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Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

145 points by carlycue 4y ago

The Apple M1 Ultra SoC chip achieves 87% of the performance of the Intel 12900K and Nvidia RTX 3090 combined while only consuming 34% of the power. The entire M1 Ultra chip draws 225W at full load and 11w at idle. Forget the Nvidia card and the other PC components, the 12900K alone can draw 250W and the Ryzen 5950X 140W. This is a seismic shift. Can Intel and the other players like AMD and Nvidia catch up to this peformace per watt that Apple has on their hands?

uniqueuid 4y ago
The picture you're painting is far too simple. There are many metrics that play a role for different applications. A modern Nvidia card is magnitudes faster than any CPU and the M1 GPUs. A Nvidia A100 card has HBM memory with ~2TB/s bandwidth. On the other hand, there are areas where a ~5GHz intel CPU is competitive, or even older server chips with AVX can compete. So let's see what happens when Intel and AMD step to smaller processes and switch to much faster memory (ddr5 as apple has done). Maybe the gap is large in energy consumption, but not in total performance.
- qeternity 4y ago
  > magnitudes faster No...
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    100+ vs <20 TFLOPS
    - danaris 4y ago
      ...which is one order of magnitude.
      - xhkkffbf 4y ago
        Not if you use base 2. And sometimes I like to use base 1.00001 for a grand effect.
  - uniqueuid 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS Intel Rocket Lake FP64: 32 Flops per core per cycle at 8 cores and 5GHz Nvidia Ampere: 1/32 Flops per core per cycle at 2048 cores and ~2 GHz Even though there are more architectural differences, there IS a difference in orders of magnitude ... for the things that you can do on a GPU (SIMD).
    - bhouston 4y ago
      This is because FP64 is emulated on the NVIDIA Ampere as it is missing dedicated FP64 hardware. This is not a fair comparison. FP32 is 64x faster on NVIDIA Ampere than FP64 per: https://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/nvidia-ampere-ga-102-gpu-architecture-whitepaper-v2.pdf https://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/nvidia-ampere-ga-102-gpu-... Ampere has 60 TFLOPs of Performance on its top GPU, the Hopper per: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere_(microarchitecture). Which is roughly 50% to 100% faster than Rocket Lake depending and that doesn't account for the parallelism/memory benefits that comes with the GPU architecture.
      - hajile 4y ago
        Let's analyze 3 real cores. A100 has 6912 cores (excluding tensor as they don't do 32-bit float math). Each core does 2 (32-bit) floats per cycle and runs at 1410MHz peak frequency. It is 826mm^2 and has an official 300w TDP. This yields 19491.84 GFLOPS. Threadripper (Zen 3) has 64 cores. Each core does 32 (32-bit) floats per cycle and runs at 4300MHz. It has 8 CPU chiplets (80.7mm^2 each) and one IO die (416mm^2) for a total area of 1061.6mm^2. This chip yields 8806.4 GFLOPS. Alder Lake has 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores. If you have an unlocked chip with AVX-512, that yields 64 (32-bit) floats per cycle running at up to 5.3GHz along with 32 (32-bit) floats per cycle running at up to 4GHz. Die area is around 215.25mm^2 (though much of that die area is taken up by the GPU) and it has a TDP of 150w (peak 241w). This chip yields 2713.6 GFLOPS for the P-cores and 1024 GFLOPS for the E-cores for a total of 3737.6 GFLOPS. The first thing of note is that orders of magnitude is a gross overstatement as there isn't even a single order of magnitude of difference between the slowest and fastest systems here. Dividing GFLOPS by die area gives 23.60 GFLOPS/mm^2 for the A100, 8.30 GFLOPS/mm^2 for the Threadripper, and 17.36 GFLOPS?mm&2 for the Alder Lake. Considering the GPU size of the Alder Lake, I suspect that GFLOPS per die area actually favors Alder Lake over the A100 (though this is also somewhat offset by the presence of tensor cores and other non-related stuff in A100). Also noteworthy is that power is a much weirder metric due to how turbos affect all the things. I suspect this is where the A100 has a major advantage not to mention real GFLOPS dropping off steeply in long-running workloads (though this will affect all of these systems to greater or lesser degrees). On the flip side, I should add that branchy code dramatically slows down actual performance on a GPU while only slowing down a CPU when a misprediction happens (in theory this should be only 1-5% of cases). A more interesting question would be Alpha EV9 with it's proposed 1024-bit SIMD unit running at around 2GHz. That chip would have delivered 256 GFLOPS of performance per core around 2005. Scaling to a modest 32-core chip at 4GHz gives a very impressive 16384 GFLOPS while retaining all those CPU advantages too. This leads to the observation that adding large SIMD/vector units to a CPU isn't really hard. A small, in-order core with very wide vector units running at a slower speed to conserve energy seems like an interesting idea and several startups are working in this direction (not to mention this being the basis of Intel's Larabee and later Knight's Corner designs).
- daneel_w 4y ago
  > So let's see what happens when Intel and AMD step to smaller processes and switch to much faster memory (ddr5 as apple has done). Maybe the gap is large in energy consumption, but not in total performance. There are 18 months worth of benchmarks from the Apple M1 that show that the gap really is large in total performance, and the "standard" M1 doesn't use DDR5, it uses the same DDR4 memory everything else uses. The observed performance gap is larger than what we can see happen between DDR4 and DDR5, and larger than what is expected to happen for AMD's and Intel's x86 between 7 and 5 nm.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Apple uses LPDDR RAM which is a very different protocol. It is actually faster than DDR, and this may be a big part of the performance difference. For obvious reasons, desktop CPUs cannot use LPDDR RAM, because you can't put it in DIMM form.
    - daneel_w 4y ago
      Are you really sure about that? I thought LPDDR is all about low power consumption - running at half the frequency but making up for it by twice the bus width, ending up at same performance but with an emphasis on the LOW POWER part of its name. Add.: or maybe I got it the wrong way around; smaller bus width but same performance due often being clocked faster. Either way I cannot find anything suggesting LPDDR offers practically faster performance on memory-bound operations than the DDR equivalent, but I'd love to see some tech details and numbers explaining how it works.
      - wmf 4y ago
        In Apple's case, it's the same width (M1/2) or much wider (Pro/Max/Ultra) and also clocked faster (6400 vs. 4800).
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        LPDDR used to be about power consumption. It is not any more. DDR uses a lot of power for I/O and SERDES links to maintain a modular form factor, and LPDDR uses a lot less power by having worse signal integrity and lower swings. They run the memory cells and the I/O faster, and as of LPDDR4 it is now significantly faster than the DDR memory products available.
- rob74 4y ago
  Both Intel and AMD have the major disadvantage of having (or, let's say, wanting) to maintain x86 backward compatibility - which means not only staying compatible with the almost 45 year old CISC instruction set of the Intel 8086, but also with the whole line of CPUs that came after it. All this ballast makes it harder for them to build an energy-efficient CPU. By contrast, Apple was able to just create a new CPU based on the much more modern ARM architecture, and switch to it like they have already done two times before (from 68k to PowerPC and then to x86), because they control the whole Macintosh platform. Compare that to Microsoft's largely unsuccessful attempt of selling ARM-based Windows machines.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Having to support x86 is definitely not a "major" disadvantage.
    - hajile 4y ago
      The X2 cores in 8cx gen3 get similar performance to Zen 2 U-series chips while using 7-10w instead of 15-50w. How many more ARM chips have to get equivalent performance at a tiny fraction of the power before people will finally start considering that either AMD and Intel hire the most incompetent people out there or that ISA actually matters?
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        The competent people say that ISA doesn’t matter, so there’s that.
        hajile 4y ago
        Do their actions match their words? ARM could have extended their ARMv7 ISA to also be 64-bit without much trouble at all (plenty of space in the ISA). Instead, we got a ground up redesign that has more in common with MIPS64 than with ARMv7 (to the point that it's fascinating that ARM and some others bought MIPS just to get patent rights before immediately selling them off again). I'm sure the go-to individual here is Jim Keller. First, were his words free from constraint? If he said "x86 is crap and we should be using ARM or RISC-V" while working for those companies, how long would it take for him to be fired? Even if he were working at another company, saying that would burn a bridge that has kept him fed for decades. Would that be worth it? He later said that if he were designing a new chip from the ground up, he'd probably go with RISC-V. He then proceeded to do that when he went to work for TensTorrent even though licensing ARM cores and adding their custom units on the side would be cheaper and faster to market. Given his connections, working with the AMD custom division would also be possible and would not only save some time and money for the startup, but would also have a massive set of available and heavily-optimized software working from the very start which would save even more money. I'd say that his actions when free from corporate constraints show a definite opinion on the matter.
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  Very simple. There's also several articles discussing that how certain M2 configurations are actually lower performance than the M1, so this is hardly a done race.
znpy 4y ago
Imho they can as long as they agree to drop some sort if retro-compatibility. Modern cpus being able to run dos software is certainly nice, but it’s probably preventing intel/amd from performing some aggressive restyling and optimisation/refactoring to their isa and its implementation in silicon. Apple on the other hand happily deprecates its own os releases and the hardware supported. Software retro-compatibility is then achieved in software (rosetta and such)
- mariuolo 4y ago
  > Imho they can as long as they agree to drop some sort if retro-compatibility. What's the performance hit/wafer space for that today?
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    I've heard numbers like 5-10%.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Modern cpus being able to run dos software is certainly nice, but it’s probably preventing intel/amd from performing some aggressive restyling and optimisation/refactoring to their isa Not really. Most of the legacy instructions are implemented via microcode anyways, so the amount of resources dedicated to legacy support is minimal.
2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
This isn't the first time there's been a shift in claims to the various performance thrones and it certainly won't be the last. It might take a while before there's another king on the CPU with integrated GPU throne, but someone will catch up eventually. Back in the 90's, there were more contenders than just AMD and Intel. Apple was using PowerPC chips, and on the x86 side there were several other competitors. Sure, it's been a bit one-sided since Apple went the Intel route, Via faded into obscurity and Transmeta went belly-up, but something else re-appearing as a viable, competitive platform is neither unprecedented nor unexpected.
fxtentacle 4y ago
For many years, AMD GPUs were cheaper and equally or more performant than NVIDIA GPUs. Did that stop NVIDIAs lead in AI training? No, software support is the key component. It's the same with Apple's M1. I don't know anyone who is using it. People need obscure x64 instructions and CUDA. And that means you buy AMD CPU + NVIDIA GPU as the cheapest high-performance combination. Also, I expect that the 5nm process is responsible for a large part of the power savings in the M1. So I would expect an AMD CPU on TSMCs 5nm to be pretty close in terms of performance per watt. It's just that the mainstream market isn't willing to pay the premium price for 5nm yet. So AMD produces "good enough" at a price that people are happy to pay, which means they need to hold off on going 5nm for now.
- SaulJLH 4y ago
  "For many years, AMD GPUs were cheaper and equally or more performant than NVIDIA GPUs. Did that stop NVIDIAs lead in AI training? No, software support is the key component. It's the same with Apple's M1. I don't know anyone who is using it. People need obscure x64 instructions and CUDA. And that means you buy AMD CPU + NVIDIA GPU as the cheapest high-performance combination." Riiight, but, OP isn't necessarily talking purely from an AI/ML use case.
