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> The Intel world has stagnated in recent years, and I look forward to seeing the CPU market jump ahead again. Really? AMD's recent moves with Zen/Zen2/Zen3/EP

> The Intel world has stagnated in recent years, and I look forward to seeing the CPU market jump ahead again. Really? AMD's recent moves with Zen/Zen2/Zen3/EPYC look like a big step forward. Zen2 chiplets are the biggest change in years. Zen3 IPC is supposed to be significantly better than Zen2 (17%). The previous gen Ryzen was like 15w TDP, where as the A12Z in the Mac Mini ARM is 15w TDP, but the Zen crushes the A12Z Bionic on benchmarks. It's difficult for people to remember, but ARM came from really terrible performance to a spot where it is getting in the ballpark of x86, so the advancements look impressive, but that's like saying if I go from $100 to $200, the gains look impressive, whereas you only went from $10000 to $11000, it looks like you are standing relatively still in comparison. But x86 architectures are decades of maturity, so someone getting a 17% IPC lift (Zen2->Zen3) or a massive reduction in TDP on such a complex chip, isn't stagnation, it's actually MORE impressive IMHO. ARM is going to reach marginal returns, and soon the yearly perf boosts won't look as impressive anymore. In the end, I think we'll see convergence of performance. ARM will still have a power advantage on mobile, because they don't have so much backwards compatibility legacy that x86 has to support. However, are Macbooks and Mac Desktops going to be performance and price competitive with Linux x86? I doubt it. First of all, ARM vendors haven't even come close to the GPU performance of NVidia or AMD's discrete GPUs. An ARM A13 or Mali is not going to compete with a laptop with an RTX 2060, 3060, or RDNA1/2. And secondly, just looking at AMD, it's possible to lift performance / watt still in x86. I think the laptop space in the x86 realm is still exciting, because of what AMD and NVidia are doing.

