iPhone 6s: Samsung And TSMC A9 SoCs Tested

[hatib]

hahahahahahahah apple is making the cpu from it is very big compititer and making displays from lg so what then apple does ? i think they just take different flagship phone and seprate the parts and then rebrand the phone which people just buy for show off in our country

 

[eklipz330]

it says 10% longer, but on regular usage, can't that add up to like an entire hour?

 

[MobileEditor]

Do you think 6s and 6s plus will have a different outcome? I've read through several test results and found out that TSMC are favorable in terms of battery life if the test model is 6s (actually I don't remember who has used 6s plus as a test model). If you can also conduct a test on the 6s model, that would be awesome!!!

Last year we saw that the iPhone 6 Plus seemed to get the higher binned A8 SoCs, since it had ~10% higher max GPU clock than the iPhone 6. This does not seem to be the case this year. Both the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus show identical CPU and GPU performance. Apple could still be binning the chips based on battery life, though.

Unfortunately, we only have the one iPhone 6s, and we do not have the budget to buy another one (let alone several for a better sample size). However, I would expect the 6s to show similar results to what we're seeing with the 6s Plus.

- Matt Humrick, Mobile Editor, Tom's Hardware

 

[MobileEditor]

hahahahahahahah apple is making the cpu from it is very big compititer and making displays from lg so what then apple does ? i think they just take different flagship phone and seprate the parts and then rebrand the phone which people just buy for show off in our country

Apple is a fabless chip designer just like Nvidia or AMD. Apple has been designing its own SoCs for years. Samsung and TSMC are just manufacturing the chips.

- Matt Humrick, Mobile Editor, Tom's Hardware

 

[MobileEditor]

it says 10% longer, but on regular usage, can't that add up to like an entire hour?

Short answer: No.

The 10% difference occurs while running the CPUs at max frequency continuously, which would never happen during regular usage. This test drains the battery in about 3 hours resulting in about 20 minutes difference between the two SoCs (under these conditions the battery would reach 0% for both versions before the runtime difference could reach 1 hour).

During our video playback test where the CPU is essentially idle (which occurs frequently during normal operation), we only see a 2-3% difference in battery life between the two different SoCs. A hypothetical use case resulting in 8 hours of battery life (a scenario where the CPU would be idle most of the time) would then show about a 15 minute advantage for the TSMC version based on our numbers.

- Matt Humrick, Mobile Editor, Tom's Hardware

 

[hammereditor]

Why is the Apple logo the coldest part for the Samsung version?

 

[Solandri]

Apple is a fabless chip designer just like Nvidia or AMD. Apple has been designing its own SoCs for years. Samsung and TSMC are just manufacturing the chips.

To be clear, ARM designs the SoC. Apple licenses and takes that design and makes some modifications to it before sending it to a fab to be produced. Some very good modifications by all accounts. If I remember, they lured some senior CPU designers away from AMD some years back. But the bulk of the SoC is designed by ARM.

 

[shahnewaz]

So, how did you make sure both these chips are of equal quality?
It could very well be a good bin TSMC chip beating a bad bin Samsung chip.

 

[MobileEditor]

Why is the Apple logo the coldest part for the Samsung version?

It's colder for both versions, because the logo is a separate piece that's made from a different material than the aluminum housing with different thermal properties.

- Matt Humrick, Mobile Editor, Tom's Hardware

 

[MobileEditor]

To be clear, ARM designs the SoC. Apple licenses and takes that design and makes some modifications to it before sending it to a fab to be produced. Some very good modifications by all accounts. If I remember, they lured some senior CPU designers away from AMD some years back. But the bulk of the SoC is designed by ARM.

There seems to still be some confusion around this issue. ARM does indeed design CPUs and GPUs and makes the intellectual property available to others through two different licensing programs. An ARM processor licensee is allowed to incorporate one or more of the ARM designed processors into its own SoC. Examples of processor licensees are Marvell, MediaTek, and Samsung (Qualcomm occasionally goes this route too). An ARM architecture licensee creates its own custom designed processors that are compatible with the ARM ISA (Instruction Set Architecture). Apple and Qualcomm (Krait CPUs) are examples of architecture licensees.

Apple purchased PA Semi in 2008 and began designing its own custom CPUs. While these CPUs use the ARM instruction set, they share nothing in common with ARM's Cortex series of CPUs. Where ARM's designs focus on simpler, narrower cores running at higher clock speeds (Cortex-A53), optionally paired with more complex, higher-performing cores (Cortex-A57) in a big.LITTLE configuration, Apple's designs focus on complex, wider cores running at lower clock speeds. To be clear, ARM is not involved in the design of Apple's CPUs anymore than Intel is involved in designing AMD's CPUs (AMD licenses the x86 instruction set).

As a fabless chip designer (like most all companies are nowadays), Apple then contracts with an outside vendor like Samsung or TSMC to manufacture its design.

As a side note, Qualcomm purchased the Imageon GPU IP from AMD and used it as the basis for its Adreno GPUs.

- Matt Humrick, Mobile Editor, Tom's Hardware

 

[George Phillips]

The variation of battery lives among iPhones with either the same TSMC or Samsung chips should also be considered. Not all batteries have the exact run time. If the battery variable can be measured and quantified by further tests feature iPhones with either only TSMC or only Samsung chips, the result will be much useful.