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    Well if you don't need the high performance, then I'd expect people will go for a cheap CPU, meaning no M1 Ultra.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      ML training isn't the only application of high performance computing. Apple is making video editing machines - which is why they have the mix of cores that they do. Simulations are also high-performance computing applications.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        > Apple is making video editing machines - which is why they have the mix of cores that they do. Nope. They have that mix because they've decided to prioritize power consumption reduction (I suspect because they sell way, way more laptops that desktops/servers). It's actually a PITA for developers (you have to ensure that your compute-heavy threads are always on the performance cores), and conceptually confusing for users if they ever have to confront it. For pure performance, with no concern for power consumption, there are faster solutions.
jacknews 4y ago
I hope so, but I'm also sure. Technology is created by people, and I believe a big chunk of Apple's silicon team left last year. So I hope we will see good performance from non-vertically integrated cpus soon. ie companies offering devices using a Qualcom or whatever cpu, which can run windows, linux, etc, not just tied into the Apple ecosystem.
bluescrn 4y ago
Performance isn't everything. Even if the comparisons to the RTX3090 were legit, all that power is still 'trapped' inside a Mac. As the main reasons to have that level of power are gaming and VR, you'd be probably be better off having a bit less performance but on a Windows machine.
- r00bot 4y ago
  The main reasons to have that power certainly are not gaming and VR. A computer is a tool for work as well as leisure. For artists, editors, programmers, scientists, etc. more power means less time sitting around waiting on a render, build, simulation, or export. Apple aren't making these chips for gamers lol.
simonh 4y ago
Yes, but the reasons are to do with business and investment as much as technology. Apple utterly dominates the mobile phone CPU landscape, and it’s hard to see that changing. The reason is that they capture a huge slice of the profits in mobile phones. Something like 90%. For a while they capture over 100% of profits, because so many of their competitors were operating at a loss. This enables them to make investments their competitors can’t. Also because their competitors use commodity chips developed by Cisco and Samsung none of the Android vendors can use those chips to differentiate their products, which means even for flagship phones the CPU isn’t a unique selling points, so they can’t justify buying super premium chips. Without the guaranteed sales, the chip vendors can’t justify investing in making super premium chips. They’ve been stuck in this rut for almost a decade now, and still not found a way out. Success breeds investment, but without investment they can’t achieve success. It’s a negative feedback loop, compounded by a prisoner’s dilemma. With desktop and server chips these factors don’t apply. Apple will never dominate the desktop and server CPU market because they’ve positioned themselves as a niche premium brand. They don’t even make servers, and the desktops they do make are ridiculously high end. They can’t go down market without eviscerating their margins. There’s still huge amounts of money to be made in those sectors, so vendors like Intel and AMD can afford to put in massive investment in new designs. They may be behind now, in some ways, but I don’t see any barriers to them competing in the near to long term.
- jinto36 4y ago
  * presumably Qualcomm and not Cisco, for mobile SoCs?
- cm277 4y ago
  100%; the business model side is the major advantage Apple has here. Part of that advantage is the sheer size of the market compared to desktop/servers. They will sell 10s of times more CPUs for iPhones/Macs than anyone will sell for servers/desktops. I am less optimistic that anyone else can compete, since no one else seems to be able to straddle both markets and use scale across both.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > Apple utterly dominates the mobile phone CPU landscape, That seems to be an interesting definition of "dominates". 14% of global smartphones from independents. 24% by Apple's claims. A curious kind of domination.
pella 4y ago
"Qualcomm Confirms Nuvia Arm Chips Will Be in PCs by Late 2023" https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-confirms-nuvia-arm-chips-late-2023 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-confirms-nuvia-ar... "Qualcomm acquired Nuvia in January 2021. The processor startup was founded by ex-Apple engineers who wanted to turn their talents to Arm-based system-on-chips (SoCs) for servers. Just a few months later Qualcomm provided an extensive update on its plans for Nuvia-technology SoCs, and it publicly pinned its hopes on addressing the always-connected PCs (ACPCs) market with a processor that could get in the ring and trade blows with the Apple M1. This could be an exciting introduction for the Windows ecosystem, if all goes to plan."
- camillomiller 4y ago
  Qualcomm has been "on track" with desktop level chips based on their mobile platforms for at least four years. I've tested the first Windows on Arm laptop with a series 8 "desktop" Snapdragon in 2018. Yet, they still have to ship anything meaningful. They lake the vertical integration Apple has, and they will never have it. Hard for me to see how competitors (Qualcomm + Microsoft + OEMs) are supposed to go after Apple in this area, considering how incapable they are at working together in a productive way.
  - pella 4y ago
    > are supposed to go after Apple in this area, Talent can be poached [1] and Technology can be acquired [2] [1] "Intel Poaches Head Apple Silicon Architect Who Led Transition To Arm And M1 Chips" https://hothardware.com/news/intel-poaches-head-apple-silicon-architect-who-led-transition-to-arm-and-m1-chips https://hothardware.com/news/intel-poaches-head-apple-silico... [2] https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/03/qualcomm-completes-acquisition-nuvia https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/03/qualcomm-comp... ------ The real problem - Apple is slowing down [3][4] [3] "Apple CPU Gains Grind To A Halt And The Future Looks Dim As The Impact From The CPU Engineer Exodus To Nuvia And Rivos Starts To Bleed In" https://semianalysis.com/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-halt-and-the-future-looks-dim-as-the-cpu-engineer-exodus-to-nuvia-and-rivos-impact-starts-to-bleed-in/ https://semianalysis.com/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-halt-and... [4] "Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase And A15 Based IP" https://semianalysis.com/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-halt-and-the-future-looks-dim-as-the-cpu-engineer-exodus-to-nuvia-and-rivos-impact-starts-to-bleed-in/ https://semianalysis.com/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-halt-and... details from [3] "It appears Apple has not changed the CPU much this generation. SemiAnalysis believes that the next generation core was delayed out of 2021 into 2022 due to CPU engineer resource problems. In 2019, Nuvia was founded and later acquired by Qualcomm for $1.4B. Apple’s Chief CPU Architect, Gerard Williams, as well as over a 100 other Apple engineers left to join this firm. More recently, SemiAnalysis broke the news about Rivos Inc, a new high performance RISC V startup which includes many senior Apple engineers. The brain drain continues and impacts will be more apparent as time moves on. As Apple once drained resources out of Intel and others through the industry, the reverse seems to be happening now. We believe Apple had to delay the next generation CPU core due to all the personnel turnover Apple has been experiencing. Instead of a new CPU core, they are using a modified version of last year’s core. One of these modifications is related to the CPU core’s MMU. This work was being done for the upcoming colloquially named “M1X” generation of Mac chips. Part of the reason for this change is related to larger memory sizes and virtualization features/support. In addition, there may be other small changes as well, but we need hardware in the hand to analyze that. We also aren’t sure if Avalanche and Blizzard are the next generation cores or the current modified Firestorm and Icestorm cores. Regardless of the paltry CPU gains and potential core architecture delays, Apple is still the leader in performance per watt. With Intel design teams starting to get back on track, AMD executing almost flawlessly, and Qualcomm coming in soon like a hammer with Nuvia cores, we aren’t sure if this lead will be sustained. The A11 to A12 generation was seen as Apple starting to asymptote out on gains with only a 15% gain, and the A13 to A14 looked even more weak with 8.3% gains, but now with no CPU gains, let’s cross our fingers and hope the A16 brings a large architectural change." source: [3]
norman784 4y ago
I think if x86 get rid of their legacy instructions, they could reduce their core size, and a few side effects will be performance per watt gains and maybe also performance (smaller cores), and if you need the legacy instructions you could just emulate, most consumer PCs don't need those. That's the biggest difference with x86 and ARM, ARM got a lot of breaking changes with their versions, while x86 don't (I'm not sure if there was any breaking change in the las 20 years at least).
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > I think if x86 get rid of their legacy instructions, they could reduce their core size Aren't those legacy instructions already emulated in microcode? I don't think they take up much physical footprint.
  - emidln 4y ago
    Yes. People bandying about "legacy x86" instructions miss this often. This isn't much different, conceptually, from Apple's Rosetta, except it's provided in microcode automatically rather than a discrete transform you need to run once and cache. This is very convenient for broad x86 backwards compatibility (e.g. I can run a Java 1.4 JVM and StarOffice or a libc.so.5 to play Unreal Tournament 2004 just fine on my 5900x). Can I run x86 apps, even ones from the last couple years on an M1 with no questions asked? Well, we abandoned local dockerized development at work because Docker for Mac's qemu couldn't hook into Rosetta and qemu alone couldn't handle JIT'd instructions from a jvm11[0]. Maybe that changes with the new MacOS version and the next version of Rosetta (there seems to be a Rosetta that works like qemu's binfmt_misc translators for Linux), but it's been missing for 2 years so far and caused me to do a bunch of work on remote dev capabilities in the meantime. [0] Let me stop you right there before you suggest I recompile 15 years of operating systems, third party toolchains, and internal tools for ARM and then rebuild every intermediate container just so we can work around Rosetta shipping without necessary features. I know that you can ship a whole parallel stack of containers with ARM but that's not feasible in the slightest for anything but the most trivial use cases or entirely greenfield projects.
baybal2 4y ago
The question is "Would they, and do they need it?" For as long as it can't run Windows, it's not a competitor. A mass market chip will never survive the yield on such extremely large dies. Most of mass market chips will be many times smaller physically to make money. Apple does not make money on these chips.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Apple does not make money on these chips. You really believe that they treat their hardware as a loss leader when they are primarily a hardware company?
  - baybal2 4y ago
    Yes, otherwise they wouldn't have gone into own chips with such low volumes. Even now their volumes probably don't afford for them making much money on such big chips if we compare them to top tier competitor SoCs.
jl6 4y ago
If your views on technological progress are informed by the 80s and 90s, and you think it is an exponential curve, then it seems unlikely that today’s leaders will ever be caught. If your views on technological progress are informed by the 00s and 10s, and you think it is an S-curve, then today’s leaders might never be caught in an absolute sense, but the competitors will get arbitrarily close eventually.
- personjerry 4y ago
  Past performance is not indicative of future results
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
sys_64738 4y ago
Well if the initial M2 machines are anything to go by then x86 really has nothing to worry about. Apple will damage the reputation of their systems by themselves.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
TruthWillHurt 4y ago
- leguminous 4y ago
