Apple is willing to trade die space (i.e. manufacturing cost) for performance in a way that their competitors are not. Anandtech architecture reviews are helpf

Apple is willing to trade die space (i.e. manufacturing cost) for performance in a way that their competitors are not. Anandtech architecture reviews are helpful, as always. Worth reading for a page or two from the linked page: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro-and-max-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro... https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re... The short of it is: massively wide execution units, massive amounts of SRAM, massive amounts of cache at all levels. There's no real "secret sauce", they're just willing to pay to make an incredibly fat core and Qualcomm and company are not. They have 16 MB of system cache on A13 for 2 high-performance and 4 low-performance cores, which is as much as a 9900K gets for 8 cores and as much as Zen2 gets for 4 cores. Plus another 8MB per big core on top of that (so up to 24MB per core in single-threaded mode), and 4 MB per small core. It helps that they're a vertically-integrated company, they don't have to sell their processors on the open market at competitive prices such that an OEM can also make a profit selling a finished product at competitive prices, they just sell the finished product.