5 ms·

> but the M1 is still version 0 for macs. Fair enough, it's just important to keep in mind that M1 is a result of decade(s) long progressive enhancement. M2 is

> but the M1 is still version 0 for macs. Fair enough, it's just important to keep in mind that M1 is a result of decade(s) long progressive enhancement. M2 is going to be another incremental step in the series. > to me it's equivalent to someone defending the keyboards on a palm treo. This is a major shift in capability ... That's a completely unjustified comparison. iPhone brought a new way to interact with your phone. M1 brings ... better performance per watt? (something which is happening every year anyway) What new capabilities does M1 bring? I'm trying to see them, but don't ...

fossuser 6y ago
> "That's a completely unjustified comparison. iPhone brought a new way to interact with your phone." People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. For the iPhone, the complaints were about cost, about lack of hardware keyboard, about fingerprints on the screen. People complained that it was less usable than existing phones for email, etc. The M1 brings much better performance at much less power. I think that's a big deal and is a massive lift for what applications can do. I also think x86 cannot compete now and things will only get a lot worse as Apple's chips get even better.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. I do remember that. iPhone had its growing pains in the first year, and there was a fair criticism back then. But it was also clear that iPhone brings a completely new vision to the concept of a mobile phone. M1 brings a nice performance at fairly low power, but that's just a quantitative difference. No new vision. Perf/watt improvements have been happening every single year since the first chips were manufactured. > I also think x86 cannot compete now and things will only get a lot worse as Apple's chips get even better. Why? Somehow Apple's chips will get better, but competition will stand still? AMD is making currently great progresses, and it finally looks like Intel is waking up from letargia as well.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    > "Why? Somehow Apple's chips will get better, but competition will stand still?" Arguably this has been the case for the last ten years (comparing chips on iPhones to others). I think x86 can't compete, CISC can't compete with RISC because of problems inherent to CISC (https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32...) It won't be for lack of trying - x86 will hold them back. I suppose in theory they could recognize this e-risk, and throw themselves at coming up with a competitive RISC chip design while also somehow overcoming the integration disadvantages they face. If they were smart enough to do this, they would have done it already. I'd bet against them (and I am).
    - astrange 6y ago
      RISC vs CISC is not real. Anyone writing articles about it is uninformed and you should ignore them. (However, it's also not true that all ISAs perform the same. x86-64 actually performs pretty well though and has good memory density - see Linus's old rants about this.) ARM64 is a good ISA but not because it's RISC, some of the good parts are actually moving away from RISCness like complex address operands.
      - erosenbe0 6y ago
        Very much this. Intel is not that stupid. They went in the lab, built and simulated everything to find that the penalty of extra decoding has an upper bound of a few percent perf/Watt max once you are out of the embedded space. OTOH, apple is doing some interesting things optimizing their software stack to the store [without release] reordering that ARM does. These sorts of things are where long term advantage lies. Nobody is ever ahead in the CPU wars by some insurmountable margin in strict hardware terms. System performance is what counts. Apple has weakish support for games, for example, so any hardware advantage they have in a vacuum is moot in that domain. Integrated system performance and total cost of ownership are what matters.
        fossuser 6y ago

fossuser 6y ago

> "That's a completely unjustified comparison. iPhone brought a new way to interact with your phone." People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. For the iPhone, the complaints were about cost, about lack of hardware keyboard, about fingerprints on the screen. People complained that it was less usable than existing phones for email, etc. The M1 brings much better performance at much less power. I think that's a big deal and is a massive lift for what applications can do. I also think x86 cannot compete now and things will only get a lot worse as Apple's chips get even better.

The_Colonel 6y ago
> People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. I do remember that. iPhone had its growing pains in the first year, and there was a fair criticism back then. But it was also clear that iPhone brings a completely new vision to the concept of a mobile phone. M1 brings a nice performance at fairly low power, but that's just a quantitative difference. No new vision. Perf/watt improvements have been happening every single year since the first chips were manufactured. > I also think x86 cannot compete now and things will only get a lot worse as Apple's chips get even better. Why? Somehow Apple's chips will get better, but competition will stand still? AMD is making currently great progresses, and it finally looks like Intel is waking up from letargia as well.
- fossuser 6y ago
  > "Why? Somehow Apple's chips will get better, but competition will stand still?" Arguably this has been the case for the last ten years (comparing chips on iPhones to others). I think x86 can't compete, CISC can't compete with RISC because of problems inherent to CISC (https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32...) It won't be for lack of trying - x86 will hold them back. I suppose in theory they could recognize this e-risk, and throw themselves at coming up with a competitive RISC chip design while also somehow overcoming the integration disadvantages they face. If they were smart enough to do this, they would have done it already. I'd bet against them (and I am).
  - astrange 6y ago
    RISC vs CISC is not real. Anyone writing articles about it is uninformed and you should ignore them. (However, it's also not true that all ISAs perform the same. x86-64 actually performs pretty well though and has good memory density - see Linus's old rants about this.) ARM64 is a good ISA but not because it's RISC, some of the good parts are actually moving away from RISCness like complex address operands.
    - erosenbe0 6y ago
      Very much this. Intel is not that stupid. They went in the lab, built and simulated everything to find that the penalty of extra decoding has an upper bound of a few percent perf/Watt max once you are out of the embedded space. OTOH, apple is doing some interesting things optimizing their software stack to the store [without release] reordering that ARM does. These sorts of things are where long term advantage lies. Nobody is ever ahead in the CPU wars by some insurmountable margin in strict hardware terms. System performance is what counts. Apple has weakish support for games, for example, so any hardware advantage they have in a vacuum is moot in that domain. Integrated system performance and total cost of ownership are what matters.
      - fossuser 6y ago