5 ms·

According to the Anandtech benchmark the A14 (what's in the latest iPhone) is 8% below the Ryzen 5950X. M1 is likely faster than that. https://www.anandtech.co

by 0-_-0 6y ago

According to the Anandtech benchmark the A14 (what's in the latest iPhone) is 8% below the Ryzen 5950X. M1 is likely faster than that. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... Quote: "In the overall SPEC2006 chart, the A14 is performing absolutely fantastic, taking the lead in absolute performance only falling short of AMD’s recent Ryzen 5000 series. The fact that Apple is able to achieve this in a total device power consumption of 5W including the SoC, DRAM, and regulators, versus +21W (1185G7) and 49W (5950X) package power figures, without DRAM or regulation, is absolutely mind-blowing."

jfb 6y ago
This is stupefying to me. Like, when Anand did the A12 or A11 reviews, I wrote: "The craziest thing is how close [to 1/56th of a Xeon 8176] they get at 3W. That's the part that's staggering. What could Apple do with, say, laptop thermals? Desktop thermals? The mind creeps closer to boggling." -- me, 5 October 2018 Guess we're finding out.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  Would this be good a chip for a data warehouse?
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    I think so, especially with the specialized hardware in there for machine learning (although in a data center you'd probably opt for specialized hardware like discrete GPUs). There are some players on the market for ARM servers as well. That said, Apple won't make their chips available to the greater market. They might use variations of it in their own data centers, maybe.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      > That said, Apple won't make their chips available to the greater market. I wonder if this could potentially be a good time to bring back Xserve...
      - _ph_ 6y ago
        They definitely should. Even if the profit on the device wouldn't be decisive, but chip making is all about production numbers. Using the Apple Silicon first for all the Apple owned cloud servers and then offering them in Xserve units would be very profitable and could reduce the power draw of data warehouses a lot.
        Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        The question marks for me would be: 1) Is Apple interested (and capable) making macOS into a realistic choice for servers again? 2) If not, is Apple comfortable with selling a box that most people will put Linux on? Would they put resources into a Bootcamp-esque driver package?
        _ph_ 6y ago
        The biggest question is: does Apple want to bring back the Xserver? If yes, there are several ways. If not, no good proposal will sway them :) But one thing was interesting during the AS announcement at WWDC. Federighi stressed how good a hypervisor macOS is. That was probably first of all a comment about virtualization on the new Macs, but could also allow to install any operation system as guest on a cloud server. Many cloud services are running inside VMs.
        iSnow 6y ago
        The only reason for that statement is to silence those who would raise a stink over the loss of Bootcamp. "See, you don't need native Linux on the machine, just use our hypervisor & Docker/VMs"
        _ph_ 6y ago
        Yes, that was the context of the statement. But it also would give an answer how customers would use an AS Xserve.
      - jfb 6y ago
harrygeez 6y ago
this is what that boggles my mind. Like are those benchmarks really comparable? I mean Intel and AMD have been doing this far longer than Apple and it seemed as if Apple just came in and bend the laws of physics that Intel and AMD have been limited by
- windsurfer 6y ago
  Apple has been designing chips since the A4 in 2010. Samsung, TMSC, and other manufacturers with more experience actually build the chips for Apple, and this M1 is no exception being manufactured by TMSC.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Apple has been at it for 12 years (they bought PA Semi in 2008). The talent they brought onboard with PA Semi had been producing processors since 2003. Experience counts, but Apple is pretty old-hat at this by now as well.
- fuzzy2 6y ago
  Isn’t that just the ARM vs x86 difference? They’re completely different architectures, each with their own benefits and drawbacks.
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    I would have thought so too, but why are there no ARM based competitors coming out with similar numbers? Or are there?
    - phamilton 6y ago
      Graviton2 I expect would stack up nicely.
  - als0 6y ago
    With the size of modern chips the instruction set has very little to do with an overall chip design. Most of it is a balancing act between power, performance and area for things like caches, controllers, optimizations, accelerators and so on. Then there are also factors like verification complexity and the fab technology you are choosing.

by 0-_-0 6y ago

jfb 6y ago

This is stupefying to me. Like, when Anand did the A12 or A11 reviews, I wrote: "The craziest thing is how close [to 1/56th of a Xeon 8176] they get at 3W. That's the part that's staggering. What could Apple do with, say, laptop thermals? Desktop thermals? The mind creeps closer to boggling." -- me, 5 October 2018 Guess we're finding out.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Would this be good a chip for a data warehouse?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I think so, especially with the specialized hardware in there for machine learning (although in a data center you'd probably opt for specialized hardware like discrete GPUs). There are some players on the market for ARM servers as well. That said, Apple won't make their chips available to the greater market. They might use variations of it in their own data centers, maybe.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > That said, Apple won't make their chips available to the greater market. I wonder if this could potentially be a good time to bring back Xserve...
    - _ph_ 6y ago
      They definitely should. Even if the profit on the device wouldn't be decisive, but chip making is all about production numbers. Using the Apple Silicon first for all the Apple owned cloud servers and then offering them in Xserve units would be very profitable and could reduce the power draw of data warehouses a lot.
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        The question marks for me would be: 1) Is Apple interested (and capable) making macOS into a realistic choice for servers again? 2) If not, is Apple comfortable with selling a box that most people will put Linux on? Would they put resources into a Bootcamp-esque driver package?
        _ph_ 6y ago
        The biggest question is: does Apple want to bring back the Xserver? If yes, there are several ways. If not, no good proposal will sway them :) But one thing was interesting during the AS announcement at WWDC. Federighi stressed how good a hypervisor macOS is. That was probably first of all a comment about virtualization on the new Macs, but could also allow to install any operation system as guest on a cloud server. Many cloud services are running inside VMs.
        iSnow 6y ago
        The only reason for that statement is to silence those who would raise a stink over the loss of Bootcamp. "See, you don't need native Linux on the machine, just use our hypervisor & Docker/VMs"
        _ph_ 6y ago
        Yes, that was the context of the statement. But it also would give an answer how customers would use an AS Xserve.
    - jfb 6y ago

harrygeez 6y ago

this is what that boggles my mind. Like are those benchmarks really comparable? I mean Intel and AMD have been doing this far longer than Apple and it seemed as if Apple just came in and bend the laws of physics that Intel and AMD have been limited by

windsurfer 6y ago
Apple has been designing chips since the A4 in 2010. Samsung, TMSC, and other manufacturers with more experience actually build the chips for Apple, and this M1 is no exception being manufactured by TMSC.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Apple has been at it for 12 years (they bought PA Semi in 2008). The talent they brought onboard with PA Semi had been producing processors since 2003. Experience counts, but Apple is pretty old-hat at this by now as well.
fuzzy2 6y ago
Isn’t that just the ARM vs x86 difference? They’re completely different architectures, each with their own benefits and drawbacks.
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  I would have thought so too, but why are there no ARM based competitors coming out with similar numbers? Or are there?
  - phamilton 6y ago
    Graviton2 I expect would stack up nicely.
- als0 6y ago
  With the size of modern chips the instruction set has very little to do with an overall chip design. Most of it is a balancing act between power, performance and area for things like caches, controllers, optimizations, accelerators and so on. Then there are also factors like verification complexity and the fab technology you are choosing.