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what's the incentive for a chip manufacturer to put out a better ARM chip (eg comparable to the Apple M1)? I don't know that world well, so my best guess is tha

by pge 4y ago

what's the incentive for a chip manufacturer to put out a better ARM chip (eg comparable to the Apple M1)? I don't know that world well, so my best guess is that the margins go to the OS manufacturers, so unless you have guaranteed commitment from MSFT for a given volume, and some sharing of the margin, it's too risky to invest in the R&D to make a better ARM chip. The market for x86 chips is large and known, so for someone like Intel, it makes more sense to invest in the i3/i5 than in a new line of ARM. But that's all speculation - would love to hear the perspective of someone who understands the industry better.

sliken 4y ago
Apple has done pretty amazing things with the m1. IMO the most unique part is scaling memory bandwidth. The vast majority of PCs are running 128 bit wide memory, with workstation CPUs like the threadripper (and pro) being the exception, but a VERY small fraction of the market. The M1 has 128 bit wide 67GB/sec peak (that you'll never see) bandwidth, like most PCs. Upgrade to the Pro and you get 200GB/sec. Max will take you to 400GB/sec, and Ultra takes you to 800GB/sec. On the Intel (i3, i5, i7, i9) or AMD (ryzen r3, r5, r7, r9) you get ... the same memory bandwidth. Check the 8 core vs 16 core scaling numbers and for most benchmarks you'll see poor scaling. Sure you can increase GPU performance by adding GPUs, which reduces (but not removes) the need for extra memory bandwidth. Sadly iGPUs (outside the XboxX and PS5) largely stink and are only good enough for non-GPU intensive workloads. Apple on the other hand does scale GPU performance, granted not to the levels that AMD and Nvidia do. So why can't anyone in the PC space do more memory bandwidth and a decent iGPU, especially when for years the GPUs were in short supply and had exorbitant prices. I think it does come down to OS support, volume (which could be problematic if current GPU customers avoid you), and potentially reducing profits for AMD (who would have sold an expensive external GPU). Not to mention that fast/wide ram requires soldering chips on board or increasing size/cost with large banks of ram. Even servers with 8 memory channels (minimum 8 dimms) only get you to the M1 pro level (1/2 of the m1 max and 1/4th of the m1 ultra). Apple can say we have X% of the market today, and all new customers will be on our new platform with 2 years, so the driver, OS, iGPU, memory bandwidth, etc will be amortized over substantial volumes. Additionally Apple gets a larger fraction of the revenue, since they aren't paying Nvidia or AMD for a GPU. Who is going to push a MBP or Apple studio competitor that could ship the same volumes?
eklitzke 4y ago
Long term there is a huge market for server-oriented CPUs that can compete with Intel Xeon, which currently has a near monopoly in the server market. Note that a lot of companies are already working on this: Ampere (ARM), Amazon (Graviton3, etc.), and likely Nvidia, Rivos (RISC-V), etc. The best of market ARM designs don't really compete head-to-head with Xeon right now, but there are still a ton of server applications where they make already make sense. As a simple example companies like Google and Facebook have hundreds of thousands of servers that are doing things like running memcached or running some application like D/GFS where the server is mostly just doing a lot of I/O and doesn't necessarily need really beefy single-threaded CPU performance. Longer term obviously if there are ARM or RISC-V CPUs that can compete head-to-head with Xeon in terms of features and single threaded performance then that opens up pretty much the entire enterprise/server market.
- MBCook 4y ago
  Performance is irrelevant depending on metrics. If my new zCPU chip is 60% as fast as a Xeon at your task, that’s a problem. If it can do it at 40% of the Xeon’s power, things get interesting. I could use twice as many zCPUs, be 20% faster, and use 20% less power. That also means less cooling capacity in my DC. Some tasks will always need the absolute best single threaded performance. But a lot don’t. And the Xeon’s power requirements leave a large opening we’re starting to see other companies poke at with things like Graviton.
MBCook 4y ago
> what's the incentive for a chip manufacturer to put out a better ARM chip (eg comparable to the Apple M1)? Intel & AMD’s consumer and/or server market share. I can’t imagine going back to an Intel after an M1. The battery life is better. It’s dead silent. It doesn’t get warm. It’s like a totally different kind of object. I know PC people (those who want Windows) aren’t interested in an M1 Mac. That’s fine. But I see PC laptop reviews with 4 or 6 or maybe 8 hours of battery life. They get hot but the fan isn’t “too loud”. And I know the performance isn’t the same. And I just wish reviewers would call it out. They’re not on the same level. I’m sure fanboys would complain about the comparison in every review, but why shouldn’t Windows users have something much better? It’s been proven possible. Hold AMD/Intel/Qualcomm to the fire more. If Qualcomm could get a chip with reasonable performance at a reasonable price that just doesn’t get hot and waste all its battery playing space heater, I bet they could really get a hold on the laptop market.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eric-hu 4y ago
  Proving your point, Amazon designed graviton, an ARM processor for their data centers.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    Data centers know power/heat is everything. I’m not surprised they’re leading the way. But as a consumer you’re stuck. You should have a machine with the performance of any normal/good laptop with way better thermals and battery life. I’m not sure what the Uber-high end laptop would look like but surely it would do better than today. The scale needs adjusting. What counts as “too hot”, “too short battery life”, “minimum performance.” It all should have changed. But it didn’t. The industry acts like Macs are magic and therefor incomparable. “Of course that Boeing goes faster, it’s a jet engine plane. You can’t compare that to our cars.” They’re both computers. It can be done. So why are Intel/AMD/Qualcomm getting off the hook to such a degree? I just don’t understand it. It’s almost like Stockholm Syndrome or something. “Intel is nice to us, who are we to complain?”

