 (talk) 21:50, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rating[edit]

I fixed the Apple project rating to be Start, the same as the Computing rating. It was set as B [1] and criteria [2] by User:Wumbolo but that seems way off the mark by itself, and in comparison to similar articles such as its predecessor. Widefox; talk 11:18, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Neural Engine redirect[edit]

Neural Engine redirects to this article, and it really shouldn't. The Neural Engine on M1 and M2 chips isn't restricted to running Apple software as it is on the A11 chip, meaning that it is available for applications to use for tasks such as video and photo enhancement. I barely know enough about the topic to write a stub, otherwise I would do it myself. ˜˜˜˜ Itsmeitis (talk) 00:21, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Software Update Discontinuation Reasoning[edit]

Right now, the article says "The latest software update for the iPhone 8 & 8 Plus including the iPhone X using this chip was iOS 16.5.1, released on June 21, 2023, as it was discontinued with the release of iOS 17 in 2023 due to hardware limitations of the A11." I don't think it is appropriate to say this is due to hardware limitations of the A11 considering iPadOS 17 is supporting the iPad 6th generation which uses the older A10. As far as I know, Apple hasn't made a statement about why they dropped the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X. How do others feel about this? JoltingMG (talk) 20:54, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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