5 ms·

The point is obvious. M1 is not more powerful due to a better design, but simply due to more modern manufacturing process. Otherwise you would see a much larg

The point is obvious. M1 is not more powerful due to a better design, but simply due to more modern manufacturing process. Otherwise you would see a much larger gap in performance.

shawnz 5y ago
So it's merely equally as good as the previous market leader's flagship product in every way except litography, where it exceeds them? Are you implying that's not something to be impressed about just because lithography is not a property of the architecture?
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Your comment is unclear. Apple's contribution to M1 was the design. TSMC built the next gen fabs, and gets credit for the manufacturing. You can't compare viability or success of the processor design when you compare cross fab generations. It's apples to oranges. You can state that M1 is better, which is true, but it doesn't follow at all that it's due to the design component. It could very well be that moving Intel's design to TSMC's fab would lead to it running circles around M1 I mean this is pretty obvious stuff, but these threads always end up full of people that don't understand hardware very well
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - DrBenCarson 5y ago
    That’s just not true. The RISC instruction set has a growing advantage in performance per watt. There’s a reason no one is producing low-power x86 chips.
    - Macha 5y ago
      Surely it's a shrinking advantage? x86 CPUs have been microcode based for a long time, and the hardware to convert x86 instructions to micro ops is a relatively fixed cost that diminishes over time with process shrinks?
  - mehrdada 5y ago
    > It could very well be that moving Intel's design to TSMC's fab would lead to it running circles around M1 Or not. There is no reason to believe Apple design has not been a major contribution to the performance. Sure TSMC process is a major component but to quote yourself it does not follow that that explains all of it. It could very well be that a hypothetical Apple design to Intel fab would still run circles around current Intel chips (or not). What we do know is system architecture is sufficiently different, and that it is likely to have a material impact on performance.
halpert 5y ago
Can you really separate the “design” from how it’s manufactured?
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Intel famously followed a "tik-tock" development cycle where they would move their existing designs to their next gen fabs, before updating the design. So yes, you absolutely can separate them, and that's how it was historically done. Though Intel fell behind on this philosophy.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    And those transitions were not seamless. Intel controlled the whole stack so they made it seem like it was. You obviously can’t separate design and manufacture at this level and scale, to even suggest it displays a massive lack of understanding of how this space operates. If you don’t know how the space operates, why are you commenting?
    - adam_arthur 5y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundry_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundry_model

The point is obvious. M1 is not more powerful due to a better design, but simply due to more modern manufacturing process. Otherwise you would see a much larger gap in performance.

shawnz 5y ago

So it's merely equally as good as the previous market leader's flagship product in every way except litography, where it exceeds them? Are you implying that's not something to be impressed about just because lithography is not a property of the architecture?

adam_arthur 5y ago
Your comment is unclear. Apple's contribution to M1 was the design. TSMC built the next gen fabs, and gets credit for the manufacturing. You can't compare viability or success of the processor design when you compare cross fab generations. It's apples to oranges. You can state that M1 is better, which is true, but it doesn't follow at all that it's due to the design component. It could very well be that moving Intel's design to TSMC's fab would lead to it running circles around M1 I mean this is pretty obvious stuff, but these threads always end up full of people that don't understand hardware very well
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DrBenCarson 5y ago
  That’s just not true. The RISC instruction set has a growing advantage in performance per watt. There’s a reason no one is producing low-power x86 chips.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Surely it's a shrinking advantage? x86 CPUs have been microcode based for a long time, and the hardware to convert x86 instructions to micro ops is a relatively fixed cost that diminishes over time with process shrinks?
- mehrdada 5y ago
  > It could very well be that moving Intel's design to TSMC's fab would lead to it running circles around M1 Or not. There is no reason to believe Apple design has not been a major contribution to the performance. Sure TSMC process is a major component but to quote yourself it does not follow that that explains all of it. It could very well be that a hypothetical Apple design to Intel fab would still run circles around current Intel chips (or not). What we do know is system architecture is sufficiently different, and that it is likely to have a material impact on performance.

halpert 5y ago

Can you really separate the “design” from how it’s manufactured?

adam_arthur 5y ago
Intel famously followed a "tik-tock" development cycle where they would move their existing designs to their next gen fabs, before updating the design. So yes, you absolutely can separate them, and that's how it was historically done. Though Intel fell behind on this philosophy.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  And those transitions were not seamless. Intel controlled the whole stack so they made it seem like it was. You obviously can’t separate design and manufacture at this level and scale, to even suggest it displays a massive lack of understanding of how this space operates. If you don’t know how the space operates, why are you commenting?
  - adam_arthur 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundry_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundry_model