  Intel's stated TDPs are not accurate representations of how much power a chip actually uses. You can see in some of these Blender benchmarks the 12900k hitting >230W average: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-12900k-and-core-i5-12600k-review-retaking-the-gaming-crown/3 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-12900k-an... It's very workload-dependent, so it's difficult to say how much power a chip will draw in general. It's clear that Intel is still a bit of an energy hog, though.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    - both Intel and AMD lie about TDP now, Intel much more than AMD - 225 W is for the M1 Ultra Mac Studio, whole system power consumption - that includes powering the TB peripherals if they exist - Intel numbers are just the CPU (not even including the chipset) and will only happen if you don't cool it enough and it has to throttle So yes, I'd rather have a M1 (probably a Pro would be enough) on my desk than an i9 under it. But I am weird and like cool and quiet, not larger numbers.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  The first thing I did with my M1 MBP was fire up my game of choice for the last twelve years. It performed adequately, and respectably, but the performance is not equal to my Nvidia 1060/70. Still, I shut off my modern i5+Nvidia desktop that day and haven't turned it on since. MBP is too damn fast (holy shit the build times!!) and too damn quiet to go back. The M1 put the i5 in a headlock and had it begging for mercy without the slightest bit of effort.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    One of Apple's major advantages, I think, is that they don't use very many shitty components. Meanwhile, OEMs always cheap out on components that don't produce the numbers that consumers understand -- hard drive? memory? Who cares! Here's the core count and clock frequency.
sausagefeet 4y ago
Intel is investing in RISC-V[0] as well as working on its own chips. But this kind of question is not new. 10-20 years ago nobody would be thinking ARM could catch up to Intel. But also, is your question just about laptops and mobile devices? I don't see Apple taking on server markets, where the power per watt is perhaps less important. Finally, lots of people will be using non-Apple hardware for a long time (think anyone who isn't in Engineering at a company, they will probably be on a Windows system), which means there is guaranteed revenue for these other folks to compete, and possibly, catch up. [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-invests-in-open-source-risc-v-processors-with-a-billion-dollars-in-new-chip-foundries/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-invests-in-open-source-r...
- bayindirh 4y ago
  > I don't see Apple taking on server markets, where the power per watt is perhaps less important. While, as an HPC admin, I don't expect to see any Apple branded XServes in our system room for a long time (if ever), or their silicon on any other system, many HPC and data center operators would love to have servers with better performance per watt, because cooling these systems is a pain. Everybody is moving to direct liquid cooling systems beyond a specific performance point, and this is not making things simpler.
breadloaf 4y ago
In general what I see as a massive issue for ARM and big win for x86 is standardization (or in case of ARM lack of) - Can you run ARM system on any ARM processor, or are you limited by core architecture, endianness (BE/LE), and RAM addressing, forcing you to recompile for specific SoC? I honestly don't know what are the exact limitations. - Can you boot any ARM processor in one specific way like x86 processor? No you can't. Every ARM processor has its own booting mechanism and you basically need to bend your system to it. This lack of standardization is the reason, why Android phones does not have universal Lineage OS, but has build for phone X, build for phone Y, build for tablet Z and on the other hand this basic standardization is what will keep x86 alive for decades to come.
- defactoPun 4y ago
  Can there be a software side compensation for this lack of standardisation? Because I too don't see any hardware standard coming very soon to ARM and I don't think it can even. But, maybe there can be a build automation which can handle all the hassle and minimize the randomness?
  - pca006132 4y ago
    I thought user-space applications should be fine? Bootloaders that kind of stuff has to deal with low-level interfaces and those do differ from SoCs to SoCs. You can build multiple functions to handle different architectures by function multi-versioning[1], not sure if it works for embedded though. [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Multiversioning.html https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Multiversioning....
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Almost nobody actually runs ARM in big-endian. I suspect although the ISA is technically capable of endian switch many SoCs wouldn't even work in BE. I seem to recall trying to get uboot and and RPi to boot big endian at one point and it was infeasible.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  That used to be true, but ARM has been standardizing these aspects now for a long time. Modern ARM systems can use ACPI for example. Android phones have different builds because the hardware varies a lot, and because the OS is an integrated part of the product offering. It's not like the PC space where the hardware makers can't compete by better integrating the OS.
user_named 4y ago
Perhaps the competition will instead come from China. Xiaomi, OPPO both make their own chipset now.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  No worries, next president will just ban them.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    I think they are quite aware of that.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  China has their infamous five year plans and for 2025 they have a goal of suppying 70% of their own semiconductor demand. So it is pretty much given that we will see high-end Chinese CPUs by then.
  - jurmous 4y ago
    Good luck with that if you cannot get the latest chipmaking machines from ASML. There is basically no competitor to ASML for latest gen chipmaking machines. https://www.reuters.com/technology/asml-still-has-no-licence-ship-newest-machines-china-ceo-2022-01-19/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/asml-still-has-no-licence...
    - throwaway4good 4y ago
      Yes. This is the heart of the tech war. On the Chinese side there is nothing short of a Manhattan project going on to create a semi-conductor industry that is outside US sanction power. It will be absolutely fascinating to see the result of it.
- jurmous 4y ago
  ASML is banned to sell the newest machines to China so I don't think it will happen soon. https://www.reuters.com/technology/asml-still-has-no-licence-ship-newest-machines-china-ceo-2022-01-19/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/asml-still-has-no-licence...
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
He who is first will later be last Bob Dylan
- WithinReason 4y ago
  And the first one now will later be last - Bob Dylan The last will be first, and the first last - Matthew 20:16
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
Apple fans sure love pretending other chips are as slow as they are > The Apple M1 Ultra SoC chip achieves 87% of the performance of the Intel 12900K and Nvidia RTX 3090 Benchmarks not run by Apple do not support this claim In reality it is not competitive with chips five years old
- defactoPun 4y ago
  Well, I dont think there's need for a personal attack here. Even though they might not be 87% faster, they are still quite significantly faster for an ultrabook and they do deliver the battery life. So I guess the OP's question can be taken as, could intel or amd or OEMs achieve the performance to power ration soon ?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    This is precisely the right reformulation of the actual question. Apple's competitors are already ahead of of Apple in terms of pure performance. "Catching up" is only a thing if you care about the performance/power ratio.
    - jmiskovic 4y ago
      Yes, but the performance/power is extremely important for laptops. As a long time Linux user I'm seriously considering migrating to Mac just for the laptop staying cool and silent after hours operating on battery.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    > Well, I dont think there's need for a personal attack here. Correctly observing that someone is making false claims due to their allegiance to a brand name is not a personal attack. . > they are still quite significantly faster for an ultrabook The benchmarks do not support this claim. . > and they do deliver the battery life. Tom's hardware has them at 14 hours, the Surface Laptop at 17. Tom's hardware also says the Surface Laptop is faster. There are Lenovos with 35 hour battery life. 14 hours is pretty standard. The flagships of HP, Dell, Lenovo, and MSI also all do 15-17 hours. Apple's actually slightly behind the pack here. Please note that battery life and CPU power are inversely correlated; you'll never find a laptop that's good with both, and if someone's telling you they have, they're lying to you It's like saying that the car that delivers the most horsepower also uses the least gas. No, it doesn't, and you should know that. In reality, these are both average middle of the road machines. They aren't particularly powerful when compared to one of MSI's beasts, and they aren't particularly battery lived when compared to one of those glorified tablets you can get. . > could intel or amd or OEMs achieve the performance to power ration soon ? They did five years ago, according to the measurements and evidence. I have never shopped for laptops according to their "performance power ratio."
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Apple Silicon: Be node ahead of competition. Solder memory on-package. ????? Profit! Not that Apple Silicon isn't impressive but I think we ignore the shortcomings and take a lot of what other processors do for granted. Silicon often struggles on workloads that don't use some sort of hardware acceleration. If you never go off the beaten path it is very compelling.
XCSme 4y ago
> achieves 87% of the performance of the Intel 12900K and Nvidia RTX 3090 combined This sounds insane (not in a good way). A 3090 destroys M1 Ultra in tasks like machine learning, 3090 being 5x-10x faster than the M1 Ultra.
- XCSme 4y ago
  Also, just stumbled upon this recent video[0] taking on the Apple marketing/graphs for the M1 ultra and testing their claims. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCs27cNz6_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCs27cNz6_k
- maccard 4y ago
  I dont fall in the "apple has changed the world" camp, but bear in mind what you're saying here - the flagship $1500 MSRP GPU is less than an order of magnitude quicker than a $2000 (total) device, with less than half the power usage. That's a pretty impressive feat for a first attempt.
  - XCSme 4y ago
    > is less than an order of magnitude quicker than a $2000 (total) device Isn't the M1 Ultra Mac studio starting at $3999 MSRP? Also, enthusiasts are usually willing to pay 2x the price for even just 2x the performance.
  - XCSme 4y ago
    I am not saying their chip isn't impressive, just that they are clearly lying/deceiving in their marketing.
  - onepointsixC 4y ago
    > the flagship $1500 MSRP GPU is less than an order of magnitude quicker than a $2000 (total) device Could you point out which precise Apple device you are thinking of? Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra appear to be $3999 MSRP, and I was assuming that's the cheapest option for an M1 Ultra.
    - 4y ago
yxhuvud 4y ago
Apple will stay in the lead as long as they pay TSMC for a virtual monopoly on the smallest die sizes. How it will look when that situation changes is anyones guess. Apple is likely to continue to use the least electricity as they have spent a lot of effort on that, but other than that is impossible to say.
sharikous 4y ago
The M1 is packed to the brim with top of the class technology (lower node, big ROB, big caches, fast buses, very complex prefetching and branch prediction...) and has the advantage that it was basically wrote from scratch during a decade or so from simple mobile level processors to full grade CPU, but it is not magic. Competitors can certainly catch up in some years A lot of their best engineers left and joined the competition and a whole lot depends on them. The second thing that needs to happen is a serious restructuring of existing processors, to the point of rewriting parts from scratch. It will take some time but there are companies with the budget and the know how to do it.
throwaway4good 4y ago
I don't think there is a technical reason why a chip based on the x86 ISA could not be just as efficient as one based on Apple's ARM-variation. And AMD (and probably Intel soon) has access to the same process technology as Apple so I think it is only a matter of time before you will see a catch up.
- cowtools 4y ago
