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>Geekbench is super misleading SPEC is the industry standard for comparing performance across platforms. >Last year I’ve noted that the A12 was margins off th

>Geekbench is super misleading SPEC is the industry standard for comparing performance across platforms. >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...

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
So now we've gone from being "significantly faster" to being as fast on integer, slower on floating point and slower on threaded applications. Which seems a lot more plausible, but now where's the argument that this is going to be a marked improvement rather than a lateral shift with a huge transition cost?
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  This is a comparison of an iPhone part to a laptop/desktop part. The iPhone part doesn't have anywhere near the same power budget, nor does it have active cooling. The SPEC benchmarks take a couple of hours to run, so cooling is definitely a factor. Apple's laptop part will be the first time they have a level playing field on both. The Apple laptop part is also going to have a process node advantage. It will be built on TSMC's 5nm node while AMD is sticking with an enhanced version of TSMC's 7nm node and Intel will still be on 10nm. The word was that Apple's entry level laptop part will have 8 next generation Big cores and 4 next generation little cores, which is quite aggressive for an entry level laptop part. The A13, in comparison, only has two big cores. We'll see how Apple's laptop chip fares when it ships.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > The iPhone part doesn't have anywhere near the same power budget, nor does it have active cooling. This is much less of an issue for single thread performance because a single thread isn't going to exhaust an 8-core CPU's full power budget anyway, or if it does it's by boosting to very high (i.e. less power efficient) clocks which only give a few extra percent more performance. The main thing the extra power budget gives you these days is the ability to have more cores, which x64 processors already have. > It will be built on TSMC's 5nm node while AMD is sticking with an enhanced version of TSMC's 7nm node and Intel will still be on 10nm. AMD already has 5nm processors on their roadmap. Apple might release theirs first, but having a modest advantage for a few months until your competitors release their next design isn't especially groundbreaking. It's basically the expected state of affairs when companies compete with each other and neither has a clear advantage -- the one released most recently is a bit faster and then soon the competitor has a release and it goes back the other way.
    - GeekyBear 6y ago
      What is on your future roadmap doesn't matter at all, if it's not going to ship in time to compete with your rivals in the current generation. In the next generation, Apple is going to gain a process node advantage, and level the playing field for the first time in respect to power and thermal envelope. Given that they were already in the same ballpark as Intel and AMD without any of those advantages, we're in for a sea change.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > What is on your future roadmap doesn't matter at all, if it's not going to ship in time to compete with your rivals in the current generation. The point is that "current generation" doesn't work like that. If AMD releases Zen3 on 7nm and Zen4 on 5nm and the ARM Macs arrive half way between one release date and the other, which one do you want to compare them to? Neither would be strictly "fair" because one or the other would have an advantage of several months of advancement one way or the other. But doing all of this just because they couldn't wait a few more months for Zen4 doesn't make much sense. We're not going to really know until ordinary people can get it in their hands and benchmark it. The whole thing strikes me as Apple seeing Intel stagnating and starting a long-term process in motion several years ago which was too far along to stop by the time AMD brought competition back to the market again.
        GeekyBear 6y ago
        >If AMD releases Zen3 on 7nm and Zen4 on 5nm and the ARM Macs arrive half way between one release date and the other Zen 3 and Apple's laptop chips are both due in the fourth quarter of this year. Apple is going to have a process node advantage at least until Zen 4 ships, which definitely will not happen only a couple of months after Zen 3 ships. However, despite Apple having a better hand to play than AMD or Intel for the first time, I agree that the proof is in the pudding.
imtringued 6y ago
Interesting. These benchmarks confirm my thoughts about the energy efficiency of Apple Silicon. As you get closer to AMD and Intel performance your energy efficiency will drop and also approach Intel & AMD. Apple Silicon is the real deal when looking at its performance but it's also equally power hungry.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

So now we've gone from being "significantly faster" to being as fast on integer, slower on floating point and slower on threaded applications. Which seems a lot more plausible, but now where's the argument that this is going to be a marked improvement rather than a lateral shift with a huge transition cost?

GeekyBear 6y ago
This is a comparison of an iPhone part to a laptop/desktop part. The iPhone part doesn't have anywhere near the same power budget, nor does it have active cooling. The SPEC benchmarks take a couple of hours to run, so cooling is definitely a factor. Apple's laptop part will be the first time they have a level playing field on both. The Apple laptop part is also going to have a process node advantage. It will be built on TSMC's 5nm node while AMD is sticking with an enhanced version of TSMC's 7nm node and Intel will still be on 10nm. The word was that Apple's entry level laptop part will have 8 next generation Big cores and 4 next generation little cores, which is quite aggressive for an entry level laptop part. The A13, in comparison, only has two big cores. We'll see how Apple's laptop chip fares when it ships.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > The iPhone part doesn't have anywhere near the same power budget, nor does it have active cooling. This is much less of an issue for single thread performance because a single thread isn't going to exhaust an 8-core CPU's full power budget anyway, or if it does it's by boosting to very high (i.e. less power efficient) clocks which only give a few extra percent more performance. The main thing the extra power budget gives you these days is the ability to have more cores, which x64 processors already have. > It will be built on TSMC's 5nm node while AMD is sticking with an enhanced version of TSMC's 7nm node and Intel will still be on 10nm. AMD already has 5nm processors on their roadmap. Apple might release theirs first, but having a modest advantage for a few months until your competitors release their next design isn't especially groundbreaking. It's basically the expected state of affairs when companies compete with each other and neither has a clear advantage -- the one released most recently is a bit faster and then soon the competitor has a release and it goes back the other way.
  - GeekyBear 6y ago
    What is on your future roadmap doesn't matter at all, if it's not going to ship in time to compete with your rivals in the current generation. In the next generation, Apple is going to gain a process node advantage, and level the playing field for the first time in respect to power and thermal envelope. Given that they were already in the same ballpark as Intel and AMD without any of those advantages, we're in for a sea change.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > What is on your future roadmap doesn't matter at all, if it's not going to ship in time to compete with your rivals in the current generation. The point is that "current generation" doesn't work like that. If AMD releases Zen3 on 7nm and Zen4 on 5nm and the ARM Macs arrive half way between one release date and the other, which one do you want to compare them to? Neither would be strictly "fair" because one or the other would have an advantage of several months of advancement one way or the other. But doing all of this just because they couldn't wait a few more months for Zen4 doesn't make much sense. We're not going to really know until ordinary people can get it in their hands and benchmark it. The whole thing strikes me as Apple seeing Intel stagnating and starting a long-term process in motion several years ago which was too far along to stop by the time AMD brought competition back to the market again.
      - GeekyBear 6y ago
        >If AMD releases Zen3 on 7nm and Zen4 on 5nm and the ARM Macs arrive half way between one release date and the other Zen 3 and Apple's laptop chips are both due in the fourth quarter of this year. Apple is going to have a process node advantage at least until Zen 4 ships, which definitely will not happen only a couple of months after Zen 3 ships. However, despite Apple having a better hand to play than AMD or Intel for the first time, I agree that the proof is in the pudding.

imtringued 6y ago

Interesting. These benchmarks confirm my thoughts about the energy efficiency of Apple Silicon. As you get closer to AMD and Intel performance your energy efficiency will drop and also approach Intel & AMD. Apple Silicon is the real deal when looking at its performance but it's also equally power hungry.