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> Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. Eh? This is a flimsy claim. AMD's performance/watt is extremely impress

> Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. Eh? This is a flimsy claim. AMD's performance/watt is extremely impressive right now. Apple is ahead of Intel for sure, but Intel isn't the only other player here. > So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. Alternately a Macbook Air type with 16 hours plus strong 4k performance. A slightly more efficient CPU doesn't get you this. You need significant efficiency improvements across a variety of aspects, including those Apple has already been optimizing for years like the display.

StillBored 6y ago
AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. The real problem though, is that apple is actually designing a core 100% focused on the target market. Unlike intel, for whatever reason, and AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. So, I would expect the engineering tradeoffs for said laptop/desktop processor to show. AKA, things like hyperthreading are quite a win for servers, but at best are a wash for a desktop use case focused on extremely high single thread perf at the expense of throughput.
- moooo99 6y ago
  > AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past. > AKA, things like hyperthreading are quite a win for servers, but at best are a wash for a desktop use case focused on extremely high single thread perf at the expense of throughput. This might be true for devices like the MacBook Air which are designed for relatively light usage like Office, but I don't see that argument working with their "Pro" lineup, including the iMac Pro and the MacBook Pro. These are devices specifically targeted to a professional audience like graphics designers, 3d artists, software developers or video editors. All of those tasks can be done with decent single-threaded performance, but lots of those tasks also benefit from multithreading. I haven't owned a single MacBook so far and I doubt that'll change anytime soon. Nevertheless, its exciting to see Apple do this move and it'll be interesting how good their CPUs can compare to mobile processors by Intel and AMD.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past. The TDP on those is, what, 3-4x the A12Z?
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      With twice the cores at a higher per-core speed, yes. And also with a much more powerful GPU.
    - moooo99 6y ago
      Yeah probably 3-4x the TDP (35-54W) with double the threads, 1.8GHz faster per core clock speed and a relatively powerful on-board graphics unit.
    - kllrnohj 6y ago
      TDP is whatever you want it to be. The big cores in an A12Z will pull around 4w each. That means an "unchained" A12Z is a ~16W+ CPU. The 4800H is a 45W TDP, but also has 2x the fast CPU cores. And the binned 4800HS is a 35W TDP, still for 8 cores / 16 threads. So ~2-3x the TDP for 2x the core count and 4x the thread count. Pretty interesting head to head when the Apple dev kits actually show up in people's hands, don't you think?
      - pertymcpert 6y ago
        Not 4W each. Stop saying this.
        ac29 6y ago
        The linked Anandtech data shows it using 4-5W in a single thread test. That doesn't mean it will use 4-5W/core in a multithreaded test, but thats almost certainly only due to limitations in power delivery and thermals.
        kllrnohj 6y ago
        SPECint2006 is a single-threaded test: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/specint2006-a13.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/specint2006-a13.png That's either 4-5W per core or the uncore in an A13 is hugely power hungry. I'm rather positive it's not an extremely bad uncore, so the only other option here is a 4-5w per core power figure. Which also lines up with the voltage/frequency curve numbers: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png If you have data to support a different number I'm all ears, finding power draw figures in this space is rather difficult, but 4-5W per-core aligns with expectations here. A 1W consumption would be unheard of levels of good.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. I'm having trouble following the reasoning. > AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. They have plenty of funds for R&D. Problem is, processor manufacture goes much beyond the processors themselves. You have to design the entire manufacturing chain, and spend billions on new foundries which will get obsolete in a few years.
  - AlphaSite 6y ago
    AMD is fabless, they just didn't have any money for spinning up several different chips for different markets. They even had a single chip from desktop to high end servers (with all the tradeoffs that entails).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  AMD right now has a core 100% focused on low power devices with amazing performance, very likely ahead of Apple. So no, your premise is not accurate.
  - ec109685 6y ago
    Why is it very likely ahead of Apple? Apple has been doing the dedicated low power core approach for a while.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Because AMD has a 4 core low power processor with multiple times the memory bandwidth and multiple times the I/O and greater performance per core at the same power draw as Apple's 2 core processor with about a tenth of the I/O and a third the memory bandwidth.