  I would imagine that any implementation of x86 would have to bear the weight of reverse-compatibility. With reverse comparability, the bad design decisions just compound, for example complicated stuff like memory synchronization https://youtu.be/KeLBd2EJLOU?t=2956 https://youtu.be/KeLBd2EJLOU?t=2956
  - layer8 4y ago
    Exactly. I wish it wasn’t the case, but x86 compatibility will always come at a cost, in particular due to memory semantics, but also I believe due to its complex ISA requiring more silicon.
    - throwaway4good 4y ago
      It would have been a critical factor if this was circuits with a few thousands transistors. Here is an article on the subject; I am sure you can find others: https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/ https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-... ARM or x86? ISA Doesn’t Matter
alberth 4y ago
1. Apple literally pays billions to TSMC to build a new fab 2. So Apple gets exclusive rights to those new fabs for the first 2 years 3. As a result, Apple gets access to the latest performance benefits of the newest nodes 2 years before anyone else 4. Additionally, since Apple chips are SoC - EVERYTHING (gpu, memory controller, memory, cpu, etc) gets fabbed on thr newest highest performing node. This has never been done before because even Nvidia latest chips, due to cost, are typically in 4 year old nodes, along with memory controllers etc. You can’t underestimate the massive benefit of having the entire SoC fabbed on a node that no other company can gain access too for 2+ years
- philistine 4y ago
  Then why was Apple winning against every other phone chip before they got access to 5nm? The M1 is the first time Apple has had exclusive access to a node in its decades plus history of making chips, and yet it has had the fastest chips for a decade.
naillo 4y ago
Considering that no one with an apple M1 chip is gaming or training ML with it, I'm not even sure what it means that these are supposedly better. What are people even using the extra performance for? Keeping thousands of tabs open simultaneously?
- maccard 4y ago
  We use it for compilation. The M1 Mac Pro we use is about 50% quicker than the i7 we had before it for an end to end compile of our project.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Compilation is just fast for me. A 100% increase in speed won't make a real difference. (Except when I compile an entire project from scratch, which I almost never do.)
    - maccard 4y ago
      I work on a medium sized project. A full rebuild is about 25 minutes on the M1 Mac and was about 55 minutes on the i7 Mac mini we used before. The "normal" build (what most developers have to face semi-regularly) is about 15 minutes on the Intel and about 4 on the M1. (I checked our CI numbers and can't explain the discrepancy sorry but I would guess the M1 Mac is quicker linking and the link time dominates). Our CI does clean builds once a week, and the other builds somewhat regularly. Reducing the feedback loop by 10 minutes for a developers post merge check is a huge win IMO.
- Joeri 4y ago
  Audio and video production, and web and app development. I don’t think many people are switching from linux and windows (although I switched from a linux thinkpad to m1 air), but those upgrading from intel macs to m1 macs are seeing huge jumps.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > Considering that no one with an apple M1 chip is gaming or training ML with it, Anecdatum of one: I use my M1 chip for gaming (predominantly Minecraft with smatterings of Cities Skyline, Rocket League, etc.) (I have trained MLs using the Metal version of Torch, too, but generally only tiny textgenrnn things for fun.)
fortran77 4y ago
Of course. It's not a seismic shift; it has some advantages in some dimensions.
modeless 4y ago
You're looking in the wrong place. The magic comes from TSMC, not Apple. Apple's major innovation is in using their unrivaled bank account to pay TSMC for exclusivity on their newest fabrication technology. As competitors gain access to that TSMC technology they will match or beat Apple's performance. And if Intel succeeds in reclaiming the fabrication technology lead from TSMC (we'll see) then Intel will beat Apple's performance again.
- chrsig 4y ago
  I was under the impression that having it all as an SoC was a significant benefit by cutting down latency between components.
  - wmf 4y ago
    Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm have been shipping SoCs for years.
    - seabrookmx 4y ago
      They don't have the RAM on package though.
      - wmf 4y ago
        This doesn't matter. I know no one will believe me, but there's no benchmark that can show the difference.
        wffurr 4y ago
        Isn't the packaging part of what makes the very wide memory controllers feasible?
        wmf 4y ago
        Not really. GPUs regularly implement 256-bit or wider RAM.
hatware 4y ago
Can HN users see there's more nuance to performance than marketing jargon?
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
And yet slack still takes 30 seconds to select and load a chat.
b20000 4y ago
the main issue IMHO is that competitors are not choosing the right combination of cores and peripherals when designing SoCs. Apple is doing that much better. for example i am not interested in 2x an A53 and 2x an A72. i want an octa core with the fastest A cores available. each time when i tried to find that i ended up in the server processor world with a price tag to match. stuff like 4k video decoders and TPUs are of no interest to me. yet multiple i2s ports or TDM are missing on typical mobile SoCs. AMD has some seriously interesting CPUs these days but unfortunately it seems hard to get access to parts if you are a small time device manufacturer…
pjmlp 4y ago
Given that whatever Apple has is not going into 80% of the desktop market, 60% of the mobile market, 100% of game consoles, or 100% of the server market, it matters much less than some Apple afficionados make out of it.
- philistine 4y ago
  When Apple can make a game console for half the price with the same GPU power as the competition, which is something that could happen in ten years, Microsoft and PlayStation are going to sweat and pay very close attention to what Apple is doing.
  - aninteger 4y ago
    Does Apple make anything at half the price of a competitor? Nothing is impossible in the future but past behavior indicates that an Apple console would likely not be "half the price". Also, Apple has sometimes been considered a "luxury" brand in tech, and that probably also means it's unlikely to push a reduced price console without diluting the brand or their image.
    - philistine 4y ago
      If they make it for half the price, they won't sell it at that price. They'll make sure to make a hefty margin on every console sold. Realistically, Apple will stop putting old phone chips in its TV box, and they'll start putting the more recent chips with good GPUs.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Good luck with that. Remember Pippin.
    - philistine 4y ago
      How can the Pippin relate to any future console endeavour of Apple? I can't think of any piece of tech, or employee, who was there when the Pippin was released.
PeterStuer 4y ago
And then you try gaming and it is comparable to a Ryzen 7 4800H (45W)/ Nvidia GTX 1650ti (50W).
- Retric 4y ago
  Several versions of M1 and M2 GPU’s but M1 8-Core GPU (15W) being roughly equivalent to low end 50W GPU’s makes me want to see what Apple could do with a discrete graphics card. 10+ times M2 performance as a discrete 200W card with dedicated memory and 100ish cores could be really compelling depending on the price point. That’s RTX 3090 territory, but much easier to cool etc.
- hajile 4y ago
  The biggest problem has been Metal and incompatibilities. Metal 3 brings most of the important things they've been missing. We're already seeing companies like crossover working on this to make a lot of additional games work on their hardware. The second issue is dev relationships. The real AMD/Nvidia advantage over other GPU makers is that they pay huge amounts of money to optimize games to the point that their drivers will detect a game and then completely replace huge sections of the game with optimized versions they wrote. These relationships take a lot of time to establish and maintain. In any case, supply chain rumors strongly indicate Apple launching a very expensive VR headset in 2023 (which also matches up well with games that would be delivered after a half-billion dollar investment into their gaming subscription service around 2019). There are also rumors of Apple making an offer to buy EA games. Apple makes more money from games than every other major game company put together. They have a huge interest in moving further this direction going forward. I don't see any way they don't just throw large amounts of money into this problem until it goes away.
tdsanchez 4y ago
Most of the performance advantage of Apple silicon is that it puts CPU, GPU and all memory (that is typically VRAM and DRAM in traditional architectures) millimeters from primary DRAM. When competing purveyors start do this with their own clever packaging, they will start to approach Apple’s mips/watt. Emulation on M1 is outstanding. The spatial locality of main memory nullifies emulation penalty. Apple has come close to what Transmeta tried to do.
- wmf 4y ago
  Nope. There's little or no advantage to 2 mm vs. 20 mm.
  - tdsanchez 4y ago
    When multiplied over billions of clock cycles it makes a tremendous amount of difference. There's a reason why PCB board specs say that all DRAM traces need to be the same length - the length of the trace, and it's capacitance are the main speed limiter for any signal. This is true whether the trace is 20 mm long or 2. "the critical point to DDR circuitry is in the timing. This means that the clock lines will determine the timing of the input and output of the memory chip data lines. Electrical signals can not be sped up, so the only way to control the timing is to add length to the traces in order to delay the arrival of the clock signal. This is accomplished by adding serpentine routing to the trace routing." https://resources.pcb.cadence.com/blog/2019-ddr-routing-techniques-in-your-pcb-design https://resources.pcb.cadence.com/blog/2019-ddr-routing-tech... "So the physical RAM modules are still separate entities, but they are sitting on the same green substrate as the processor. “Big whoop,” I hear you saying. “What’s the big deal?” Well, first of all, this means faster access to memory, which inevitably improves performance. In addition, Apple is tweaking how memory is used within the system." https://www.howtogeek.com/701804/how-unified-memory-speeds-up-apples-m1-arm-macs/ https://www.howtogeek.com/701804/how-unified-memory-speeds-u...
incrudible 4y ago
The GPU is not that fast. It is at heart a mobile architecture that excels when the application takes that into account. Otherwise, it is mediocre. It is also worth noting that performance does not scale linearly with power. You can often get something like 75% of the performance at 50% of the power.
rubatuga 4y ago
You are so wrong about achieving 87% of rtx 3090 power.
philistine 4y ago
Reading this thread, the delusional thinking is thick! I’m hearing that we need to wait until Intel moves to 5nm to really compare. When that means that the whole PC market cedes the crown to Apple, who is not slowing down. Apple is on its second generation on 5nm and the x86 crowd as yet to show any response! That it’s only because Apple is on 5nm that they’re competitive. Which is crazy, since we can directly compare slightly older chips made on a 7nm process and Apple comes out way ahead. That the competitors like Qualcomm are not optimizing for performance. When the reality is much simpler. The benchmarks are this bad from Qualcomm because they’re optimizing for their wallets. The reality is simple: for a decade, Apple has had the fastest phones, and the fastest tablets. Are you PC guys ready to admit Apple has the fastest computers?
- mhh__ 4y ago
  Your comment is needlessly argumentative. No one is saying they aren't good chips. Also if it isn't the process it arguably makes it easier for them to catch up because other than the semi-cultural stuff like EDA tooling changing a design is much easier than changing a process. Now they have a real target to hit I expect the gap to close, especially if Intel can convert their IDM concept into a real battle with TSMC
- draw_down 4y ago
dclusin 4y ago
Apples hardware is proprietary and they don’t offer or probably plan to offer server chips. I think what would make these stats more interesting is if we saw a shift in the thin client vs. fat client debate back to fat clients. Perhaps these changes will bring us into that era? Amazons arm-based offerings are pretty interesting as are the other non-x86 initiatives. But I don’t see x86 going away in my day job any time soon.
dekhn 4y ago
Your gpu perf numbers are not representative.
PeterStuer 4y ago
Seismic shift? Seems to be pretty much on-par with current AMD and Intel offerings [1]. Let's see how Apple holds up when AMD gets on the same node. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfJq0Y4Oos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfJq0Y4Oos