saagarjha 6y ago
You might find it interesting that Apple made some very suggestive statements at WWDC regarding graphics performance, like “don’t assume discrete graphics is better than integrated”. I think it might be interesting to wait a bit to see what they come out with.
- archi42 6y ago
  In the PC world a discrete GPU means you get a second chip with a thermal/power budget of 70 to 200W. On a SoC the thermal budget is more limited, so even if they integrate nVidia IP on silicon, they can't clock it as high. Of course by "integrated" Apple could mean they just solder a GPU chip to the board. Or they built a surprisingly performant GPU core for their SoC, though I wouldn't expect it to be much faster than what AMD integrates in their CPUs (30% at most? Still much slower than discrete).
- cromwellian 6y ago
  Right, so a device with 5000+ CUDA Cores, 312 TFlops of Tensor Cores, hundreds of dedicated RT Cores, and 1+ Tb/s memory bandwidth to 8gb of dedicated VRAM, and 54 billion transistors, is going to lose to a SoC? Not likely. Apple's view of what "discrete" performance is, is probably 2-generation old cut-down mobile variants. For example, their top-of-the-line uber-expensive Mac Pro ships with Radeon Vega II architecture from 2017. Meanwhile, AMD RDNA2/Navi and NVidia Ampere are about to ship. From my view, they're at least 2-3 generations behind in performance, and their focus on mobile means they're always going to be behind given thermals. NVidia and AMD are focused on maximum performance, and they assume gaming takes place plugged into a wall socket. And because they're focused on maximum performance, especially for triple-A title games and DCC, they're putting in features like DXR (DirectX Raytracing) with support for hardware accelerated ray-intersection. How long until I can run Minecraft with ray-tracered shaders at 2k or 4k on Apple's GPU? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdTxrggo8e8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdTxrggo8e8) I mean, Apple's engineers on ARM are good and they did a fantastic job improving the PA Semi IP, but I don't think they're going to take what's essentially a PowerVR architecture which was never competitive with discrete, and leapfrog NVidia and AMD.
  - m0xte 6y ago
    Average gamer doesn’t need and cant afford that stuff. Some have just got used to having every bell and whistle. Average gamer is playing fortnite which works perfectly nicely on an A12Z. I tried it. Plugged my monitor into my iPad Pro and paired an Xbox controller with it and got a pleasant surprise. The key is consistent performance and that is something they can manage with full control over API and silicon end to end. They are already doing this well on cores that are two generations old. I expect to see a good compromise on performance and power which is what we need for general purpose computing. To be clear I have actually canned my gaming pc recently which was a ryzen 3700x and GTX 1660. I haven’t missed it, the big titles or the pain in the arse getting it stable and built to start with.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Pain in getting it stable? What does it even mean, it was unbalabced and falling off your desk? What did you have, crashing games? It has been like 7 years since I had any stability issues on windows for gaming.
pertymcpert 6y ago
> The previous gen Ryzen was like 15w TDP, where as the A12Z in the Mac Mini ARM is 15w TDP, Source for 15W A12Z TDP? And the benchmarks?
- cromwellian 6y ago
  Mostly from developer forums. The A12 has been estimated at 5-6w by reviewers who used power measuring techniques (e.g. Anandtech, etc running stress test benchmarks). The A12Z on the Apple DTK has 2-extra CPU cores, and 3 extra GPU cores, so people have estimated based on scaling and clock, to be anywhere from 10w to 15w if you consider the device on plugged in power, running all cores, with clock boosting. Whether it's accurate or not, the reality is, the Ryzen Mobile is pretty efficient for its performance, and Intel LakeField is basically going with a "BIG.litte" architecture as well (x86+atom). AMD in particular is a fierce fighter, and they're not just going to sit still and let ARM capture the laptop and desktop markets, especially since a huge existing ecosystem gives them an advantage, and many people with work or business laptops aren't necessarily going to throw away everything to get an extra mm of thinness, or slightly longer battery life. After all, if battery life was the end all and be all, mobile phones could have doubled battery life a long time ago by simply doing less. Putting super high pixel density displays and constantly running background services is one reason why battery size keeps going up, but battery life hasn't improved as much.
  - Veedrac 6y ago
    > 3 extra GPU cores Four extra, eight total. The A12X is the one with a core disabled.
  - close04 6y ago
    > Intel LakeField is basically going with a "BIG.litte" architecture as well (x86+atom) Current Cinebench R15 benchmarks [0] of real world Lakefield based hardware put this CPU 10+% lower than a 2013 AMD A6-1450 8W 'Temash' CPU [1]. Let's say it's the same ballpark. Unless it's a benchmarking fluke or early hardware issues Lakefield is nothing to write home about. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Exclusive-First-benchmarks-of-Intel-s-Lakefield-Hybrid-CPU-Innovative-or-unnecessary.477524.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Exclusive-First-benchmarks-of-... [1] https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_a6_1450-143 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_a6_1450-143
GreenHeuristics 6y ago
There is no reason why you can't run AMD/Nvidia GPUs alongside ARM chips. The GPUs do not run x86. Further, the average laptop consumer is happy with their intel integrated graphics. All they do is browse the web and punch some numbers in excel.
- bad_user 6y ago
  Not sure who the average consumer is, but all teenagers and many adults want games to work, Intel's integrated graphics don't cut it especially with screen resolutions going up and many people find that out after the purchase.
  - evilos 6y ago
    Intel's Xe integrated graphics is reportedly faster than AMD's newest APU family. The article I saw said up to 30% faster in many workloads.
    - floatboth 6y ago
      Isn't "Xe" the name of the non-integrated, PCIe graphics cards?
      - evilos 6y ago
        These reports were more unsubstantiated then I originally realized, sorry for not noting that. The news is based on leaked benchmarks from upcoming tiger lake mobile socs with markedly higher graphics scores. I suppose it is possible that these tests were done with a discrete GPU hooked up. Hard to say for now. But it seems like a logical step for intel to upgrade their anemic integrated graphics with their next generation stuff.
  - methodsignature 6y ago
    I would also like my laptop to run cool enough to, idk, put on top of my lap.
nojito 6y ago
>where as the A12Z in the Mac Mini ARM is 15w TDP There is no chance the A12z in the DTK is a 15w chip. Do you have a source?
shorts_theory 6y ago
From the limited data regarding the Tiger Lake benchmarks floating around, it could be just as much of a revelation as the Zen2 jump which you mentioned. The GPU is much more powerful than Icelake and the CPU seems to have benefited from the higher clock speeds possible from the more mature 10nm process. TDP is said to be the same, but it's hard to go by Intel watts until someone does a battery life test.
ksec 6y ago
You are looking at x86 from an AMD's perspective which really is just catching up to Intel in many aspects and enjoying the advantage of TSMC and Chiplets. The Zen3 rumoured impressive IPC improvement will still be below Willow Cove or Tiger Lake. An uArch that was supposed to be out in 2018. Intel's 7nm ( In between TSMC 5nm and 3nm Node ) Golden Cove was supposed to be launch this year in Intel's original roadmap. From roughly 2.5 years ahead of the industry to now lagging behind 1.5 years. That is 4 years of difference. That is why The Intel world has stagnated in recent years. 4 years is very long in tech industry.
Veedrac 6y ago
> The previous gen Ryzen was like 15w TDP, where as the A12Z in the Mac Mini ARM is 15w TDP, but the Zen crushes the A12Z Bionic on benchmarks. Hmm? The A12X beats the 3700U in Geekbench 5's single-thread, multi-thread and compute benchmarks, and not by trivial margins. Your power comparisons are also unfair; if the A12X ever draws 15W, it would be way at the edge of its power curve on all cores[1], whereas 15W on the 3700U is a tepid clock for the Ryzen. The A12X is much more reasonably considered an ~8W part. [1] https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png

