3 ms·

Fair points, but I think we can be 100% certain that Apple has modelled this and made their architectural decisions based on this modelling - especially as they

Fair points, but I think we can be 100% certain that Apple has modelled this and made their architectural decisions based on this modelling - especially as they are no the 10th or so iteration of their designs.

rbanffy 6y ago
That and that their CPUs are designed to run one OS and apps are developed against one set of libraries. This frees them to tune the hardware to the needs of the software much more than any other manufacturer can do (a PC needs to run Word and Autocad equally well)
- klelatti 6y ago
  They have certainly optimised against some key aspects of their software (eg Rosetta and reference counting) but that is not at the expense of other software. The M1 Arm CPUs are just very fast general purpose CPUs. Word and Autocad also run on the Mac!
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    > but that is not at the expense of other software It's always at the expense of something. Transistor budget is fixed.
    - klelatti 6y ago
      Maybe they've used the transistors freed up from not having to support a legacy ISA.
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        That's still not free - you are locked out from a software base. Today it's cheap, but, still, not free.