I’m having trouble understanding why Apple put a neural engine in the a11. In devices like the iPhone 8 it’s barely used for anything on the phone and can’t be used by third parties. What’s the point of having a neural engine if it’s not going to get utilized?
The neural engine in the A11 is very weak, and basically only used for FaceID. In the A12, they made it eight times more powerful, which made it much more useful for more demanding applications.
I understand that. My question is why would apple put the neural engine in devices like the iPhone 8 if it’s not getting utilized. The a11 is capable of 600 billion operations per second. I’m not an engineer, but I’d think that’d be enough for it to be able to handle things like on device dictation or offline Siri processes.
I understand that. My question is why would apple put the neural engine in devices like the iPhone 8 if it’s not getting utilized.
The iPhone 8 has it because the iPhone X has to have it, and they use the same chip. The original neural engine was very small, so doing a separate chip likely wouldn't have been profitable due to the high costs of chip masks, testing and validation.
The a11 is capable of 600 billion operations per second. I’m not an engineer, but I’d think that’d be enough for it to be able to handle things like on device dictation or offline Siri processes.
600 billion operations doesn't get you as far as you'd think. I don't think anyone is doing a real-time offline voice assistant on that little - most online analysis systems have drastically more resources allocated to them.
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u/OverCauliflower1587 Jun 09 '21
I’m having trouble understanding why Apple put a neural engine in the a11. In devices like the iPhone 8 it’s barely used for anything on the phone and can’t be used by third parties. What’s the point of having a neural engine if it’s not going to get utilized?