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I think the real reason for the switch is the same as the switch away from PPC to Intel. Higher performance per watt and less waste heat. AMD going from an al

I think the real reason for the switch is the same as the switch away from PPC to Intel. Higher performance per watt and less waste heat. AMD going from an also-ran to highly competitive is certainly impressive. However, it's not "more than double the performance of the competition for less than half the power budget" level impressive. >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... However, that's in the mobile space. Time will tell how well Apple does competing in the laptop/desktop arena.

monocasa 6y ago
> Higher performance per watt and less waste heat. The thing is, I don't really see that in heir designs. You're not going to get "more than double the performance of the competition for less than half the power budget" even when you compare to Intel, and I doubt that you're going to beat AMD. And yes, when you compare to other ARM cores the Thunder does well, but that's not it's competition in the laptop space. Intel and AMD are, and a Thunder core does not do well against a Zen 2 core.
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  Thunder is an ARM "little" core implementation. It's not meant to compete with a full performance core from anyone. It competes against other "little"cores. I'm sure when Intel starts shipping their chips that mix Core and Atom, someone will start comparison testing. As far as performance per watt and less waste heat, you don't even have to wait to see what their 5nm desktop/laptop chips look like, their iPhone chips with a tiny power budget and passive cooling are already competitive with Intel and AMD. >Last year I’ve noted that the A12 was margins off the best desktop CPU cores. This year, the A13 has essentially matched best that AMD and Intel have to offer – in SPECint2006 at least. In SPECfp2006 the A13 is still roughly 15% behind. 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...

monocasa 6y ago

> Higher performance per watt and less waste heat. The thing is, I don't really see that in heir designs. You're not going to get "more than double the performance of the competition for less than half the power budget" even when you compare to Intel, and I doubt that you're going to beat AMD. And yes, when you compare to other ARM cores the Thunder does well, but that's not it's competition in the laptop space. Intel and AMD are, and a Thunder core does not do well against a Zen 2 core.

GeekyBear 6y ago
Thunder is an ARM "little" core implementation. It's not meant to compete with a full performance core from anyone. It competes against other "little"cores. I'm sure when Intel starts shipping their chips that mix Core and Atom, someone will start comparison testing. As far as performance per watt and less waste heat, you don't even have to wait to see what their 5nm desktop/laptop chips look like, their iPhone chips with a tiny power budget and passive cooling are already competitive with Intel and AMD. >Last year I’ve noted that the A12 was margins off the best desktop CPU cores. This year, the A13 has essentially matched best that AMD and Intel have to offer – in SPECint2006 at least. In SPECfp2006 the A13 is still roughly 15% behind. 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...