valuearb 6y ago
Apple SOCs are going to be a big part of the performance/watt gains.
ascendantlogic 6y ago
AMD is small though. I have no data to back up my gut but anecdotally I feel like they don't have the manufacturing capacity to keep up with Apple's demands right now.
- fabianhjr 6y ago
  AMD is the provider of APUs/CPUs and Graphics of both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. AMD represents about 2/9 in Windows and 3/10 in Linux of processors using Steam month-by-month and raising; In this same survey Windows represents 95% and MacOS 4% of computers.https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/ I think they can manage the production to provide for all Apple CPU needs.
- monocasa 6y ago
  The chips are going to be manufactured by TSMC whether they're AMD or Apple chips. And the game consoles show that AMD can put together a secure, x86 chip at high volumes at leading nodes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
You're correct that AMD’s offerings are impressive, but that‘s vs an uncooled A12 chip. Add active cooling and a few more watts there's no reason why they couldn't blow the doors off.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  I think you're either underestimating how much power an A12 consumes or overestimating what actively cooled CPUs consume per-core. The A12 will pull around 4w on a single-core workload to come close to 9900K in performance. That's a good number, but it's not unheard of. The 4800HS is also a 4w per core CPU, and also comes close to the 9900K in performance. The problem is increasing single-core performance becomes non-linear. It's not just a few more watts to bump from 3ghz to 4ghz. It's a lot of watts. Simply having 4 big cores on an A12 would push it into 10w actively cooled territory as well, same as the i5 in a macbook air (a CPU that's also 10w). Add a few watts to bump the single core performance while you're at it and suddenly it's a 20w chip. Make it 8-cores to compete with the current macbook pro CPUs and suddenly it's a 40w chip.
  - Reason077 6y ago
    > "Simply having 4 big cores on an A12 would push it into 10w actively cooled territory as well" The A12X/A12Z already has 4 big cores (and 4 little cores, and 7-8 GPU cores). I imagine the A14X will follow this pattern, but the cores will be 2 generations newer, with 2 generations of performance-per-watt improvements.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Rumors indicate all high-power cores.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        Heterogenous cores are a pretty huge advantage.
  - wizee 6y ago
GeekyBear 6y ago
I'd say that you should take a look at a comparison of the power efficiency of Apple's "little" core in the A13 to a stock ARM little core. >In the face-off against a Cortex-A55 implementation such as on the Snapdragon 855, the new Thunder cores represent a 2.5-3x performance lead while at the same time using less than half the energy. 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... Apple has been hitting it out of the park lately.
- monocasa 6y ago
  Yeah, the other ARMs are anemic, but the AMD cores are knocking it out of the park recently.
  - thetinguy 6y ago
    They’re not really though. Still slower IPC.
MR4D 6y ago
>Eh? This is a flimsy claim. Anandtech would like to disagree with your word choice. https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro-and-max-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro...
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  Did you read your own link? > In virtually all of the SPECint2006 tests, Apple has gone and increased the peak power draw of the A13 SoC; and so in many cases we’re almost 1W above the A12. Here at peak performance it seems the power increase was greater than the performance increase, and that’s why in almost all workloads the A13 ends up as less efficient than the A12. > The total power use is quite alarming here, as we’re exceeding 5W for many workloads. In 470.lbm the chip went even higher, averaging 6.27W. If I had not been actively cooling the phone and purposefully attempting it not to throttle, it would be impossible for the chip to maintain this performance for prolonged periods. In other words, to get those good specint numbers, power was sacrificed to do it. 5W per-core power draw is right in line with a typical x86 laptop CPU, too. 4800HS sits at 35w, or 4.3w per core.
  - wizee 6y ago
    You do realize that's 5W total, not 5W per core? Apple is currently around 4-5x the performance per watt of Intel's most efficient parts.
    - kllrnohj 6y ago
      It's a single-threaded test. That's 5W on a single core. Here's the A12's power/frequency curve: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png That's the curve per core (that's how those charts work). 3.85W per core @ 2.5ghz is what a big core A12 is spec'd at.
      - wizee 6y ago
        That's fair. However, according to the same chart, it draws 1W at 2000 MHz, which should give 80% the single core performance. This is how Apple is getting 4x the perf/watt of Intel and AMD competitors in Geekbench and similar workloads. Apple is able to acheive very high multithreaded performance within a 5-6W TDP by running all the cores around 80% of peak performance.

