6 ms·

You are basing that on what metrics? It's all just speculation for now. AMD 4000 mobile processors, on the other hand, already exist.

scarface74 7y ago
We know the performance/power trade offs of Apple’s ARM chips in iPad Pros.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  And the odds are good that even that could be scaled up further for a laptop-class part. The iPad Pro is a passively cooled device which is expected to always run on battery power, after all; a laptop would have larger batteries and more thermal margin. Not that it'd even have to be scaled up by much. The A13 (iPhone 11) already performs comparably to many Intel mobile parts; an -X variant (future iPad Pro) would surely improve upon that.
  - zrm 7y ago
    The scaling is really the question. ARM processors generally have better performance per watt because they're designed to prioritize power efficiency over absolute performance. The Intel parts Apple's ARM processors compare to on performance are the lowest power ones, which isn't exactly the sweet spot for Intel's microarchitecture. If you gave the ARM designers the (higher) laptop power budget, almost certainly they'd increase performance at the expense of performance per watt. In other words they'd take more of the trade offs that Intel and AMD do. But to justify switching architectures it can't just be the same, it would have to be enough better to be worth the transition.
    - amalter 7y ago
      This has been exactly proven out by Amazon - https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcing-new-amazon-ec2-m6g-c6g-and-r6g-instances-powered-by-next-generation-arm-based-aws-graviton2-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcin... If Amazon can make a server class ARM chip that is competitive or better with their custom designed Xeons, I take it as a truism Apple could do the same for mobile.
      - wu_187 7y ago
        The problem is the use-case. The software Mac laptops run would perform horribly on ARM. A Macbook Pro is not going to have an ARM processor.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Why do you think the software Macs run are so much different than the software that iPad Pros run? They run some of the same frameworks. Since when you run iOS apps in the simulator for Macs you actually running x86 builds of iOS apps linked against an x86 build of the iOS frameworks, it’s not hard to compare performance
        mindajar 7y ago
        It already does, in the T2. It seems to me like future T* chips will run more and more of the system, leaving the x86 to become something like the MBP’s discrete GPU option. And then, like discrete GPUs, eventually an x86 CPU is only available in top-end models.
      - zrm 7y ago
        There are a lot of reasons to expect that to work better for servers than laptops. Most server workloads scale with core count, so winning in performance per watt is winning in general because you can scale performance by adding cores. A server with twice as many cores that are each half as fast is just as good, but that doesn't work for a laptop. A server processor also doesn't have to win at every workload. If it can win at any workload, people can use it for only those, which makes it useful. That also doesn't really work for a laptop. People run Linux on servers. It's portable. The architectural transition cost there is close to zero. On top of that, Amazon is fudging the benchmarks in claiming it's faster. They're comparing performance "per-vCPU" which on Intel are hyperthreads rather than full cores. That's fine when Amazon is charging less for the ARM "vCPU" than the Intel hyperthread "vCPU", but you can't use that trick when running single-threaded workloads on a laptop.
        scarface74 7y ago
        And OS X is portable. It’s already been ported from PPC to x86 and parts of it back and forth between ARM and x86.
vr46 7y ago
Would these really be an upgrade? I thought we were hitting thermal and power limits these days? (Genuinely asking btw, have just bought a tricked-out MBP 16)
- scarface74 7y ago
  It depends on what you’re optimizing for. Having a laptop that has the battery life of an iPad would definitely be an upgrade.

scarface74 7y ago

We know the performance/power trade offs of Apple’s ARM chips in iPad Pros.

duskwuff 7y ago
And the odds are good that even that could be scaled up further for a laptop-class part. The iPad Pro is a passively cooled device which is expected to always run on battery power, after all; a laptop would have larger batteries and more thermal margin. Not that it'd even have to be scaled up by much. The A13 (iPhone 11) already performs comparably to many Intel mobile parts; an -X variant (future iPad Pro) would surely improve upon that.
- zrm 7y ago
  The scaling is really the question. ARM processors generally have better performance per watt because they're designed to prioritize power efficiency over absolute performance. The Intel parts Apple's ARM processors compare to on performance are the lowest power ones, which isn't exactly the sweet spot for Intel's microarchitecture. If you gave the ARM designers the (higher) laptop power budget, almost certainly they'd increase performance at the expense of performance per watt. In other words they'd take more of the trade offs that Intel and AMD do. But to justify switching architectures it can't just be the same, it would have to be enough better to be worth the transition.
  - amalter 7y ago
    This has been exactly proven out by Amazon - https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcing-new-amazon-ec2-m6g-c6g-and-r6g-instances-powered-by-next-generation-arm-based-aws-graviton2-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcin... If Amazon can make a server class ARM chip that is competitive or better with their custom designed Xeons, I take it as a truism Apple could do the same for mobile.
    - wu_187 7y ago
      The problem is the use-case. The software Mac laptops run would perform horribly on ARM. A Macbook Pro is not going to have an ARM processor.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Why do you think the software Macs run are so much different than the software that iPad Pros run? They run some of the same frameworks. Since when you run iOS apps in the simulator for Macs you actually running x86 builds of iOS apps linked against an x86 build of the iOS frameworks, it’s not hard to compare performance
      - mindajar 7y ago
        It already does, in the T2. It seems to me like future T* chips will run more and more of the system, leaving the x86 to become something like the MBP’s discrete GPU option. And then, like discrete GPUs, eventually an x86 CPU is only available in top-end models.
    - zrm 7y ago
      There are a lot of reasons to expect that to work better for servers than laptops. Most server workloads scale with core count, so winning in performance per watt is winning in general because you can scale performance by adding cores. A server with twice as many cores that are each half as fast is just as good, but that doesn't work for a laptop. A server processor also doesn't have to win at every workload. If it can win at any workload, people can use it for only those, which makes it useful. That also doesn't really work for a laptop. People run Linux on servers. It's portable. The architectural transition cost there is close to zero. On top of that, Amazon is fudging the benchmarks in claiming it's faster. They're comparing performance "per-vCPU" which on Intel are hyperthreads rather than full cores. That's fine when Amazon is charging less for the ARM "vCPU" than the Intel hyperthread "vCPU", but you can't use that trick when running single-threaded workloads on a laptop.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        And OS X is portable. It’s already been ported from PPC to x86 and parts of it back and forth between ARM and x86.

vr46 7y ago

Would these really be an upgrade? I thought we were hitting thermal and power limits these days? (Genuinely asking btw, have just bought a tricked-out MBP 16)

scarface74 7y ago
It depends on what you’re optimizing for. Having a laptop that has the battery life of an iPad would definitely be an upgrade.