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It seems to me M1-style performance should be easy to achieve for other large companies with access to decent foundries... one would think Samsung could just us
by drcode 5y ago
It seems to me M1-style performance should be easy to achieve for other large companies with access to decent foundries... one would think Samsung could just use a similar ARM core, then study the design of the M1 to come up with a competitive cache design. (but I'm no expert, happy to have someone correct my view with better information)
- read_if_gay_ 5y agoIf that were the case Apple couldn’t have maintained a huge performance lead in smartphone CPUs for half a decade.
- systemvoltage 5y agoExcellent point. Also Apple has a unique advantage of hardware + OS all built under their control and carefully optimized. Regular chip companies can't influence their customers as well as Apple's hardware team influences the OS departments.
- marticode 5y agoThey had a lead because they were optimizing for a different target than Qualcomm. Apple was more concerned about single core performance while Qualcomm was focusing on lower cost and efficiency.
- valuearb 5y agoIf it was that easy Exynos wouldn’t already lag the A14 so badly. It should gain maybe 15% in a smaller process, but has a lot farther to go.
- ascar 5y agoI was curious about the actual performance difference and I don't know what the big name benchmarks are, but a quick Google search showed the centurion benchmark [1] which puts the A14 just 5% ahead of the newest Exynos and Snapdragons. That's not too big of a lead? Last years benchmark against the A13 showed a much bigger gap tho. [1] https://www.techcenturion.com/smartphone-processors-ranking https://www.techcenturion.com/smartphone-processors-ranking
- GeekyBear 5y agoThe industry standard benchmark for completely different CPUs has been SPEC, going back to the days when every UNIX workstation vendor also had it's own custom CPU and instruction set. Exynos and Snapdragons aren't even close. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
- jeswin 5y agoThe benchmark uses Snapdragon 865, not the newer generation. The Snapdragons also run at mobile phone power budgets.
- wmf 5y agoFine, here you go: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16463/snapdragon-888-vs-exynos-2100-galaxy-s21-ultra/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16463/snapdragon-888-vs-exyno...
- jeswin 5y agoThat's single threaded performance though. Snapdragons have more cores at the expense of single core performance.
- GeekyBear 5y agoThe Snapdragon 888 only has one X1 core.
- ascar 5y ago1x Kryo 680 (ARM Cortex X1-based) Prime core @ 2.84GHz, 1x 1MB L2 cache 3x Kryo 680 (ARM Cortex A78-based) Performance cores @ 2.4GHz, 3x 512KB L2 cache 4x Kryo 680 (ARM Cortex A55-based) Efficiency cores @ 1.8GHz, 4x 128KB L2 cache Vs 2 big 3.1 GHz and 4 small 1.8 GHz on the A14. Comparing single core performance is kinda cherry-picking a benchmark where the A14 is supposed to be ahead.
- wmf 5y ago1. There was no similar ARM core until recently. 2. Samsung/Qualcomm/etc have lower prices and lower margins than Apple so they can't afford to make chips that are as big as Apple Silicon. For example, the M1 has four big cores but competitors use one big core and three medium.
- fomine3 5y ago2. To be fair, A14 is just 2 big cores compared to other smartphone SoCs' 4(3+1) big cores. (but Apple's core design is richer than others)