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For years now, Intel's only way to get more performance out of their functional process nodes has been to push power and heat higher. Now, the Tiger Lake perfo

For years now, Intel's only way to get more performance out of their functional process nodes has been to push power and heat higher. Now, the Tiger Lake performance per watt story just isn't that impressive compared to the competition. >Here we present the 15W vs 28W configuration figures for the single-threaded workloads, which do see a jump in performance by going to the higher TDP configuration, meaning [Tiger Lake] is thermally constrained at 15W even in [single threaded] workloads. Comparing it against Apple’s A13, things aren’t looking so rosy as the Intel CPU barely outmatches it even though it uses several times more power, which doesn’t bode well for Intel once Apple releases its “Apple Silicon” Macbooks. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16084/intel-tiger-lake-review-deep-dive-core-11th-gen/8 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16084/intel-tiger-lake-review...

CyberDildonics 6y ago
Is something that can be condensed down to a number really a "story"?
marcinzm 6y ago
> which doesn’t bode well for Intel once Apple releases its “Apple Silicon” Macbooks. How so? Apple's market share is something like 10% so it's a minority of Intel's market.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Apple is a trendsetter, though: I think, as a rule, Apple’s decisions are copied by a large part of the market so its market share isn’t an adequate measurement of its influence. This will be especially true if Apple Silicon MacBooks are impressive in some way, like extra-long battery life.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    Will manufacturers start to demand Windows on ARM? ( WARM? )
    - vesh 6y ago
      Absolutely, better performance per watt means longer battery life. Windows already supports ARM. Microsoft doesn't really have a choice here but to improve support for ARM. Office on Mac seems like is going to be ready for Apple Silicon if that effort also helps Office on Windows ARM then they are half way there.
    - brian_herman 6y ago
      https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b/processors-ip-blog/posts/third-generation-of-windows-on-arm https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b... They are making some. I hope bootcamp will be updated for the new macbooks eventually. I don't expect it to be out on day 1 but maybe a couple months after release?
    - wmf 6y ago
      Windows on ARM only runs on lame processors like 8cx/SQ1/SQ2. Apple Silicon may beat Intel/AMD and Apple Silicon is ARM, but that doesn't mean that ARM is beating Intel/AMD.
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      Yes. Microsoft is happy to oblige and Qualcomm seems to be ramping up their Snapdragon 8cx program, with it in a few recently released devices.
- rubyn00bie 6y ago
  Because Apple is going to prove TSMC is capable of building x86 destroying processors. Not in theory. Not academic or institutional one offs... no, it’ll be mass-produced and in the hands of consumers. Intel’s failure to get their fabs running has put them into a death spiral unless they pull off a miracle. Also, if Apples ARM chips are really that fast they will be purchased by the shipload to be sent to performance critical operations like HFT. They will be put into servers or turned into them to squeeze and eek out every possible advantage... which will shit on intels most profitable lines (Xeons for single threaded workloads). It’s gonna be a crazy time.
  - aurizon 6y ago
    Apple has a similarly onerous history of monopoly action - watch what you wish for, you may get it.
    - sosborn 6y ago
      The situation is a bit different though. If Apple's plan was to produce processors for the likes of HP, Dell, etc, then maybe that would be an issue. But I highly doubt they will move into those markets. It's AMD that's poised to take over that space.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    Apple haven't ever been really interested in or committed to non-consumer markets.
    - pram 6y ago
      “Haven’t ever” is simply not true. Apple has had plenty of historical server products, including dedicated rack servers with the Xserve line. That’s not to say it’s likely but it’s not unprecedented ;P
      - thu2111 6y ago
        And they scrapped them. That's exactly my point. They were not committed: they made an uncompetitive product for a few years and bailed instead of trying harder. Compare to the Mac.
- spideymans 6y ago
