3 ms·
The reason why the M1 performs so well, next to its insanely wide out of order capabilities, is that Apple placed Specialized processors really close and gave e
by spockz 6y ago
The reason why the M1 performs so well, next to its insanely wide out of order capabilities, is that Apple placed Specialized processors really close and gave everything a fast connection. Then because they control a large part of The OS and applications they rewrote the underlying macOS libraries and the applications to make use of these specific co processors. They were able to achieve this because they are vertically integrated.
When AMD would switch to RISC they could also create a huge out of order capable cpu but would be lacking the co processors plus the tight integration and if they could add them they would lack the capability to drive and dictate that the cpu would be used in the most performant way.
So it seems to me that Apple is perfectly aligned to take a large part of the market and AMD as a general purpose cpu designer will need to come with a very competitive cpu either on x86 (ZenX) or on RISC to stay competitive. They can outsource the fabrication the chips. Intel meanwhile with its owned fabs has a lot more inertia and ego to turn around.
On the other hand, maybe AMD or Intel will find a way to increase the re-order buffer and the amount of “splicer” (I forgot the official name for the unit that takes the instruction code and translates it into chunks of microcode).
- avianlyric 6y agoI have to disagree with this, I really don’t think that Apple is a competitor here. The M1 chip is undoubtably a remarkable piece of engineering. But it quite clear that Apple are never going to sell it standalone. It also seems extremely unlikely that Apple are going to get back into the server game again. Apple sell high markup, low volume (relatively) products. Data centre severs are the opposite, and Apple have stated quite explicitly they’re not interested in building anything that isn’t a high margin, luxury, product. In the consumer space, I can see Apple taking more market share. But again, the vast majority of PC are either business machines, or low margin consumer machines. Both markets that Apple doesn’t seem to be that interested in diving into (their enterprise support is crap, and see above regarding low margin goods for the consumer market). In all I must disagree with this statement > So it seems to me that Apple is perfectly aligned to take a large part of the market Not because Apple doesn’t have the technical chops to do it. But because they just aren’t interested in that market. As such I think AMD, and other ARM manufacturers have everything to play for, and no need to worry about Apple.
- lukeh 6y agoWhat about Linux servers for their own datacenters?
- spockz 6y agoI agree that it is unlikely that Apple will sell the M1 chip separately exactly for the reasons I mentioned in my post. However, they do not have to sell the chip individually to be a competitor to AMD. If Apple’s are sufficiently attractive it will eat the market share of consumer devices from the likes of Dell/HP/etc. When they start selling less devices they have less need for AMD or Intel CPUs. This leaves only the datacenter market where Apple will not compete with Intel and AMD. Indeed, there is lots of room for a (new?) player to pull of the same trick as Apple for general purpose cpus. I just think they are not as well positioned because of the lack of vertical integration. So AMD and Intel indirectly have to worry about what Apple is doing.