saagarjha 6y ago

You might find it interesting that Apple made some very suggestive statements at WWDC regarding graphics performance, like “don’t assume discrete graphics is better than integrated”. I think it might be interesting to wait a bit to see what they come out with.

archi42 6y ago
In the PC world a discrete GPU means you get a second chip with a thermal/power budget of 70 to 200W. On a SoC the thermal budget is more limited, so even if they integrate nVidia IP on silicon, they can't clock it as high. Of course by "integrated" Apple could mean they just solder a GPU chip to the board. Or they built a surprisingly performant GPU core for their SoC, though I wouldn't expect it to be much faster than what AMD integrates in their CPUs (30% at most? Still much slower than discrete).
cromwellian 6y ago
Right, so a device with 5000+ CUDA Cores, 312 TFlops of Tensor Cores, hundreds of dedicated RT Cores, and 1+ Tb/s memory bandwidth to 8gb of dedicated VRAM, and 54 billion transistors, is going to lose to a SoC? Not likely. Apple's view of what "discrete" performance is, is probably 2-generation old cut-down mobile variants. For example, their top-of-the-line uber-expensive Mac Pro ships with Radeon Vega II architecture from 2017. Meanwhile, AMD RDNA2/Navi and NVidia Ampere are about to ship. From my view, they're at least 2-3 generations behind in performance, and their focus on mobile means they're always going to be behind given thermals. NVidia and AMD are focused on maximum performance, and they assume gaming takes place plugged into a wall socket. And because they're focused on maximum performance, especially for triple-A title games and DCC, they're putting in features like DXR (DirectX Raytracing) with support for hardware accelerated ray-intersection. How long until I can run Minecraft with ray-tracered shaders at 2k or 4k on Apple's GPU? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdTxrggo8e8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdTxrggo8e8) I mean, Apple's engineers on ARM are good and they did a fantastic job improving the PA Semi IP, but I don't think they're going to take what's essentially a PowerVR architecture which was never competitive with discrete, and leapfrog NVidia and AMD.
- m0xte 6y ago
  Average gamer doesn’t need and cant afford that stuff. Some have just got used to having every bell and whistle. Average gamer is playing fortnite which works perfectly nicely on an A12Z. I tried it. Plugged my monitor into my iPad Pro and paired an Xbox controller with it and got a pleasant surprise. The key is consistent performance and that is something they can manage with full control over API and silicon end to end. They are already doing this well on cores that are two generations old. I expect to see a good compromise on performance and power which is what we need for general purpose computing. To be clear I have actually canned my gaming pc recently which was a ryzen 3700x and GTX 1660. I haven’t missed it, the big titles or the pain in the arse getting it stable and built to start with.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Pain in getting it stable? What does it even mean, it was unbalabced and falling off your desk? What did you have, crashing games? It has been like 7 years since I had any stability issues on windows for gaming.

pertymcpert 6y ago

> The previous gen Ryzen was like 15w TDP, where as the A12Z in the Mac Mini ARM is 15w TDP, Source for 15W A12Z TDP? And the benchmarks?