  Beyond what others have mentioned, we also mustn’t discount the possibility that Apple Silicon could be a strategic move to lower device MSRP, thus increasing market share and Apple services revenue. People will instinctively write off this idea, but this is the new pricing strategy Apple has been employing with the $329 entry level iPad, $399 iPhone SE, and the new $279 Apple Watch SE. The Macintosh now remains Apple’s only major consumer product line that hasn’t seen aggressive price reductions to make Apple services accessible to a broader range of consumers. The move to Apple Silicon, which could save Apple potentially hundreds of dollars per device, is the perfect time to move the Mac to this pricing strategy. If this happens, it would absolutely eat into Intel’s consumer market share.
  - wmf 6y ago
    Eh, every chip company has lower-end models that are cheaper. There's nothing stopping Apple from putting i3s in Macs.
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      With low-end branding and possibly sub-par performance.
    - mulmen 6y ago
      But what if Apple offers a Macbook with i7 performance and i3 price?
      - The_Colonel 6y ago
        Typical Apple - undercutting other companies on price \s
        thekyle 6y ago
        I know you're joking, but looking at some Geekbench scores there doesn't seem to be a single Android phone on the market that can outperform the iPhone SE in single-core performance. The OnePlus 8 is the closest, but still not really that close. iPhone SE: 1321 OnePlus 8: 898 On multi-core it's a little better since there seem to be seven Android phones that can outperform the iPhone SE: iPhone SE: 2737 OnePlus 8: 3281 OnePlus 8 Pro: 3216 Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G: 3107 Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G: 3102 Samsung Galaxy S20 5G: 3078 Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G: 2918 Huawei Mate 30 Pro: 2835 However, all of those Android phones cost quite a bit more than the SE. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks
pizza234 6y ago
Same thing happened to Nvidia, and I'm very perplexed why this is not widely reported. I wonder how the 3070 and 3060 are going to compare, in terms of performance per watt, when compared to the 2080/2070 series. Based on the current numbers, they'll possibly show very little improvement.
- amarshall 6y ago
  What “current numbers” do you refer to? Of course it may depend on workload, but the 3080 has, at least in one benchmark[1], better performance per watt than all compared cards (7% better than 2080 Ti, 21% than 2070, 32% than 2080, 67% than 1080 Ti). Total power consumption is up quite a bit (25% over 2080 Ti), but still get more performance than more power. [1] https://youtu.be/csSmiaR3RVE?t=1229 https://youtu.be/csSmiaR3RVE?t=1229
  - wmf 6y ago
    Right, the efficiency improvement used to be ~60% per two years now it's 7% per two years.
    - ascom 6y ago
      NVIDIA pushed the 3080's stock performance a little too high up the perf/watt curve. If you limit it to the TDP of the 2080 Ti, you lose 4% performance but you get much better efficiency: https://www.computerbase.de/2020-09/geforce-rtx-3080-test/6/ https://www.computerbase.de/2020-09/geforce-rtx-3080-test/6/
    - webmaven 6y ago
      > Right, the efficiency improvement used to be ~60% per two years now it's 7% per two years. Is 3080 vs. 2080 Ti the correct comparison?
      - amarshall 6y ago
        It’s not clear yet, since we’ve no idea if there will be a 3080 Ti. The 3090 throws out the naming convention from the past few generations, leaving it a bit of a mystery. Nvidia may do as they did with the 1080 Ti: not release till nearly a year after the 1080 (whereas 2080 & 2080 Ti were launched just a week apart). Given the 3090 is not too much faster than 3080, it seems there may not be room there. But then again, the 1080 Ti was as fast as the Titan X. So…yea.
tinus_hn 6y ago
Does it even matter? When it starts to matter you won’t be able to run MacOS on Intel and you can’t run Windows or something else on ‘Apple Silicon’. They may be very nice machines but they won’t be in the race for a very large portion of the market.
- blinkingled 6y ago
  Also note that the only benchmark where the A13 was included was Spec2006 - so unless Spec 2006 is relevant across most workloads that most users care about it's not really telling the whole story.
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  Software and platform lockdown are a lot weaker than they were in the WinTel heyday. It’s a lot easier to go from macOS to Windows to Linux these days. There are many exceptions of course, but I’d wager that market is not as big as you think.
  - whoisburbansky 6y ago
    I think OPs point is that this is going to get a lot harder once macbooks become Apple Silicon only
    - tambourine_man 6y ago
      Software has a lot more abstractions these days. Almost no one codes close to the ISA. I don’t think it’s as much of an issue as it was.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Only if ones lives in a POSIX CLI world of Web GUIs. That is not the market that Apple cares about, nor NeXT did that much, other to gain market share when things were looking dim.
    - tambourine_man 6y ago