StillBored 6y ago

AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. The real problem though, is that apple is actually designing a core 100% focused on the target market. Unlike intel, for whatever reason, and AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. So, I would expect the engineering tradeoffs for said laptop/desktop processor to show. AKA, things like hyperthreading are quite a win for servers, but at best are a wash for a desktop use case focused on extremely high single thread perf at the expense of throughput.

moooo99 6y ago
> AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past. > AKA, things like hyperthreading are quite a win for servers, but at best are a wash for a desktop use case focused on extremely high single thread perf at the expense of throughput. This might be true for devices like the MacBook Air which are designed for relatively light usage like Office, but I don't see that argument working with their "Pro" lineup, including the iMac Pro and the MacBook Pro. These are devices specifically targeted to a professional audience like graphics designers, 3d artists, software developers or video editors. All of those tasks can be done with decent single-threaded performance, but lots of those tasks also benefit from multithreading. I haven't owned a single MacBook so far and I doubt that'll change anytime soon. Nevertheless, its exciting to see Apple do this move and it'll be interesting how good their CPUs can compare to mobile processors by Intel and AMD.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past. The TDP on those is, what, 3-4x the A12Z?
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    With twice the cores at a higher per-core speed, yes. And also with a much more powerful GPU.
  - moooo99 6y ago
    Yeah probably 3-4x the TDP (35-54W) with double the threads, 1.8GHz faster per core clock speed and a relatively powerful on-board graphics unit.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    TDP is whatever you want it to be. The big cores in an A12Z will pull around 4w each. That means an "unchained" A12Z is a ~16W+ CPU. The 4800H is a 45W TDP, but also has 2x the fast CPU cores. And the binned 4800HS is a 35W TDP, still for 8 cores / 16 threads. So ~2-3x the TDP for 2x the core count and 4x the thread count. Pretty interesting head to head when the Apple dev kits actually show up in people's hands, don't you think?
    - pertymcpert 6y ago
      Not 4W each. Stop saying this.
      - ac29 6y ago
        The linked Anandtech data shows it using 4-5W in a single thread test. That doesn't mean it will use 4-5W/core in a multithreaded test, but thats almost certainly only due to limitations in power delivery and thermals.
      - kllrnohj 6y ago
        SPECint2006 is a single-threaded test: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/specint2006-a13.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/specint2006-a13.png That's either 4-5W per core or the uncore in an A13 is hugely power hungry. I'm rather positive it's not an extremely bad uncore, so the only other option here is a 4-5w per core power figure. Which also lines up with the voltage/frequency curve numbers: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png If you have data to support a different number I'm all ears, finding power draw figures in this space is rather difficult, but 4-5W per-core aligns with expectations here. A 1W consumption would be unheard of levels of good.
outworlder 6y ago
> AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. I'm having trouble following the reasoning. > AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. They have plenty of funds for R&D. Problem is, processor manufacture goes much beyond the processors themselves. You have to design the entire manufacturing chain, and spend billions on new foundries which will get obsolete in a few years.
- AlphaSite 6y ago
  AMD is fabless, they just didn't have any money for spinning up several different chips for different markets. They even had a single chip from desktop to high end servers (with all the tradeoffs that entails).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sudosysgen 6y ago
AMD right now has a core 100% focused on low power devices with amazing performance, very likely ahead of Apple. So no, your premise is not accurate.
- ec109685 6y ago
  Why is it very likely ahead of Apple? Apple has been doing the dedicated low power core approach for a while.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Because AMD has a 4 core low power processor with multiple times the memory bandwidth and multiple times the I/O and greater performance per core at the same power draw as Apple's 2 core processor with about a tenth of the I/O and a third the memory bandwidth.

valuearb 6y ago

Apple SOCs are going to be a big part of the performance/watt gains.

ascendantlogic 6y ago

AMD is small though. I have no data to back up my gut but anecdotally I feel like they don't have the manufacturing capacity to keep up with Apple's demands right now.