bhouston 4y ago
> This leads to the observation that adding large SIMD/vector units to a CPU isn't really hard. A small, in-order core with very wide vector units running at a slower speed to conserve energy seems like an interesting idea and several startups are working in this direction (not to mention this being the basis of Intel's Larabee and later Knight's Corner designs). As well as the Sony/IBM Cell processor used in the PS3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor) Wide SIMD or just in-order massive FP capabilities is not new. But it is hard to program for. In many ways special purpose ASICs fill this role if you just need raw massive FP capabilities. Or eventually memory embedded computing can even take this further.
- hajile 4y ago
  The Cell was a very flawed implementation. Load hit store issues where you could wait around almost a hundred cycles (and stall it because no OoO). Getting rid of SMT and adding complete OoO support would have been a much better result even if the die area was a bit bigger as a result. The SPE had NO branch prediction and were pretty close to VLIW in design. It relied on the provably false trope of a "sufficiently advanced compiler" that can somehow solve the halting problem and of course leading to a 50-50 chance that you plowed ahead on the wrong branch and now must wait almost 20 cycles for everything to reset. As it only had 128 registers to unroll loops into, this problem is basically guaranteed to happen a lot. They didn't provide any cache per core. Instead, programmers have to micromanage the 256k of RAM as if it were cache. Accurately predicting every possible memory pattern is impossible (it would require proving all execution paths which the halting problem says is impossible). Even modern GPUs include cache and choose the appropriate fetching patterns on the fly. I'll also note that the SPE used a different ISA from the CPU (PPE) which adds yet another layer of headaches. We'll never know how powerful the cell could have been because it had so many footguns that devs were seemingly incapable of avoiding all of them. These problems were called out by places like Anandtech or Real World Tech a year and a half before the PS3 launched and was then reiterated by the people using it. Sony allegedly took to threatening teams that wanted to release their finished xbox 360 games before the PS3 version and even took to flying around a couple teams of cell developers to try to get games out the door quicker. A system using the same ISA for both CPU and GPU isn't such a common idea in practice. There are supposedly a couple companies trying to use RISC-V to do this. I guess we'll have to wait and see what they can come up with. I certainly don't see them repeating these major mistakes.

