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Apple Silicon will have the title of world's best designed silicon for the foreseeable future. The only way for AMD and Intel to be competitive is if they can m

Apple Silicon will have the title of world's best designed silicon for the foreseeable future. The only way for AMD and Intel to be competitive is if they can match the performance/watt, thin-ness, fan-less and battery life of the M2 MacBook Air. Forget having all of these things at once. AMD and Intel chips can't even function in fan-less enclosures!

SteveNuts 4y ago
Apple has the luxury of being able to design the chips and the chassis together to dissipate heat. Intel and AMD chips go to OEMs
- zaroth 4y ago
  And the operating system too, so they can fully leverage all the special features on the chip to improve UX. Once you have critical mass being able to have enough experienced engineers up and down the whole stack, and you’ve figured out an organizational structure that allows them to work together efficiently, I don’t see how you can beat the vertical integration in a world where the fabs Apple can use are actually better than Intel’s own fab.
  - zaroth 4y ago
    Correct me if I’m wrong, but a decade ago Intel would probably have said their fab/process node was their moat? I know nothing about chip design, but like most things, I feel like one exceptionally brilliant tech lead surrounded by a group of say ~100 merely very smart collaborators can make a world class ARM based processor-design. A mere $100mm annually in hiring and overhead? The rest of Apple’s advantage comes from being able to actually hire the best, and being their own customer at scale, which means being able to buy first place in line at the fab with billions of dollars of cash. This is perhaps less true now that the chip has so many specialized areas on the die? Like, does the neural engine get allocated a certain mm^2 and certain number of bus lanes, and then a fully separate team of 100 designs it? I suspect the neural engine part of the chip is actually super simple to design, it’s the tight coupling with the OS and getting apps to properly leverage it which is tricky.
fezfight 4y ago
I dont care about thinness, or fan-less-ness or battery life, assuming it's adequate. I care about openness and performance (watts are irrelevant if reasonable like they are now). Your list, to me, sounds like marketing. Move the goal posts to these arbitrary points, declare victory.
- zaroth 4y ago
  That’s not fair. Some people care about different things than you do. I think op’s description is more aligned with the broader market, but that’s just, like, my opinion.
- yakkityyak 4y ago
  Those are the goal posts the majority of consumers value.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    Consumers believe what we tell them to believe.
    - yakkityyak 4y ago
      No, not really.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  You think that openness and performance aren’t marketing points? You’ve just chosen your two favorites.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    Yes. Just like OP. But with more freedom.
    - pram 4y ago
      Surely you mean RISC-V then. There’s nothing free (like freedom) about x86 or ARM.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Can we please have ONE. SINGLE. SILICON DISCUSSION ON HN. stay on the topic at hand without fanboys spamming "hurr durr, my M2 is da best, Intel suxxx, X86 is dead!!!111one", while not bringing anything useful or relevant to the discussion? Seeing your comment at the top makes me not want to ever open any silicon topic here again as I'm sure it will be full of these kind of low effort comments vomiting marketing garble on how AS is the best and everything else is doomed to failure, while not bringing any useful info or arguments on-topic.
- echelon 4y ago
  I think a suitable counter argument is that Apple has grown too large and needs to be split into multiple smaller companies to better aid competition. Between what they're doing to silicon, the outrageous App Store behavior, and how they flaunt that they're a quazi-government entity, I think this could find broad support in Congress and the DOJ. Nobody can compete with Apple, and that's a bad thing for everyone.
  - jeromegv 4y ago
    So Apple brought competitiveness to an industry that was badly needing it and stalling in the most recent years.. and your “solution” is that we should prevent them from doing so?
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      It's a strawman. Apple has the capacity to do immense good, but only because they're the single largest company in the world! We should scrutinize concentration of power heavily, and so far Apple has done nothing to suggest their benevolence to the rest of the market. They're blowing off Dutch regulators like it's a middle school homework assignment, and refusing to loose their asinine monopoly over software distribution on iPhone. They're behaving childishly, and everyone knows they're not a child. They're a company with hundreds of billions of dollars, and they're demonstrating organizational failure to address the demand of the market. On top of that, they're largest revenue sources are rent-collection and unibody aluminum computers made by political prisoners in Chinese concentration camps. They need a slap, hard.
heavyset_go 4y ago
I'd save this judgment call for when there's node parity between Apple's chips, x86 and even other ARM manufacturers. The fact is that Apple's chips are on smaller nodes than the rest of the competition, because they bought up all of manufacturing on those nodes from TSMC. Performance per watt, power draw, thermals, etc are all functions of node size.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- senttoschool 4y ago
  Apple Silicon is magnitudes more efficient. It cannot be explained by node size alone. TSMC 5nm is 15%-25% higher performance or 30% lower power compared to TSMC 7nm. Also, Apple's 7nm chips outperformed AMD/Intel 7nm chips.
  - pulse7 4y ago
    Compare AMD Ryzen 7 5800U [1] with Apple M2 8 Core [2] and you will see that Apple Silicon is not "magnitudes more efficient", but ca. 30% faster in single-thread, but at the same time 30% slower in multi-thread and with 25% higher TDP... This is not "magnitudes more efficient"... [1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+5800U&id=4102 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+5800U&i... [2] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M2+8+Core+3500+MHz&id=4922 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M2+8+Core+350...
    - senttoschool 4y ago
      Passmark is a terrible benchmark. Stick to SPEC or Geekbench5. This Reddit post summarizes the efficiency and speed advantages of the M1: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/nii37s/comment/gz2xd7y/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/nii37s/comment/gz...
- urthor 4y ago
  The sensible answer.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
Stick it in a desktop chassis, mount a heat sink, crank the power to 100W, then it might be useful.

