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> Maybe you can address the observation already made by dotaro about Intel making literally 20 different variations of the same CPU's, scaling from the ULV end

> Maybe you can address the observation already made by dotaro about Intel making literally 20 different variations of the same CPU's, scaling from the ULV end with low clock speeds and limited cooling options, all the way up to the HPC end where clock speeds, TDP, etc. are large multiples of what goes into the ULV parts? Just because you can scale down an HEDT- or HPC-focused design to the point of making it run as a ULV chip under very challenging thermals, doesn't mean that the resulting chip will perform very well. We've seen this time and time again with x86 vendors trying and failing to enter the lucrative "mobile" segment. And it's not clear why we should expect a different outcome when mobile-focused vendors try the reverse play, by attempting to "scale up" their existing designs. One size very much doesn't fit all in the semiconductor industry.

Symmetry 8y ago
Exactly. Part of the reason that Apple's chips do so well against Intel at a given power level is that there Apple is operating at the frequencies their chips are designed for whereas Intel is far away from their sweet spot. You can cover a variety of power targets with one microarchitecture but you're going to do so less efficiently when you're far away form your design point. And while I bet you could overclock an Apple core somewhat if you used liquid nitrogen or whatever it will still have more logic between clock latches than an Intel processor does. That deeper pipelining means that Intel will be able to clock higher than you can for any given process/voltage/temperature combination. Apple has some very talented CPU architects and I'm sure they could design a high performance chip. But it won't be the same one that runs in iPhones.