yxhuvud 4y ago

How about waiting until the competitors is actually on the same process node size until declaring the x86 baggage to costly? Most of all, Apple is currently in the lead because they threw money on TSMC to get a virtual monopoly on the smallest node size. How much of that which will remain once the competitors are comparable is an unknown at this point.

throwaway5959 4y ago
What if Apple maintains a lead in process mode though? 3 nm while Intel is at 5, 2 nm while Intel is at 3, etc. I’m glad they have competition from more than just AMD and wish all three the best.
- yxhuvud 4y ago
  Apple may maintain the lead, but it is done by throwing money at TSMC, not by having better technology by themselves. I'd prefer a situation where the TSMC let all of them have some access to the better node sizes as that would let the company with the better tech sell more.
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    I don’t see why the distinction would matter to the people it should matter the most to, Apple’s customers.
    - yxhuvud 4y ago
      I was responding to a claim that Apple would keep their lead due to x86 baggage. It matters for the truthiness for that claim, it doesn't matter for how much stuff Apple will sell.
mromanuk 4y ago
Comparing currently available CPUs on the market is pretty fair.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Sure, but would you go as far to claim that X phone is so much better in battery, Y has no chance of catching up, when X just put a twice as big battery in their phone? Like we just don’t know how much node size alone matters in the picture (or in the analogy, whether the improvement is only due to the bigger capacity battery vs better energy management at other places)
  - mromanuk 4y ago
    > Like we just don’t know how much node size alone matters in the picture (or in the analogy, whether the improvement is only due to the bigger capacity battery vs better energy management at other places) Yes, that's what interesting about this, how did they achieved the performance gap
- yxhuvud 4y ago
  That is definitely true, but you can't reach any conclusion on the cost of the x86 baggage by comparing different process nodes. It has way too much influence on the end result to be ignored. In a few months we will have both AMD and Apple on the same size, so we will finally get some idea of how the baggage compare then. It won't be a long situation, Apple will relatively soon after release a new on a smaller size again.
  - hajile 4y ago
    A13 and Zen 2 were both made in TSMC N7 fabs, but the performance per watt differences were still enormous.
  - philistine 4y ago
    You have had the same fab processes for years on phone chips and Apple was winning every year. The fact the chip is in the chassis of a computer does not suddenly change the game in favour of AMD.

alberth 4y ago

> Apple was able to just create a new CPU based on the much more modern ARM architecture Is that accurate? x86 launched in 1978. (64bit in 2003). ARM launched in 1985. (64bit in 2011). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family

dmitrygr 4y ago
X86-64 INCLUDES all the legacy cruft of x86-32 and x86-16 and is thus 44 years old. Aarch64 in Apple chips doesn’t include A32 and is thus 11 years old. It is indeed a large age difference.
- agsnu 4y ago
  Apple was also the first vendor to ship an ARMv8-A compatible chip; I'm sure there have been reports that they heavily influenced the design of AArch64 but I can't dig them out right now.
  - NobodyNada 4y ago
    To back this up, here’s a Twitter thread from an Apple engineer: https://twitter.com/stuntpants/status/1346470705446092811 https://twitter.com/stuntpants/status/1346470705446092811 > arm64 is the Apple ISA, it was designed to enable Apple’s microarchitecture plans. There’s a reason Apple’s first 64 bit core (Cyclone) was years ahead of everyone else, and it isn’t just caches. > Arm64 didn’t appear out of nowhere, Apple contracted ARM to design a new ISA for its purposes. When Apple began selling iPhones containing arm64 chips, ARM hadn’t even finished their own core design to license to others. > ARM designed a standard that serves its clients and gets feedback from them on ISA evolution. In 2010 few cared about a 64-bit ARM core. Samsung & Qualcomm, the biggest mobile vendors, were certainly caught unaware by it when Apple shipped in 2013. > Apple planned to go super-wide with low clocks, highly OoO, highly speculative. They needed an ISA to enable that, which ARM provided. > M1 performance is not so because of the ARM ISA, the ARM ISA is so because of Apple core performance plans a decade ago.
- alberth 4y ago
  But ARMv8-A is backward compatible.
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    Armv8 aarch32 (32-bit) support is optional and hasn’t existed in Apple CPUs for years… (according to jail breakers and public SDK info). Aarch32 is a separate mode so dropping it is easy. In x86 you cannot drop 32bit because… it is part of the 64-bit mode and needed.
  - hajile 4y ago
    Apple dropped support years ago and the last couple ARM chip designs finally dropped support too. A715 in particular made it's decoder 20+% wider while reducing die area by 75% all due to eliminating 32-bit support.
    - skavi 4y ago
      IIRC, you’re a bit wrong with the numbers. The decoder is now a fourth the size it used to be, and they’re now using 5 (up from 4).
      - hajile 4y ago
        It's more nuanced than that though 75% smaller is a fourth the size (I guess depending on where you're looking from). A710 had a uop cache. A710 had 4 decoders but it was like Intel's decoders where one (I assume one, but less than all of them) decoder could decode anything and the others could decode common instructions, but would block and send complex decodes to the complex one. A715 now has not just 5 decoders, but every one of them can decode anything reducing pipeline complexity and increasing theoretical throughput (depending on how often those complex instructions would be used). A710 did instruction fusion in the uop cache, but A715 now does it in the L1 cache during fetch which increases effective instruction throughput by occasionally turning 2+ instructions into one. Finally, A710 used a uop cache. The decoders would fill the uop cache at a rate of 4 instructions per cycle (less if one of those complex decodes happened). Once the uop cache would fill, it would provide 5 instructions per cycle to the rest of the frontend. If A710 could prefetch and keep the uop cache full and there were always enough loops to reuse some parts while others were refilling, then you could keep the full 5 instruction theoretical output. A715 gets rid of all these exceptions making it more consistent. In truth, the final difference is definitely less than 20% in the real world, but even a 0% increase in throughput while getting rid of 75% of your transistors would still be a massive win.
phoe-krk 4y ago
You should not consider the dates that support for these initial revisions had started, you should consider the dates it had been dropped. For x86, it's "never", unlike for modern ARM (see sibling comment).
- alberth 4y ago
  ARM only officially dropped 32bit support last year. https://m.gsmarena.com/arm_will_drop_32bit_support_in_the_big_cortexa_cores_starting_in_2022-news-45688.php https://m.gsmarena.com/arm_will_drop_32bit_support_in_the_bi...
  - NobodyNada 4y ago
    ...“in big Cortex-A cores.” ARM designs both the architecture specification and some reference designs. 32-bit support has been an optional part of the specification since ARMv8 in 2011. The article you link is saying that ARM’s Cortex-A reference designs will no longer include 32-bit support, which has nothing to do with Apple since Apple uses their own custom designs. Apple dropped 32 bit support in their own designs in (IIRC) 2016.
    - doublepg23 4y ago
      afaik the last remaining 32 bit Apple SoC is in the Apple Watch Series 3.

