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Intel cannot and will not catch up. The arrival of the M1 chip is analogous to the arrival of the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. It’s efficiency is frankly

Intel cannot and will not catch up. The arrival of the M1 chip is analogous to the arrival of the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. It’s efficiency is frankly alien technology.

atty 5y ago
I love my M1, but it is most certainly not alien technology that can’t be replicated, nor does it imply that other foundries/chip designers can’t catch up. In many respects AMD is already very close (on a previous node, no less), and Intels 12th Gen, while very power hungry, is very good in terms of total performance (obviously not competitive on perf/watt, but it was never going to be, because of the node difference).
- criddell 5y ago
  Are you saying that AMD is very close in perf/watt? If so, that's pretty cool.
  - atty 5y ago
    Sorry I should have been clearer. As far as I am aware, the M1 is still better at perf/watt (again, comparing TSMC 5 to 7, so it’s not unexpected) - for laptops, the M1 also has an extremely low idle power draw that I don’t think anyone else can match right now, which significantly improves battery life. I meant comparable single-threaded performance in a laptop form factor.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  You can get better performance than an M1, but you are not getting anything else with the performance and battery life. Except maybe the M2. If you want an actual ultra portable, you are getting a Mac.
  - kcb 5y ago
    If you want a Mac.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Well, if "ultra portable" matters more than "Mac vs non-Mac", then get a Mac (at the moment). If you want "not Mac" more than you want "ultra portable", then don't get a Mac.
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      If you don't you have a wide selection of other computers, but none of them really qualify as ultra portable.
donkarma 5y ago
if my understanding is correct then M1 was a one time boost due to the massive decoder and on chip RAM, it's not going to be constantly getting faster
- selectodude 5y ago
  The M1 also has old cores from the A14. The A15 isn't hugely faster than the A14 but it clocks faster and has other efficiency tweaks. Clock for clock, the M1 is slower than the iPhone 13 Pro.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  That’s basically it. Apple went big because the target process allowed it. To someone out of the ASIC industry, it is a set of interestingly scaled but pedestrian design choices coupled with some exaggeration (realizable memory bandwidth per core on the Max is a fraction of what you’d expect based on Apple’s aggregate memory bandwidth claim for the processor as a whole) and a very serious investment in performance/watt (legacy of the phone use case). The Max has barely any improvement core-wise than the first M1. It’s going to be interesting to see what the real next generation looks like.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    > The Max has barely any improvement core-wise than the first M1. Isn't that what you would expect in two chips that use the same core design? There is more memory bandwidth to the Max, and the system level cache is larger, so there are differences outside of the core, but the core itself didn't change.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  >one time boost That's not what you would expect if you look at the graph of six years of year-over-year SPEC performance gains on iPhone cores. Their history shows a pretty reliable 20% gain per year. >Whilst in the past 5 years Intel has managed to increase their best single-thread performance by about 28%, Apple has managed to improve their designs by 198%, or 2.98x (let’s call it 3x) the performance of the Apple A9 of late 2015. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
malfist 5y ago
Why do you say that? They're already responding to ARM with their big.Bigger architecture in their latest generation. I'm sure people said the same thing about Intel when AMD introduced 64 bit procs or Sun introduced multicore processors. Intel has adapted and lead the field many times after being overtaken. No reason to expect them not to do the same here, or at least compete.
- klelatti 5y ago
  Not sure ‘already’ is appropriate here. big.LITTLE was announced in 2011. Taking 11 years to copy a competitor’s successful feature must be a record of some sort.
  - Kon-Peki 5y ago
    Not sure you understand the point of big.LITTLE. It's about dealing with power and thermal constraints in the quest for more performance [1]. So was the transition to multicore processors, BTW [2]. These are the things hardware companies do when they have no other option. And as [2] points out, we software folks still don't have a good way to deal with it. [1] https://armkeil.blob.core.windows.net/developer/Files/pdf/white-paper/big-little-technology-the-future-of-mobile.pdf https://armkeil.blob.core.windows.net/developer/Files/pdf/wh... [2] https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-183.pdf https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-... Alder Lake is about dealing with power and thermal constraints. Intel has finally pushed performance so far that they need to do this. The chips are benchmarking so well because of this move, not in spite of it.
    - klelatti 5y ago
      I do know what big.LITTLE is about thanks. No idea why you’d think otherwise from my post. Of course Alder Lake is benchmarking well because of it. My point was ‘already’ makes it sound like Intel is rapidly adopting this technology - not 11 years after Arm.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
> It’s efficiency is frankly alien technology. That's probably an exaggeration, and this exaltation of Apple is a Bad Thing. The M1 had good designers - two of which have moved on already, one to Microsoft [0], and the lead designer to Intel [1] only days later. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/apple-silicon-microsoft-poach-chips/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/apple-silicon-microsoft-poach... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/06/apple-engineering-director-m1-intel/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/06/apple-engineering-director-m1...
pjmlp 5y ago
M1 only runs on Apple hardware. Hardly matters to Intel customers.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  That’s true to an extent but no one lives in isolation. Losing Apple was a pretty massive blow. Still the real blow will be if someone successfully enters the server business. Graviton* are interesting but that’s not a broad threat yet.
  - sydbarrett74 5y ago
    I think it'll be another huge blow if Windows users with laptops move almost entirely to ARM over the next 3-5 years. While Intel may have an absolute performance advantage in the desktop and server arena, most Windows users these days are using laptops, where ARM's energy efficiency matters more.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      First Microsoft needs to sort out their Windows on ARM story.