fabianhjr 6y ago
AMD is the provider of APUs/CPUs and Graphics of both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. AMD represents about 2/9 in Windows and 3/10 in Linux of processors using Steam month-by-month and raising; In this same survey Windows represents 95% and MacOS 4% of computers.https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/ I think they can manage the production to provide for all Apple CPU needs.
monocasa 6y ago
The chips are going to be manufactured by TSMC whether they're AMD or Apple chips. And the game consoles show that AMD can put together a secure, x86 chip at high volumes at leading nodes.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Eric_WVGG 6y ago

You're correct that AMD’s offerings are impressive, but that‘s vs an uncooled A12 chip. Add active cooling and a few more watts there's no reason why they couldn't blow the doors off.

kllrnohj 6y ago
I think you're either underestimating how much power an A12 consumes or overestimating what actively cooled CPUs consume per-core. The A12 will pull around 4w on a single-core workload to come close to 9900K in performance. That's a good number, but it's not unheard of. The 4800HS is also a 4w per core CPU, and also comes close to the 9900K in performance. The problem is increasing single-core performance becomes non-linear. It's not just a few more watts to bump from 3ghz to 4ghz. It's a lot of watts. Simply having 4 big cores on an A12 would push it into 10w actively cooled territory as well, same as the i5 in a macbook air (a CPU that's also 10w). Add a few watts to bump the single core performance while you're at it and suddenly it's a 20w chip. Make it 8-cores to compete with the current macbook pro CPUs and suddenly it's a 40w chip.
- Reason077 6y ago
  > "Simply having 4 big cores on an A12 would push it into 10w actively cooled territory as well" The A12X/A12Z already has 4 big cores (and 4 little cores, and 7-8 GPU cores). I imagine the A14X will follow this pattern, but the cores will be 2 generations newer, with 2 generations of performance-per-watt improvements.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Rumors indicate all high-power cores.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Heterogenous cores are a pretty huge advantage.
- wizee 6y ago

GeekyBear 6y ago

I'd say that you should take a look at a comparison of the power efficiency of Apple's "little" core in the A13 to a stock ARM little core. >In the face-off against a Cortex-A55 implementation such as on the Snapdragon 855, the new Thunder cores represent a 2.5-3x performance lead while at the same time using less than half the energy. 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... Apple has been hitting it out of the park lately.

monocasa 6y ago
Yeah, the other ARMs are anemic, but the AMD cores are knocking it out of the park recently.
- thetinguy 6y ago
  They’re not really though. Still slower IPC.

MR4D 6y ago

>Eh? This is a flimsy claim. Anandtech would like to disagree with your word choice. https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro-and-max-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro...

kllrnohj 6y ago
Did you read your own link? > In virtually all of the SPECint2006 tests, Apple has gone and increased the peak power draw of the A13 SoC; and so in many cases we’re almost 1W above the A12. Here at peak performance it seems the power increase was greater than the performance increase, and that’s why in almost all workloads the A13 ends up as less efficient than the A12. > The total power use is quite alarming here, as we’re exceeding 5W for many workloads. In 470.lbm the chip went even higher, averaging 6.27W. If I had not been actively cooling the phone and purposefully attempting it not to throttle, it would be impossible for the chip to maintain this performance for prolonged periods. In other words, to get those good specint numbers, power was sacrificed to do it. 5W per-core power draw is right in line with a typical x86 laptop CPU, too. 4800HS sits at 35w, or 4.3w per core.
- wizee 6y ago
  You do realize that's 5W total, not 5W per core? Apple is currently around 4-5x the performance per watt of Intel's most efficient parts.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    It's a single-threaded test. That's 5W on a single core. Here's the A12's power/frequency curve: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png That's the curve per core (that's how those charts work). 3.85W per core @ 2.5ghz is what a big core A12 is spec'd at.
    - wizee 6y ago
      That's fair. However, according to the same chart, it draws 1W at 2000 MHz, which should give 80% the single core performance. This is how Apple is getting 4x the perf/watt of Intel and AMD competitors in Geekbench and similar workloads. Apple is able to acheive very high multithreaded performance within a 5-6W TDP by running all the cores around 80% of peak performance.