3 ms·

This isn't just a matter of Moore's law. The lack of competition over the past decade also played a major role. Intel didn't feel pressed to deliver anything an

This isn't just a matter of Moore's law. The lack of competition over the past decade also played a major role. Intel didn't feel pressed to deliver anything and instead decided to milk the market. It doesn't even matter if tomorrow we find a way to bring back Moore's law (performance increase, not necessarily transistor density). Apple probably doesn't want to be back here 10 years from now if competition is dwindling. And again, if they want to charge a lot more than the competition they have to justify it. This is the justification. Give me a super optimized CPU for which major software companies optimize their software and you've got my attention. I imagine Adobe would make sure their SW gets tha last drop of performance on Apple's machines. May not be the case with the competition's run of the mill ARM core.

speedplane 8y ago
It all comes back to Moores law. Today, there is more competition between chip fabs than ever. ARM is beating Intel in a number of markets. They are able to do so, because Intel is slowing down. Intel is slowing down because of Moore's law. The idea that a company would optimize a chip to their specific purpose is also a consequence of Moore's law. If performance did exponentially increase, there would be no point in optimizing for a task, because by the time you finished that, the general purpose solution would be faster.