cromwellian 6y ago
Mostly from developer forums. The A12 has been estimated at 5-6w by reviewers who used power measuring techniques (e.g. Anandtech, etc running stress test benchmarks). The A12Z on the Apple DTK has 2-extra CPU cores, and 3 extra GPU cores, so people have estimated based on scaling and clock, to be anywhere from 10w to 15w if you consider the device on plugged in power, running all cores, with clock boosting. Whether it's accurate or not, the reality is, the Ryzen Mobile is pretty efficient for its performance, and Intel LakeField is basically going with a "BIG.litte" architecture as well (x86+atom). AMD in particular is a fierce fighter, and they're not just going to sit still and let ARM capture the laptop and desktop markets, especially since a huge existing ecosystem gives them an advantage, and many people with work or business laptops aren't necessarily going to throw away everything to get an extra mm of thinness, or slightly longer battery life. After all, if battery life was the end all and be all, mobile phones could have doubled battery life a long time ago by simply doing less. Putting super high pixel density displays and constantly running background services is one reason why battery size keeps going up, but battery life hasn't improved as much.
- Veedrac 6y ago
  > 3 extra GPU cores Four extra, eight total. The A12X is the one with a core disabled.
- close04 6y ago
  > Intel LakeField is basically going with a "BIG.litte" architecture as well (x86+atom) Current Cinebench R15 benchmarks [0] of real world Lakefield based hardware put this CPU 10+% lower than a 2013 AMD A6-1450 8W 'Temash' CPU [1]. Let's say it's the same ballpark. Unless it's a benchmarking fluke or early hardware issues Lakefield is nothing to write home about. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Exclusive-First-benchmarks-of-Intel-s-Lakefield-Hybrid-CPU-Innovative-or-unnecessary.477524.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Exclusive-First-benchmarks-of-... [1] https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_a6_1450-143 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_a6_1450-143

GreenHeuristics 6y ago

There is no reason why you can't run AMD/Nvidia GPUs alongside ARM chips. The GPUs do not run x86. Further, the average laptop consumer is happy with their intel integrated graphics. All they do is browse the web and punch some numbers in excel.

bad_user 6y ago
Not sure who the average consumer is, but all teenagers and many adults want games to work, Intel's integrated graphics don't cut it especially with screen resolutions going up and many people find that out after the purchase.
- evilos 6y ago
  Intel's Xe integrated graphics is reportedly faster than AMD's newest APU family. The article I saw said up to 30% faster in many workloads.
  - floatboth 6y ago
    Isn't "Xe" the name of the non-integrated, PCIe graphics cards?
    - evilos 6y ago
      These reports were more unsubstantiated then I originally realized, sorry for not noting that. The news is based on leaked benchmarks from upcoming tiger lake mobile socs with markedly higher graphics scores. I suppose it is possible that these tests were done with a discrete GPU hooked up. Hard to say for now. But it seems like a logical step for intel to upgrade their anemic integrated graphics with their next generation stuff.
- methodsignature 6y ago
  I would also like my laptop to run cool enough to, idk, put on top of my lap.

nojito 6y ago

>where as the A12Z in the Mac Mini ARM is 15w TDP There is no chance the A12z in the DTK is a 15w chip. Do you have a source?

shorts_theory 6y ago

From the limited data regarding the Tiger Lake benchmarks floating around, it could be just as much of a revelation as the Zen2 jump which you mentioned. The GPU is much more powerful than Icelake and the CPU seems to have benefited from the higher clock speeds possible from the more mature 10nm process. TDP is said to be the same, but it's hard to go by Intel watts until someone does a battery life test.

ksec 6y ago

You are looking at x86 from an AMD's perspective which really is just catching up to Intel in many aspects and enjoying the advantage of TSMC and Chiplets. The Zen3 rumoured impressive IPC improvement will still be below Willow Cove or Tiger Lake. An uArch that was supposed to be out in 2018. Intel's 7nm ( In between TSMC 5nm and 3nm Node ) Golden Cove was supposed to be launch this year in Intel's original roadmap. From roughly 2.5 years ahead of the industry to now lagging behind 1.5 years. That is 4 years of difference. That is why The Intel world has stagnated in recent years. 4 years is very long in tech industry.

Veedrac 6y ago

> The previous gen Ryzen was like 15w TDP, where as the A12Z in the Mac Mini ARM is 15w TDP, but the Zen crushes the A12Z Bionic on benchmarks. Hmm? The A12X beats the 3700U in Geekbench 5's single-thread, multi-thread and compute benchmarks, and not by trivial margins. Your power comparisons are also unfair; if the A12X ever draws 15W, it would be way at the edge of its power curve on all cores[1], whereas 15W on the 3700U is a tepid clock for the Ryzen. The A12X is much more reasonably considered an ~8W part. [1] https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png