Intel cannot and will not catch up. The arrival of the M1 chip is analogous to the arrival of the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. It’s efficiency is frankly alien technology.

atty 5y ago

I love my M1, but it is most certainly not alien technology that can’t be replicated, nor does it imply that other foundries/chip designers can’t catch up. In many respects AMD is already very close (on a previous node, no less), and Intels 12th Gen, while very power hungry, is very good in terms of total performance (obviously not competitive on perf/watt, but it was never going to be, because of the node difference).

criddell 5y ago
Are you saying that AMD is very close in perf/watt? If so, that's pretty cool.
- atty 5y ago
  Sorry I should have been clearer. As far as I am aware, the M1 is still better at perf/watt (again, comparing TSMC 5 to 7, so it’s not unexpected) - for laptops, the M1 also has an extremely low idle power draw that I don’t think anyone else can match right now, which significantly improves battery life. I meant comparable single-threaded performance in a laptop form factor.
tomjen3 5y ago
You can get better performance than an M1, but you are not getting anything else with the performance and battery life. Except maybe the M2. If you want an actual ultra portable, you are getting a Mac.
- kcb 5y ago
  If you want a Mac.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Well, if "ultra portable" matters more than "Mac vs non-Mac", then get a Mac (at the moment). If you want "not Mac" more than you want "ultra portable", then don't get a Mac.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    If you don't you have a wide selection of other computers, but none of them really qualify as ultra portable.

donkarma 5y ago

if my understanding is correct then M1 was a one time boost due to the massive decoder and on chip RAM, it's not going to be constantly getting faster

selectodude 5y ago
The M1 also has old cores from the A14. The A15 isn't hugely faster than the A14 but it clocks faster and has other efficiency tweaks. Clock for clock, the M1 is slower than the iPhone 13 Pro.
foobiekr 5y ago
That’s basically it. Apple went big because the target process allowed it. To someone out of the ASIC industry, it is a set of interestingly scaled but pedestrian design choices coupled with some exaggeration (realizable memory bandwidth per core on the Max is a fraction of what you’d expect based on Apple’s aggregate memory bandwidth claim for the processor as a whole) and a very serious investment in performance/watt (legacy of the phone use case). The Max has barely any improvement core-wise than the first M1. It’s going to be interesting to see what the real next generation looks like.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  > The Max has barely any improvement core-wise than the first M1. Isn't that what you would expect in two chips that use the same core design? There is more memory bandwidth to the Max, and the system level cache is larger, so there are differences outside of the core, but the core itself didn't change.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
GeekyBear 5y ago
>one time boost That's not what you would expect if you look at the graph of six years of year-over-year SPEC performance gains on iPhone cores. Their history shows a pretty reliable 20% gain per year. >Whilst in the past 5 years Intel has managed to increase their best single-thread performance by about 28%, Apple has managed to improve their designs by 198%, or 2.98x (let’s call it 3x) the performance of the Apple A9 of late 2015. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...

malfist 5y ago

Why do you say that? They're already responding to ARM with their big.Bigger architecture in their latest generation. I'm sure people said the same thing about Intel when AMD introduced 64 bit procs or Sun introduced multicore processors. Intel has adapted and lead the field many times after being overtaken. No reason to expect them not to do the same here, or at least compete.

klelatti 5y ago
Not sure ‘already’ is appropriate here. big.LITTLE was announced in 2011. Taking 11 years to copy a competitor’s successful feature must be a record of some sort.
- Kon-Peki 5y ago
  Not sure you understand the point of big.LITTLE. It's about dealing with power and thermal constraints in the quest for more performance [1]. So was the transition to multicore processors, BTW [2]. These are the things hardware companies do when they have no other option. And as [2] points out, we software folks still don't have a good way to deal with it. [1] https://armkeil.blob.core.windows.net/developer/Files/pdf/white-paper/big-little-technology-the-future-of-mobile.pdf https://armkeil.blob.core.windows.net/developer/Files/pdf/wh... [2] https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-183.pdf https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-... Alder Lake is about dealing with power and thermal constraints. Intel has finally pushed performance so far that they need to do this. The chips are benchmarking so well because of this move, not in spite of it.
  - klelatti 5y ago
    I do know what big.LITTLE is about thanks. No idea why you’d think otherwise from my post. Of course Alder Lake is benchmarking well because of it. My point was ‘already’ makes it sound like Intel is rapidly adopting this technology - not 11 years after Arm.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

> It’s efficiency is frankly alien technology. That's probably an exaggeration, and this exaltation of Apple is a Bad Thing. The M1 had good designers - two of which have moved on already, one to Microsoft [0], and the lead designer to Intel [1] only days later. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/apple-silicon-microsoft-poach-chips/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/apple-silicon-microsoft-poach... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/06/apple-engineering-director-m1-intel/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/06/apple-engineering-director-m1...

pjmlp 5y ago

M1 only runs on Apple hardware. Hardly matters to Intel customers.

foobiekr 5y ago
That’s true to an extent but no one lives in isolation. Losing Apple was a pretty massive blow. Still the real blow will be if someone successfully enters the server business. Graviton* are interesting but that’s not a broad threat yet.
- sydbarrett74 5y ago
  I think it'll be another huge blow if Windows users with laptops move almost entirely to ARM over the next 3-5 years. While Intel may have an absolute performance advantage in the desktop and server arena, most Windows users these days are using laptops, where ARM's energy efficiency matters more.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    First Microsoft needs to sort out their Windows on ARM story.