tambourine_man 4y ago

Software changes much faster these days. We are all dealing with high abstraction layers and legacy x86/64 and even CUDA can be replaced without much disruption in most cases. If it’s proven that Apple can consistently provide better performance per watt per dollar and have enough chips available that people can actually buy, I think they can stand a chance to gain the AI market.

fxtentacle 4y ago
"even CUDA can be replaced without much disruption in most cases" Tell that to AMD who's been missing out on the very lucrative government data-center market because they can't replace CUDA well enough. BTW, PyTorch and TensorFlow still ship without AMD support despite AMD's ROCm being around for 6 years now.
- pca006132 4y ago
  iirc there are comments saying that ROCm is not very mature yet. I wish OpenCL can evolve to compete with CUDA
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  Is that more an indictment of ROCm immaturity or of PyTorch/TensorFlow unwillingness to support it?
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    I believe ROCm isn't usable yet. I don't know anyone who successfully trained a state of the art neural network on anything that was not NVIDIA. AMD keeps offering their own forks of PyTorch and TensorFlow, but last time I checked they were years outdated, and nobody uses them. So either PyTorch/TensorFlow are secretly sponsored by NVIDIA, or AMD's and Apple's CUDA replacements aren't mature enough yet. Given how many bugs there still are in CUDA despite them being around for a long time, I'd guess that building a GPU-capable BLAS library is just a lot more work than one would think. I mean I also always wonder why CUDA comes with 400 MB of GPU shaders ... but apparently they need that to cover every edge case in a fast way. FYI, this is the ROCm "getting started" guide: https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm-docker/blob/master/quick-start.md https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm-docker/blob/master... NVIDIA has a GUI installer for CUDA.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      It is the former, that Nvidia effectively sponsors ML libraries. If you're training a neural network, and you are hiring expensive ML people, you're likely just going to pay the Nvidia tax than work on ROCm support. My use of ROCm for signal processing has been pretty nice so far, and I think the ROCm BLAS library is up to par now.
    - Const-me 4y ago
      > building a GPU-capable BLAS library is just a lot more work than one would think I made a few pieces when needed: dense and sparse matrices, conjugate gradient, householder QR decomposition, other things. Wasn’t terribly hard. I only needed to support relatively new GPUs, that’s one reason why. Another one, I based on DirectCompute not ROCm. The thing’s well tested (modern videogames are using compute shaders a lot), and works with all 3 vendors of GPUs. The main downside it’s Windows only. > NVIDIA has a GUI installer for CUDA. It’s still more friction compared to D3D runtime, which is an essential OS component installed and updated as a part of the OS.
      - fxtentacle 4y ago
        DirectCompute is only the execution of fully trained neural networks, so they can skip all the gradient calculations, which are the compute-heavy and memory-heavy part. To give you and idea, I need 24GB of GPU RAM to build a background separation model, but once it's finished, it's only 500kb of parameters and it can run on CPU in JavaScript in realtime. As for the friction, CUDA is easy enough for motivated gaming kids to handle. AMD is not. But I'd predict that today's GPU enthusiast kids will become tomorrow's AI experts. As an example, look at the LAION chat which is a weird mixture of childish humor, gaming memes, and discussions about analytical approximations for probabilistic differential equations. (the Elucidated paper applied to Imagen's DDPM)
        Const-me 4y ago
        DirectCompute is pretty close to CUDA. When handled with care, it can do these compute-heavy pieces with similar performance. The main downside is the libraries: cuBLAS, cuFFT, and similar pieces of CUDA are manually optimized, and nVidia ships multiple versions of these compute kernels for different GPUs. DirectCompute doesn’t have an equivalent, need to implement manually in HLSL. This can be tricky because for optimal performance different chips need slightly different implementations.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    ROCm is pretty mature, but harder to support than CUDA. Its BLAS library works well. PyTorch and TensorFlow are likely getting a lot more help from Nvidia than from AMD on compatibility. The ROCm ecosystem is a lot smaller, too, so there are many fewer examples to copy. Still, if you want to do floating point math with high performance for a lot cheaper than Nvidia, investing the time in ROCm is probably worth it.
    - fxtentacle 4y ago
      In our case, we train on NVIDIA and then port to C++ with AVX. It's a bit more work, but deployment on AMD CPUs is even cheaper than on AMD GPUs.

dav43 4y ago
I read “dominates” as has the “dominate share of the profits for the industry”. Not dominates shipments.
- belltaco 4y ago
  By that metric Microsoft utterly dominates the web server market.
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    Yes, but that's not the point here. I don't know what Microsoft does with their IIS profits but Apple is definitely reinvesting them back into making better phones.
    - solardev 4y ago
      > I don't know what Microsoft does with their IIS profits That's ok. Microsoft doesn't either ;)
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      The point is that you've chosen a questionable benchmark that is only correct if you adopt a very spwsific point of view.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
I think the @simonh "domination" point is that Apple has dominated the mobile phone CPU PROFITABILITY landscape, not the SALES landscape, and I for one feel @simonh has a valid point.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  To emphasise, according to Counterpoint Research as of last year (https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-handset-market-operating-profit-q2-2021/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-handset-market-o...) Apple is able to maintain 75% of the total profits on the phone market, while Samsung only captures 13% and others (including Xiaomi and the BBK group) capturing the remaining 12% with no single company peaking above 5%. Apple could store two-thirds of its profits offshore (waiting for an opportunate tax break) while only moving a third of that profits into actual use and it will still be better than Samsung's position. (Rant specific to HN: some even are comparing IIS sales. Geez, it seems that most here are not willing to understand correctly what the GGP's comment pointed out is that Apple has a massive R&D budget that is unbeatable.)
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  If you're talking about CPU profitability, then look at Qualcomm profits, not Xiaomi.
matwood 4y ago
I read that as mobile CPU performance is where Apple dominates. And they do. This is why people have been wondering for years when Apple would put one of their mobile chips (or a derivative) in a laptop.
fortran77 4y ago
> That seems to be an interesting definition of "dominates". 14% of global smartphones from independents. Exactly right! It always amazes me to see the bubble some people here live in (and that's the best possible interpretation of these sort of comments; the worst is that it's a coordinated/paid astroturf attempt) We just spec'd several new computers here and they're all Xeon/NVidia. Nothing else can meet our needs.
zinekeller 4y ago
I'm sorry but I have to label this as a bad-faith attack. "dominates" in this context means being the fastest available, not necessarily that most people will buy that. It's like saying "the i9/Ryzen 7 dominates" and then answering with "most people buys Celerons/Athlons". You need to read the context of the conversation: it is about performance domination and not usershare domination.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  And yet this subthread is filled with several people who have yet a 3rd (maybe even a 4th) interpretation. I don't dispute that yours could be the intended one, but let's not pretend that it's completely clear.
- bmitc 4y ago
  The iPhones are not always the fastest and certainly not dominating.
simonh 4y ago
The thread is about performance and technology, and Apple dominates the phone CPU landscape in those areas. I thought that was clear as my comment mainly addressed technology and the driving forces behind it, but I’m sorry for the confusion.

wmf 4y ago

That's not true. Compare the 8+ Gen 1 (TSMC N4) against A15 (TSMC N5).

modeless 4y ago
Qualcomm prioritizes cost over performance and it shows. Look at AMD for a performance comparison.
- throw34 4y ago
  But doesn’t your statement prove that there are decisions and things the user of a node can make which effect the end result? Therefore, is not just process node that matters.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    I think it states that Qualcomm is not competing with apple on the success metrics that this post talks about re catching up, so you can't use it as a comparison. No idea how fast they could hit those specs up if they wanted to (was core to their business)
  - modeless 4y ago
    Obviously you can choose not to aim for the best possible performance in order to reduce costs. But for the companies that are competing for the absolute best performance at any cost, which doesn't include Qualcomm, by far the biggest factor determining that performance is the fabrication technology.
    - throw34 4y ago
      That’s an interesting take given this thread because Apple has explicitly stated they don’t prioritize performance, they prioritize performance per watt, which is not the same thing. And that also shows there’s a whole design space here and just focusing on one dimension, process node, is overly simplistic.
      - modeless 4y ago
        Top end performance is power limited, so optimizing for performance per watt is almost the same thing as optimizing for performance.
        throw34 4y ago
        I’m not sure what point you’re arguing anymore. I’m arguing against this statement. I don’t think it’s true. “ You're looking in the wrong place. The magic comes from TSMC, not Apple.” My point is a good process is necessary but not sufficient to make a part competitive with Apple on performance per watt. There’s a lot of “magic” to go around.
        xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
        I think the argument is that Apple would have significantly less magic were it not for TSMC, which seems to be correct regardless of process or design (vertical integration).
        fomine3 4y ago
        Yes. Now every computers tend to be power limited (or say heat limited).
ac29 4y ago
Where'd you see benchmarks of 8+ Gen 1? It was only announced about a month ago and isnt expected to even start sampling until later this quarter.
- wmf 4y ago
  Ian Cutress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QZIN8LFE-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QZIN8LFE-U

bearjaws 4y ago

This is just absolutely incorrect. Design is over half the battle, look at Qualcomm n5 performance vs Apple M1 on n5 performance. It's not even comparable in anyway. Even AMD 6900U struggles in many regards compared to M1 pro, and even more so at performance per watt. For example Cinebench runs at 118% more power draw on the Ryzen at only a 11% multi-core performance advantage.