SteveNuts 4y ago

Apple has the luxury of being able to design the chips and the chassis together to dissipate heat. Intel and AMD chips go to OEMs

zaroth 4y ago
And the operating system too, so they can fully leverage all the special features on the chip to improve UX. Once you have critical mass being able to have enough experienced engineers up and down the whole stack, and you’ve figured out an organizational structure that allows them to work together efficiently, I don’t see how you can beat the vertical integration in a world where the fabs Apple can use are actually better than Intel’s own fab.
- zaroth 4y ago
  Correct me if I’m wrong, but a decade ago Intel would probably have said their fab/process node was their moat? I know nothing about chip design, but like most things, I feel like one exceptionally brilliant tech lead surrounded by a group of say ~100 merely very smart collaborators can make a world class ARM based processor-design. A mere $100mm annually in hiring and overhead? The rest of Apple’s advantage comes from being able to actually hire the best, and being their own customer at scale, which means being able to buy first place in line at the fab with billions of dollars of cash. This is perhaps less true now that the chip has so many specialized areas on the die? Like, does the neural engine get allocated a certain mm^2 and certain number of bus lanes, and then a fully separate team of 100 designs it? I suspect the neural engine part of the chip is actually super simple to design, it’s the tight coupling with the OS and getting apps to properly leverage it which is tricky.

fezfight 4y ago

I dont care about thinness, or fan-less-ness or battery life, assuming it's adequate. I care about openness and performance (watts are irrelevant if reasonable like they are now). Your list, to me, sounds like marketing. Move the goal posts to these arbitrary points, declare victory.

zaroth 4y ago
That’s not fair. Some people care about different things than you do. I think op’s description is more aligned with the broader market, but that’s just, like, my opinion.
yakkityyak 4y ago
Those are the goal posts the majority of consumers value.
- fezfight 4y ago
  Consumers believe what we tell them to believe.
  - yakkityyak 4y ago
    No, not really.
Tagbert 4y ago
You think that openness and performance aren’t marketing points? You’ve just chosen your two favorites.
- fezfight 4y ago
  Yes. Just like OP. But with more freedom.
  - pram 4y ago
    Surely you mean RISC-V then. There’s nothing free (like freedom) about x86 or ARM.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Can we please have ONE. SINGLE. SILICON DISCUSSION ON HN. stay on the topic at hand without fanboys spamming "hurr durr, my M2 is da best, Intel suxxx, X86 is dead!!!111one", while not bringing anything useful or relevant to the discussion? Seeing your comment at the top makes me not want to ever open any silicon topic here again as I'm sure it will be full of these kind of low effort comments vomiting marketing garble on how AS is the best and everything else is doomed to failure, while not bringing any useful info or arguments on-topic.

echelon 4y ago
I think a suitable counter argument is that Apple has grown too large and needs to be split into multiple smaller companies to better aid competition. Between what they're doing to silicon, the outrageous App Store behavior, and how they flaunt that they're a quazi-government entity, I think this could find broad support in Congress and the DOJ. Nobody can compete with Apple, and that's a bad thing for everyone.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  So Apple brought competitiveness to an industry that was badly needing it and stalling in the most recent years.. and your “solution” is that we should prevent them from doing so?
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    It's a strawman. Apple has the capacity to do immense good, but only because they're the single largest company in the world! We should scrutinize concentration of power heavily, and so far Apple has done nothing to suggest their benevolence to the rest of the market. They're blowing off Dutch regulators like it's a middle school homework assignment, and refusing to loose their asinine monopoly over software distribution on iPhone. They're behaving childishly, and everyone knows they're not a child. They're a company with hundreds of billions of dollars, and they're demonstrating organizational failure to address the demand of the market. On top of that, they're largest revenue sources are rent-collection and unibody aluminum computers made by political prisoners in Chinese concentration camps. They need a slap, hard.

heavyset_go 4y ago

I'd save this judgment call for when there's node parity between Apple's chips, x86 and even other ARM manufacturers. The fact is that Apple's chips are on smaller nodes than the rest of the competition, because they bought up all of manufacturing on those nodes from TSMC. Performance per watt, power draw, thermals, etc are all functions of node size.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
senttoschool 4y ago
Apple Silicon is magnitudes more efficient. It cannot be explained by node size alone. TSMC 5nm is 15%-25% higher performance or 30% lower power compared to TSMC 7nm. Also, Apple's 7nm chips outperformed AMD/Intel 7nm chips.
- pulse7 4y ago
  Compare AMD Ryzen 7 5800U [1] with Apple M2 8 Core [2] and you will see that Apple Silicon is not "magnitudes more efficient", but ca. 30% faster in single-thread, but at the same time 30% slower in multi-thread and with 25% higher TDP... This is not "magnitudes more efficient"... [1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+5800U&id=4102 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+5800U&i... [2] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M2+8+Core+3500+MHz&id=4922 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M2+8+Core+350...
  - senttoschool 4y ago
    Passmark is a terrible benchmark. Stick to SPEC or Geekbench5. This Reddit post summarizes the efficiency and speed advantages of the M1: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/nii37s/comment/gz2xd7y/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/nii37s/comment/gz...
urthor 4y ago
The sensible answer.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

Stick it in a desktop chassis, mount a heat sink, crank the power to 100W, then it might be useful.