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You don't think it's a little impressive that a mobile SoC in a tablet (that is constrained by power and physical space) is matching the performance of an i7 in an iMac that has the benefits of sitting on your desk plugged into power all day, isn't constrained by size, and has significant active cooling?

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I, for one, am constantly amazed by the performance of such mobile/small devices (regardless of type and model). However, shouldn't such a result also say something about the iMac (or any other "desktop" for that matter)? I mean, 5 years is not that much when it comes to performance; "shrinking" a desktop in 5 years (while keeping the performance) to such an extent seams unlikely.

Its definitely a noteworthy accomplishment. Not sure of all the benchmarks they used, but hopefully they tested more than just hardware accelerated operations or else it detracts from overall versatility a bit.

the i7 can keep that performance indefinitely though. Can the SoC do the same thing (i.e. not trigger thermal throttling) without active cooling and on battery power?

Honest question btw, I have no idea how the Apple cpu behaves in this scenario.

I think it's impressive in a general Moore's law is mind-boggling way, in the way my phone is more powerful than the desktop I bought in 2007. Nothing particular to this SoC, and nothing special about this particular comparison to this particular machine.

Mobile CPUs have many constrains to adapt to, but "size" shouldn't really be one of them.

It makes a big difference for cooling though.

As in: the bigger, the better?? :)

I'm curious why you say that. Circuit board real estate seems to be a precious commodity especially in iphones. What do you mean by size?

I was answering about the CPU (or SoC)

Huh? Size of the system is one of the defining constraints of "mobile". I guess you are saying the chip is small enough you don't think size of the CPU will be the limiting factor for setting the size of the system? True that other components are larger, but not true that the CPU is insignificant!

As an aside, In a high production volume chip, size (silicon area) == cost. It's really that simple for a lot of design choices.

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