CyberDildonics 6y ago

Is something that can be condensed down to a number really a "story"?

marcinzm 6y ago

> which doesn’t bode well for Intel once Apple releases its “Apple Silicon” Macbooks. How so? Apple's market share is something like 10% so it's a minority of Intel's market.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
Apple is a trendsetter, though: I think, as a rule, Apple’s decisions are copied by a large part of the market so its market share isn’t an adequate measurement of its influence. This will be especially true if Apple Silicon MacBooks are impressive in some way, like extra-long battery life.
- the-dude 6y ago
  Will manufacturers start to demand Windows on ARM? ( WARM? )
  - vesh 6y ago
    Absolutely, better performance per watt means longer battery life. Windows already supports ARM. Microsoft doesn't really have a choice here but to improve support for ARM. Office on Mac seems like is going to be ready for Apple Silicon if that effort also helps Office on Windows ARM then they are half way there.
  - brian_herman 6y ago
    https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b/processors-ip-blog/posts/third-generation-of-windows-on-arm https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b... They are making some. I hope bootcamp will be updated for the new macbooks eventually. I don't expect it to be out on day 1 but maybe a couple months after release?
  - wmf 6y ago
    Windows on ARM only runs on lame processors like 8cx/SQ1/SQ2. Apple Silicon may beat Intel/AMD and Apple Silicon is ARM, but that doesn't mean that ARM is beating Intel/AMD.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Yes. Microsoft is happy to oblige and Qualcomm seems to be ramping up their Snapdragon 8cx program, with it in a few recently released devices.
rubyn00bie 6y ago
Because Apple is going to prove TSMC is capable of building x86 destroying processors. Not in theory. Not academic or institutional one offs... no, it’ll be mass-produced and in the hands of consumers. Intel’s failure to get their fabs running has put them into a death spiral unless they pull off a miracle. Also, if Apples ARM chips are really that fast they will be purchased by the shipload to be sent to performance critical operations like HFT. They will be put into servers or turned into them to squeeze and eek out every possible advantage... which will shit on intels most profitable lines (Xeons for single threaded workloads). It’s gonna be a crazy time.
- aurizon 6y ago
  Apple has a similarly onerous history of monopoly action - watch what you wish for, you may get it.
  - sosborn 6y ago
    The situation is a bit different though. If Apple's plan was to produce processors for the likes of HP, Dell, etc, then maybe that would be an issue. But I highly doubt they will move into those markets. It's AMD that's poised to take over that space.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Apple haven't ever been really interested in or committed to non-consumer markets.
  - pram 6y ago
    “Haven’t ever” is simply not true. Apple has had plenty of historical server products, including dedicated rack servers with the Xserve line. That’s not to say it’s likely but it’s not unprecedented ;P
    - thu2111 6y ago
      And they scrapped them. That's exactly my point. They were not committed: they made an uncompetitive product for a few years and bailed instead of trying harder. Compare to the Mac.
spideymans 6y ago
Beyond what others have mentioned, we also mustn’t discount the possibility that Apple Silicon could be a strategic move to lower device MSRP, thus increasing market share and Apple services revenue. People will instinctively write off this idea, but this is the new pricing strategy Apple has been employing with the $329 entry level iPad, $399 iPhone SE, and the new $279 Apple Watch SE. The Macintosh now remains Apple’s only major consumer product line that hasn’t seen aggressive price reductions to make Apple services accessible to a broader range of consumers. The move to Apple Silicon, which could save Apple potentially hundreds of dollars per device, is the perfect time to move the Mac to this pricing strategy. If this happens, it would absolutely eat into Intel’s consumer market share.
- wmf 6y ago
  Eh, every chip company has lower-end models that are cheaper. There's nothing stopping Apple from putting i3s in Macs.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    With low-end branding and possibly sub-par performance.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    But what if Apple offers a Macbook with i7 performance and i3 price?
    - The_Colonel 6y ago
      Typical Apple - undercutting other companies on price \s
      - thekyle 6y ago
        I know you're joking, but looking at some Geekbench scores there doesn't seem to be a single Android phone on the market that can outperform the iPhone SE in single-core performance. The OnePlus 8 is the closest, but still not really that close. iPhone SE: 1321 OnePlus 8: 898 On multi-core it's a little better since there seem to be seven Android phones that can outperform the iPhone SE: iPhone SE: 2737 OnePlus 8: 3281 OnePlus 8 Pro: 3216 Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G: 3107 Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G: 3102 Samsung Galaxy S20 5G: 3078 Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G: 2918 Huawei Mate 30 Pro: 2835 However, all of those Android phones cost quite a bit more than the SE. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks

