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> we've had this particular wheel for 50 years and its doing fine but hey let's reimagine it anyway How is it doing fine? Apple is doing laps over Intel becaus

> we've had this particular wheel for 50 years and its doing fine but hey let's reimagine it anyway How is it doing fine? Apple is doing laps over Intel because -- it seems -- of their choice to use ARM. Would they have been able to design an x86/amd64 CPU just as good?

yyyk 5y ago
>Apple is doing laps over Intel because -- it seems -- of their choice to use ARM. AMD processors are essentially equivalent to M1 in performance while still keeping x86, so probably yes (there are an ARM advantage in instruction decoding, but judging by performance differences, it's probably small). Apple's advantage is mostly that Apple (via TSMC) can use a smaller processor node than Intel and optimize the entire Mac software stack for their processors.
- leucineleprec0n 5y ago
  Where does this memetic lie come from? AMD's listed "15W TDP" is irrelevant to the observed wattage and frequency (or performance) curves. And we've seen Apple's A12, A13 on a similar TSMC 7NM node - older if I may add so AMD garners what little improvements are made on that process since then. Here's a fairly telling chart on the performance: watt curves. https://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2020/8/f5957fa8-630f-44be-b5f6-91010f2234d2.jpg https://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2020/8/f5957fa8-630f-44be-b... BTW: it doesn't improve too much on Zen 3. Slope is just not ARM, much less Apple-tier. Inevitably someone will chime in and point out AMD's power efficiency is subpar due to boosting far beyond optimal points on the curve; while true this is inefficient we can truncate their frequency to Apple's 3.2GHZ or merely observe the slope of the p:w curves above - at almost any point on the y axis, an A12 or A13 will be taking AMD to the woodshed on performance per watt. And I'm not exactly amicable to handicapping the comparisons by giving AMD & X86 a half decade to work out the architecture before things are "fair". As it stands, Apple's architecture is simply more performant.
- Someone 5y ago
  > and optimize the entire Mac software stack for their processors. And vice versa.
- simfree 5y ago
  The Apple M1 and A14 SoCs were built on TSMC's 5nm process while AMD has been using TSMC 7nm for Zen. With the next generation of Zen on TSMC 5nm, we will see whether Apple's ARM or AMD's x86-64 implementations are more performant when starting with the same silicon.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  > AMD processors are essentially equivalent to M1 in performance while still keeping x86 Perf/Watt?
  - Salgat 5y ago
    That is only one of many important metrics. Technically speaking, a low power low frequency processor almost always beats out other processors in perf/watt, even if it is vastly inferior in processing capability.
    - BombNullIsland 5y ago
      Yeah, and die area isn't exactly going to be given away on a capacity constrained 5nm wafer line. If you can get the wafer starts at all. Performance per dollar is the only metric that matters, and maybe 7nm or even 14nm performs better at the moment. DRAM, storage, networking, gpus, accelerators, etc are all eating huge chunks of power. CPU's tiny in comparison. Maybe you save 5% across a datacenter using those fancy unicorn wafers.

yyyk 5y ago

>Apple is doing laps over Intel because -- it seems -- of their choice to use ARM. AMD processors are essentially equivalent to M1 in performance while still keeping x86, so probably yes (there are an ARM advantage in instruction decoding, but judging by performance differences, it's probably small). Apple's advantage is mostly that Apple (via TSMC) can use a smaller processor node than Intel and optimize the entire Mac software stack for their processors.

leucineleprec0n 5y ago
Where does this memetic lie come from? AMD's listed "15W TDP" is irrelevant to the observed wattage and frequency (or performance) curves. And we've seen Apple's A12, A13 on a similar TSMC 7NM node - older if I may add so AMD garners what little improvements are made on that process since then. Here's a fairly telling chart on the performance: watt curves. https://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2020/8/f5957fa8-630f-44be-b5f6-91010f2234d2.jpg https://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2020/8/f5957fa8-630f-44be-b... BTW: it doesn't improve too much on Zen 3. Slope is just not ARM, much less Apple-tier. Inevitably someone will chime in and point out AMD's power efficiency is subpar due to boosting far beyond optimal points on the curve; while true this is inefficient we can truncate their frequency to Apple's 3.2GHZ or merely observe the slope of the p:w curves above - at almost any point on the y axis, an A12 or A13 will be taking AMD to the woodshed on performance per watt. And I'm not exactly amicable to handicapping the comparisons by giving AMD & X86 a half decade to work out the architecture before things are "fair". As it stands, Apple's architecture is simply more performant.
Someone 5y ago
> and optimize the entire Mac software stack for their processors. And vice versa.
simfree 5y ago
The Apple M1 and A14 SoCs were built on TSMC's 5nm process while AMD has been using TSMC 7nm for Zen. With the next generation of Zen on TSMC 5nm, we will see whether Apple's ARM or AMD's x86-64 implementations are more performant when starting with the same silicon.
mhh__ 5y ago
> AMD processors are essentially equivalent to M1 in performance while still keeping x86 Perf/Watt?
- Salgat 5y ago
  That is only one of many important metrics. Technically speaking, a low power low frequency processor almost always beats out other processors in perf/watt, even if it is vastly inferior in processing capability.
  - BombNullIsland 5y ago
    Yeah, and die area isn't exactly going to be given away on a capacity constrained 5nm wafer line. If you can get the wafer starts at all. Performance per dollar is the only metric that matters, and maybe 7nm or even 14nm performs better at the moment. DRAM, storage, networking, gpus, accelerators, etc are all eating huge chunks of power. CPU's tiny in comparison. Maybe you save 5% across a datacenter using those fancy unicorn wafers.