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So ... Intel has almost caught up to AMD, but Apple just lapped them both?
by thanatos519 5y ago
So ... Intel has almost caught up to AMD, but Apple just lapped them both?
- LtdJorge 5y agoIt's very important to remember that Apple is always in the bleeding edge of process nodes. In this case, TSMC's 5nm, which is the most advanced process in shipping products right now. AMD is still in 7nm but will be moving later, and Intel is in its own 10nm, or I guess "Intel 7" now.
- pjmlp 5y agoUntil Apple CPUs run on Amazon, Azure and Google clouds, it doesn't really matter how much better they are, other than 10% worldwide desktop users, and some tier 1 markets where iOS sales take place.
- nebula8804 5y agoAmazon is developing their own chips no? They are already in production.
- pjmlp 5y agoThe point is that whatever M1 capabilities are, they are largely irrelevant to any company besides Apple themselves.
- newsclues 5y agoFerrari and Kia both make cars, but customer bases are separate.
- j245 5y agoImo this is a bad analogy. I would say it’s more akin to Kia and BMW. The proportion of potential users priced out of owning a Mac vs. a PC is much lower than Ferrari vs. Kia What I mean to say is - customer base for Mac vs. PC overlap alot and aren’t distinct as you seem to be alluding to.
- ekianjo 5y agosince when has Apple made a major dent in the PC market? They are a minor player all things considered.
- solarkraft 5y agoSince they released products with M1
- pjmlp 5y agoWhich of those products are priced at the same range as typical PC products in tier 2 and 3 countries?
- j245 5y agoIt will be interesting to see how things evolve. From anecdotal experience one big reason was always: ‘You can get the same specs in a Windows PC for 1/2 the price !!’ Now with M1 - you can’t get comparable specs/performance in a Windows PC. Also - in the past few months I’ve seen M1 MacBook Airs at very competitive price points. There are actually cases where you get better performance at a lower price point compared to a Windows PC. I do think the M1 / ARM pivot has been a game changer. Market share in the last 12 months seems to be on the up.
- 5y ago
- jandrewrogers 5y agoAmazon ARM and Apple ARM are a class apart, and are not substitutable. Same ISA but wildly different architectural capabilities and limitations, a bit like Via x86 versus Intel x86 back in the day.
- nebula8804 5y agoI remember Via vs Intel. Is the gap really that big?
- f6v 5y agoI don’t think Apple aggressively markets their laptops to the rest 90%.
- pjmlp 5y agoThey never will, otherwise they will just be yet another OEM, instead the Ferrari/Bugati/Lamborghini of computers. They don't want to be the computer people take for groceries, rather the one that drives slowly in the main avenue making everyone aware of their presence.
- DeathArrow 5y agoYou suggest that Apple's PCs are just for show off? Buying groceries is more akin to doing something useful.
- pjmlp 5y agoNo, just that their price places them way beyond what a large percentage of people on this planet are able to afford. I am lucky to live in Europe, in a country where most people probably wouldn't think twice about buying anything Apple. There are plenty of the countries out there where people aren't as fortunate, most devs would be more than happy to have any kind of computer to actually work on, and that computer won't be an Apple one with a very high degree of probability. When your path to a better life is coding via a feature phone, whatever M1 is capable of is meaningless. https://www.hanselminutes.com/615/developing-on-not-for-a-nokia-feature-phone-with-elvis-chidera https://www.hanselminutes.com/615/developing-on-not-for-a-no...
- f6v 5y ago> No, just that their price places them way beyond what a large percentage of people on this planet are able to afford. 1000$/€ MBA is in the same price category with similarly-performing machines. I mean, I doubt you can work as a developer without being able to run a load of tools at the same time. That phone guy example is an exception.
- nine_k 5y agoApple did not lap them; instead Apple moved to a different playing field.
- Gigachad 5y agoThe user doesn’t care what field they are on. Apple has destroyed the rest of the market.
- nine_k 5y agoThe user of Macs, certainly, because there is only one playing field, where Apple places it. Apple is entirely not represented on the AMD and Intel key playing field, datacenter-grade chips. OTOH it's very much present (and more with M1) in the Qualcomm and Samsung playing field, ARM-based mobile chips, from which AMD and Intel are both absent.
- f6v 5y ago> Apple did not lap them; instead Apple moved to a different playing field. Intel put itself in the same playing field by slapping their “Intel inside” stickers on every goddamn laptop that has their CPU.
- adrian_b 5y agoApple CPUs have a much better energy efficiency than either Intel or AMD, in part due to the improved TSMC 5-nm process and in part because the Apple CPUs are more brainiac, doing 50% more work per clock cycle at a 2/3 times lower clock frequency than the Intel/AMD CPUs. However, for absolute performance values, the desktop Intel and AMD CPUs remain faster than even M1 Max, both in single-thread and in multi-thread tasks. M1 Max should be able to match the best laptop CPUs in some tasks and be faster in the tasks that are limited by the memory bandwidth. On the other hand, when the laptop Alder Lake CPUs will be introduced in Q1 2022, they should be much faster in ST than M1 Max or M1 Pro, but while consuming a much higher power.
- kllrnohj 5y agoApple only just took the multithreaded performance crown on a laptop with the M1 Pro & M1 Max, neither of which are actually available yet. And neither the M1 Pro nor M1 Max are competitive with AMD's top-end consumer desktop CPUs at multicore performance (ie, Ryzen 5900X & 5950X), to say nothing of the prosumer ones (aka, Threadripper). Which given the differences in power budget isn't really that surprising, but still. To call that "lapping" seems a bit overly extreme. Also this article is about server CPUs, so I don't know why the M1 is being mentioned at all. It would get humiliated in a server environment by existing Xeons & Epyc CPUs, to say nothing of what Intel is demoing here.