modeless 4y ago
Qualcomm chooses low cost over performance on purpose. AMD 6900U is still at a process disadvantage compared to M1. AMD's comparable chips won't come out for many more months.
- Bud 4y ago
  You're still wrong. Design counts. Apple has a huge design lead here. There's no way to successfully obscure or distract from that fact.
  - fundad 4y ago
    It’s obvious they invested so much design energy making A series much faster every year to build the competence to build the M series the way they wanted it.
webmobdev 4y ago
> This is just absolutely incorrect. Design is over half the battle Completely agree. There are many ARM SoCs available in the market, and Apple's ARM SoCs outperform most of them. Apple has also made significant design changes in its SoCs that really does differentiate it from current Intel and AMD chips and these design changes do give it a performance advantage. The unified memory access architecture (I think pioneered by SGI), is a good example of one such architectural difference. And ofcourse, manufacturing these SoCs on newer node tech also allows Apple to pack more transistors in their chip than Intel and AMD currently can. Altogether, it is undeniable that Apple engineers have created a great piece of hardware and a very decent and viable alternative to Intel and AMD chips. But ... better tech doesn't always necessarily translate to more sales and popular acceptance. AMD is a great example here - despite having better technology than both Intel and Apple (on CPUs and GPUs), it still struggles to compete with either and is nowhere near the market size or capitalisation of either Intel or Apple. However, here we are not talking about a product from a new startup or small business but Apple - A huge behemoth with a fantastic team of management that knows how to sell stuff and make a profit. So it's not at all far-fetched to assume that the Apple Silicon chips are here for the long term and will continue to be a viable competitor to Intel and AMD chips. But how are they competing, and what company's vision will win in the long term? Apple's long term business vision is to continue being a hardware + software company while evolving & increasing its recurrent revenue from services that is tied to monetising the personal data of its users. I have no clear idea of either Intel's or AMD's future business visions (which is perhaps telling in its own way of how both businesses are today), other than that they want to continuing innovating and selling the hardware that is their core business (CPU, GPU, Fab tech etc.) that is more "open" to integration with other systems (software and hardware). So, keeping those visions in mind, let's compare the pros and cons of Apple and AMD / Intel chips. Apple Silicon - Pros: 1. Latest tech, innovative design offering better performance in some areas. 2. Low power usage, great battery life. 3. Cheaper. 4. "Integrated" RAM leading to better performance. 5. Highly integrated with Apple ecosystem (Apple hardware + software + web services). Apple Silicon - Cons: 1. It is not sold as stand alone part. 2. It is a closed box system with no hardware literature available to build alternative platforms on it. 3. Highly integrated with Apple's ecosystem. 4. Has built-in planned obsolescence (CPU is soldered, RAM is soldered, bootloader can be locked anytime). 5. Low power usage that unnecessarily sacrifices performance is undesirable in a desktop computer. As is evident, the pros and cons of Apple Silicon are tied to the business vision of Apple - they believe that the best way to make recurrent revenues by selling Apple services, is to create a closed-box system and tightly integrated ecosystem that forces its users to only use Apple hardware and services. Built-in planned obsolescence makes it easier to sell new system. Similarly, AMD / Intel's business vision is reflected in pros and cons of their product too: AMD / Intel CPUs - Pros: 1. Good support for multiple OS platforms. 2. Backward compatible (x86). 3. More open, better hardware literature on their SoC's support creating new platforms. 4. Better integration with other hardware allows more flexibility to users in building custom hardware. 5. Supports repairability (CPUs can be replaced and upgraded more easily in the same system, integrated GPU doesn't prevent you from adding and using a more powerful GPU etc). AMD / Intel CPUs - Cons: 1. Lagging in newer tech. 2. Maintaining backward compatibility comes at a price - more complexity, limits exploring new designs and architectures. 3. Supporting multiple platforms can be somewhat limiting as hardware performance varies depending on software quality of the platform. ----- As AMD and Intel have shown in the past, both have had better tech than the other at some point. It's the same today with Apple innovating and currently having better tech than AMD / Intel. So it isn't exactly a question of will the better tech win. What matters is who can sell their tech better.
- greggsy 4y ago
  > increasing its recurrent revenue from services that is tied to monetising the personal data of its users. My understanding is that they’re more responsible than other services with respect to personal data. Unless I’m mistaken, their strategy isn't to monetise and sell data, but is instead to sell services that allow users to interact with their own personal data, which is incredibly rich given the ecosystem that Apple Watch and HealthKit offers.
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    As an Apple user, I see it more cynically now - their whole idea of "privacy" has morphed into a strategy to prevent their competitors access to the personal data of the users, while ensuring they have more invasive access to it. This idea is offensive to me. Preventing data collection is the first step to user privacy. Once BigTech has your data, they can do anything with it in the future (despite what they say today) because of the lack of appropriate law and regulation to prevent this. I see us heading to a dystopian future where BigTech evolve into data brokers.
    - greggsy 4y ago
      >Preventing data collection is the first step to user privacy. Apple are the first to actually do this properly by cross-app tracking, forcing developers to outline data collection statements, and providing clearer sharing acceptance pages. > Once BigTech has your data, they can do anything with it in the future (despite what they say today) because of the lack of appropriate law and regulation to prevent this. This is entirely incorrect. HIPPAA and GDPR are very clear about PII health data, and a large corporate like Apple will be fined through the teeth violating it. Changes to the PP are communicated, and allow the user to opt out by discontinuing the service. Sure they’re sometimes opaque, but Apple has built a reputation on responsible data policies, which are frequently contrasted with those of other big tech data factories like Facebook and Google.
      - webmobdev 4y ago

n7pdx 4y ago

lol this will age well. i remember designing CPUs at intel when they had like a ~2.5 gen process lead (literally 4-5 years) and the result was still barely better than competition. what outsiders don’t realize is intel management never had to deal with competition. they spent their entire careers fighting each other in petty internecine political battles. if you think intel vs amd is a feud, you haven’t seen intel arch/design vs intel fabs. and in that kind of environment, loyalists and politicians are promoted, not people willing to critically inspect your own processes and improve things. end result: intel has a massive competence gap. in the extremely unlikely scenario where intel can regain the process lead, they will still be behind the curve on innovation and execution.

jaytaylor 4y ago
I didn't know the word internecine, it's actually really useful and relevant in many situations, thank you! > internecine, adj.: > destructive to both sides in a conflict.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  I find myself googling "etymology {word}" a lot recently; here inter is between like in intercontinental, and necine is death like in necrosis. And inter is apparently the origin of intel, which is topical, and suggests Intelnecine, adj: destructive to all factions within Intel, or any company with a destructive amount of in-fighting. https://www.etymonline.com/word/internecine https://www.etymonline.com/word/internecine
SilverBirch 4y ago
(Ex-Intel, agree) What do you think of the new management? Too difficult to turn the tanker?
- n7pdx 4y ago
  Looks bad. I have two examples to go with: - The Sapphire Rapids validation catastrophe proves they haven’t learned a damn thing about high quality first silicon even after all these years of getting their asses handed to them by AMD/Apple on fast cadence updates. - Arc, enough said. Pat Gelsinger made some big moves on his direct reports but he doesn’t have the time to perform the necessary mass purge of the mid/mid-high level management (i.e. the baby VP tier). When you run a company with 100k staff you have to delegate a lot of things, but the problem is a huge amount of the toxic management are still there, hiding in nooks and crannies and surviving. Intel is currently throwing a lot of money around to hire people from the companies thrashing them (got a text message from a VP a couple months back), I get the feeling the Intel immune system will spit them back out upon detecting deviance from “the Intel way”.