pizza234 6y ago

Same thing happened to Nvidia, and I'm very perplexed why this is not widely reported. I wonder how the 3070 and 3060 are going to compare, in terms of performance per watt, when compared to the 2080/2070 series. Based on the current numbers, they'll possibly show very little improvement.

amarshall 6y ago
What “current numbers” do you refer to? Of course it may depend on workload, but the 3080 has, at least in one benchmark[1], better performance per watt than all compared cards (7% better than 2080 Ti, 21% than 2070, 32% than 2080, 67% than 1080 Ti). Total power consumption is up quite a bit (25% over 2080 Ti), but still get more performance than more power. [1] https://youtu.be/csSmiaR3RVE?t=1229 https://youtu.be/csSmiaR3RVE?t=1229
- wmf 6y ago
  Right, the efficiency improvement used to be ~60% per two years now it's 7% per two years.
  - ascom 6y ago
    NVIDIA pushed the 3080's stock performance a little too high up the perf/watt curve. If you limit it to the TDP of the 2080 Ti, you lose 4% performance but you get much better efficiency: https://www.computerbase.de/2020-09/geforce-rtx-3080-test/6/ https://www.computerbase.de/2020-09/geforce-rtx-3080-test/6/
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > Right, the efficiency improvement used to be ~60% per two years now it's 7% per two years. Is 3080 vs. 2080 Ti the correct comparison?
    - amarshall 6y ago
      It’s not clear yet, since we’ve no idea if there will be a 3080 Ti. The 3090 throws out the naming convention from the past few generations, leaving it a bit of a mystery. Nvidia may do as they did with the 1080 Ti: not release till nearly a year after the 1080 (whereas 2080 & 2080 Ti were launched just a week apart). Given the 3090 is not too much faster than 3080, it seems there may not be room there. But then again, the 1080 Ti was as fast as the Titan X. So…yea.

tinus_hn 6y ago

Does it even matter? When it starts to matter you won’t be able to run MacOS on Intel and you can’t run Windows or something else on ‘Apple Silicon’. They may be very nice machines but they won’t be in the race for a very large portion of the market.

blinkingled 6y ago
Also note that the only benchmark where the A13 was included was Spec2006 - so unless Spec 2006 is relevant across most workloads that most users care about it's not really telling the whole story.
tambourine_man 6y ago
Software and platform lockdown are a lot weaker than they were in the WinTel heyday. It’s a lot easier to go from macOS to Windows to Linux these days. There are many exceptions of course, but I’d wager that market is not as big as you think.
- whoisburbansky 6y ago
  I think OPs point is that this is going to get a lot harder once macbooks become Apple Silicon only
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    Software has a lot more abstractions these days. Almost no one codes close to the ISA. I don’t think it’s as much of an issue as it was.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Only if ones lives in a POSIX CLI world of Web GUIs. That is not the market that Apple cares about, nor NeXT did that much, other to gain market share when things were looking dim.
  - tambourine_man 6y ago