 

[alextheblue]

I think there is a question here that seems to have been lost in the battery life debate. How does each of these chips age over time? We all know Samsung makes high quality products that you can rely on for usually well beyond they warranty. I wonder if TSMC can keep up with Samsung in the durability and endurance comparisons. Even if it's only slightly different, the TSMC chip may not be as reliable over the long term given it's different manufacturing process. Because this is the core component of the phone I feel like consumers are going to want to know if there is a perceptible difference. Please develop and start a 'lifespan' cellphone test series.

Something else on the phone will die or break long before the SoC does, especially in a low-power mobile device. Anyway TSMC isn't exactly NEW to the world of making chips. They make all of the AMD and Nvidia discrete graphics chips, and those chips are bigger and higher-power than a phone SoC (and they run a heck of a lot hotter too).

 

[show_me_the_monkey]

The skin temperature picture proves that you don't treat both iPhone6s equally.

The Apple mark on Samsung one is cooler, and Samsung one has more heat spread to bottom right than TSMC one, you should keep both iPhone under the same condition, not let one have more air flow, another has less.

 

[Maxtile]

The aforementioned temperature photo on Samsung version seems to be weird. I have no idea why the Apple logo area (blue section) surrounded by outer high temperature area (red section) is much colder. The Apple logo area on TSMC version seems to be normally presented with yellow color because it's almost in the same high temperature as the surrounding area is in. Does anyone explain this?

 

[JERRYCH3]

Someone probably add a fan on the side during the samsung test... it look like a fake test result to me...

 

[Sed___]

This test too fake.
How can make the temperature of apple logo cooling so rapidly in Samsung but not in TMSC if the chip's temperatures only two degree fahrenheit difference?
The answer is....................

 

[MobileEditor]

The aforementioned temperature photo on Samsung version seems to be weird. I have no idea why the Apple logo area (blue section) surrounded by outer high temperature area (red section) is much colder. The Apple logo area on TSMC version seems to be normally presented with yellow color because it's almost in the same high temperature as the surrounding area is in. Does anyone explain this?

Both phones were tested at the same time and were sitting on the same desk about ten-inches apart from each other. There were no fans in the room.

The Apple logo on the back of an iPhone is a separate piece made from a different material than the housing. The logo is also polished versus the matte finish of the aluminum housing. The polished surface of the logo has a much lower emissivity than the surrounding material, which means it radiates less heat. The thermal camera works by sensing the thermal energy radiated from a surface. Less radiation means less heat detected by the camera.

Put another way, the temperature shown by the camera is a function of both the temperature of the object and the emissivity of the object's surface. Let's say we have two objects both at 100 deg F, but one has an emissivity equal to 1.0 (a perfect black body) and the other has an emissivity equal to 0.8. The thermal camera would show the object with emissivity of 1.0 with a temperature of 100 deg F and would show the object with emissivity equal to 0.8 with a temperature of 80 deg F.

Because the camera does not know the emissivity of the surfaces it's looking at, it cannot accurately detect the temperature of all objects in the frame if they have radically different emissivities, like in the case of the Apple logo. In reality the Apple logo is the same temperature as the rest of the housing (which you can crudely verify by touching it with your finger), but because of its very low emissivity the camera is not measuring it correctly.

- Matt Humrick, Mobile Editor, Tom's Hardware

 

[GK6504]

I think there is a question here that seems to have been lost in the battery life debate. How does each of these chips age over time? We all know Samsung makes high quality products that you can rely on for usually well beyond they warranty. I wonder if TSMC can keep up with Samsung in the durability and endurance comparisons. Even if it's only slightly different, the TSMC chip may not be as reliable over the long term given it's different manufacturing process. Because this is the core component of the phone I feel like consumers are going to want to know if there is a perceptible difference. Please develop and start a 'lifespan' cellphone test series.

My personal experience with Samsung has been less than stellar. I had a computer monitor and a TV both died just over a year. I think Samsung's enormous marketing budget probably has something to do with the perceived quality. TSMC has also been in the chip business longer than Samsung. That been said, other components will most likely break before the SoC.

 

[utroz]

Seems like most of the people saying this article is "faked" have brand new accounts, coincidence? I think not... It is one thing to put forth questions about the testing and another to just say that the results are "faked". I have been reading Tom's since the late 1990's and it is usually pretty good about testing. Granted some writers have their own biases but for the most part there is no real point to be biased on which Apple A9 is the best, they are all Apple stuff in the end.

 

[joonee88]

So I hear that some Taiwanese are spreading a rumor that Samsung's A9 is inferior to that of TSMC. Most likely coming from their ill-directed patriotism and envy of the South Korea's success in the last decade. They are now discrediting Tom's Hardware since this review proved them wrong.

 

[NYC101]

Hi Tom

Don't be an amateur, be professional. Even a preschool kid knows how to fake a test and uses photoshop to perfect their report before it was made public.

 

[syant]

Care to explain this?
http://imgur.com/QxgyhAI

oh, I can help you out there.
http://imgur.com/Nrc6CwK

Makes more sense huh?

 

[Xiaoken]

It would be great if there were shots of the test platform to figure out why the Samsung had more heat at the bottom right corner. People believe what they want to believe, some people don't know a thing about this stuff and are certain that they're right

 

[Ching-Han]

The locations of the probe points are also not the same on the two pictures. It's closer to the Apple logo on the Samsung picture (and potentially farther away from the actual point where the temperature peaks).

 

[utroz]

And the paid shills have now invaded... I suspect a few "damage" control accounts already have been made just to comment on this article.. If you guy's know it all then PROVE it with scientific testing, if not quit slandering Tom's Hardware.. I personally would like to have scientific, reasonable, and thought out arguments instead of obvious troll shill fud..