3 ms·

I do understand the pros and cons. My point was that it doesn't matter when you prefer peak performance vs efficiency on a desktop PC. I'd rather have 8 Firesto

I do understand the pros and cons. My point was that it doesn't matter when you prefer peak performance vs efficiency on a desktop PC. I'd rather have 8 Firestorm cores on my PC, with one or two of these fast cores dedicated for the "lighter" workload even if it consumes a few more watts. When your desktop computer is slow, doing a CPU resource intensive task, nobody is going to appreciate that it is consuming less power - everyone will be cribbing about the slow speed.

celrod 5y ago
Assuming die area is the constraint, the choice is between 4 firestorm + 4 icestorm and 5 firestorm, because a firestorm core is 4x bigger than an icestorm core. Or between 8 firestorm and 7 fire + 4 ice (or 6 fire + 8 ice).
Applejinx 5y ago
I thought the idea was that not all processes are the same class of citizen. Some of 'em go to high performance cores, but some of them always get assigned to what's basically a second computer running in parallel and handling interface stuff or system management, typically a lot less powerful (though according to this article, far from helpless). In this way the CPU-intensive stuff never has to break its concentration by sullying its tiny processors with utility calculations, but keeping the observable system responsive (a much less demanding task) goes to the second, weaker computer, that's running as if nothing else is happening. So neither thing ends up being slow, because neither thing particularly has to be interleaved with the other. Source: I'm no CPU or SoC designer, but I own a Mac M1 laptop for the purposes of compiling open source plugins to the new machines, so I've done hundreds of XCode compiles on the machine, and lots of housekeeping work in Finder. None of it seems slow, by any metric or perspective.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  I understand that. But that wasn't the point. Historically laptop and desktop PC CPUs have been different because of the different requirement - laptop's prioritise efficiency whereas desktop pc users prioritise performance. Apple instead has used the same CPU on their tablet, laptop and Desktop PC. (And note that even Intel / AMD processors do the kind of power scaling that you described without any specialised low power cores - all cores are designed to run at varying speed. Thus, when a small task is executing, the core executing it runs it at the minimum acceptable speed and saves power. But the same core can run at full speed on demand. That's a more acceptable tradeoff for me for Desktop PCs, especially considering that ARM CPUs already are very efficient.)

celrod 5y ago

Assuming die area is the constraint, the choice is between 4 firestorm + 4 icestorm and 5 firestorm, because a firestorm core is 4x bigger than an icestorm core. Or between 8 firestorm and 7 fire + 4 ice (or 6 fire + 8 ice).

Applejinx 5y ago

I thought the idea was that not all processes are the same class of citizen. Some of 'em go to high performance cores, but some of them always get assigned to what's basically a second computer running in parallel and handling interface stuff or system management, typically a lot less powerful (though according to this article, far from helpless). In this way the CPU-intensive stuff never has to break its concentration by sullying its tiny processors with utility calculations, but keeping the observable system responsive (a much less demanding task) goes to the second, weaker computer, that's running as if nothing else is happening. So neither thing ends up being slow, because neither thing particularly has to be interleaved with the other. Source: I'm no CPU or SoC designer, but I own a Mac M1 laptop for the purposes of compiling open source plugins to the new machines, so I've done hundreds of XCode compiles on the machine, and lots of housekeeping work in Finder. None of it seems slow, by any metric or perspective.

webmobdev 5y ago
I understand that. But that wasn't the point. Historically laptop and desktop PC CPUs have been different because of the different requirement - laptop's prioritise efficiency whereas desktop pc users prioritise performance. Apple instead has used the same CPU on their tablet, laptop and Desktop PC. (And note that even Intel / AMD processors do the kind of power scaling that you described without any specialised low power cores - all cores are designed to run at varying speed. Thus, when a small task is executing, the core executing it runs it at the minimum acceptable speed and saves power. But the same core can run at full speed on demand. That's a more acceptable tradeoff for me for Desktop PCs, especially considering that ARM CPUs already are very efficient.)