by pge 4y ago

sliken 4y ago

Apple has done pretty amazing things with the m1. IMO the most unique part is scaling memory bandwidth. The vast majority of PCs are running 128 bit wide memory, with workstation CPUs like the threadripper (and pro) being the exception, but a VERY small fraction of the market. The M1 has 128 bit wide 67GB/sec peak (that you'll never see) bandwidth, like most PCs. Upgrade to the Pro and you get 200GB/sec. Max will take you to 400GB/sec, and Ultra takes you to 800GB/sec. On the Intel (i3, i5, i7, i9) or AMD (ryzen r3, r5, r7, r9) you get ... the same memory bandwidth. Check the 8 core vs 16 core scaling numbers and for most benchmarks you'll see poor scaling. Sure you can increase GPU performance by adding GPUs, which reduces (but not removes) the need for extra memory bandwidth. Sadly iGPUs (outside the XboxX and PS5) largely stink and are only good enough for non-GPU intensive workloads. Apple on the other hand does scale GPU performance, granted not to the levels that AMD and Nvidia do. So why can't anyone in the PC space do more memory bandwidth and a decent iGPU, especially when for years the GPUs were in short supply and had exorbitant prices. I think it does come down to OS support, volume (which could be problematic if current GPU customers avoid you), and potentially reducing profits for AMD (who would have sold an expensive external GPU). Not to mention that fast/wide ram requires soldering chips on board or increasing size/cost with large banks of ram. Even servers with 8 memory channels (minimum 8 dimms) only get you to the M1 pro level (1/2 of the m1 max and 1/4th of the m1 ultra). Apple can say we have X% of the market today, and all new customers will be on our new platform with 2 years, so the driver, OS, iGPU, memory bandwidth, etc will be amortized over substantial volumes. Additionally Apple gets a larger fraction of the revenue, since they aren't paying Nvidia or AMD for a GPU. Who is going to push a MBP or Apple studio competitor that could ship the same volumes?

eklitzke 4y ago

Long term there is a huge market for server-oriented CPUs that can compete with Intel Xeon, which currently has a near monopoly in the server market. Note that a lot of companies are already working on this: Ampere (ARM), Amazon (Graviton3, etc.), and likely Nvidia, Rivos (RISC-V), etc. The best of market ARM designs don't really compete head-to-head with Xeon right now, but there are still a ton of server applications where they make already make sense. As a simple example companies like Google and Facebook have hundreds of thousands of servers that are doing things like running memcached or running some application like D/GFS where the server is mostly just doing a lot of I/O and doesn't necessarily need really beefy single-threaded CPU performance. Longer term obviously if there are ARM or RISC-V CPUs that can compete head-to-head with Xeon in terms of features and single threaded performance then that opens up pretty much the entire enterprise/server market.

MBCook 4y ago
Performance is irrelevant depending on metrics. If my new zCPU chip is 60% as fast as a Xeon at your task, that’s a problem. If it can do it at 40% of the Xeon’s power, things get interesting. I could use twice as many zCPUs, be 20% faster, and use 20% less power. That also means less cooling capacity in my DC. Some tasks will always need the absolute best single threaded performance. But a lot don’t. And the Xeon’s power requirements leave a large opening we’re starting to see other companies poke at with things like Graviton.

MBCook 4y ago

> what's the incentive for a chip manufacturer to put out a better ARM chip (eg comparable to the Apple M1)? Intel & AMD’s consumer and/or server market share. I can’t imagine going back to an Intel after an M1. The battery life is better. It’s dead silent. It doesn’t get warm. It’s like a totally different kind of object. I know PC people (those who want Windows) aren’t interested in an M1 Mac. That’s fine. But I see PC laptop reviews with 4 or 6 or maybe 8 hours of battery life. They get hot but the fan isn’t “too loud”. And I know the performance isn’t the same. And I just wish reviewers would call it out. They’re not on the same level. I’m sure fanboys would complain about the comparison in every review, but why shouldn’t Windows users have something much better? It’s been proven possible. Hold AMD/Intel/Qualcomm to the fire more. If Qualcomm could get a chip with reasonable performance at a reasonable price that just doesn’t get hot and waste all its battery playing space heater, I bet they could really get a hold on the laptop market.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eric-hu 4y ago
Proving your point, Amazon designed graviton, an ARM processor for their data centers.
- MBCook 4y ago
  Data centers know power/heat is everything. I’m not surprised they’re leading the way. But as a consumer you’re stuck. You should have a machine with the performance of any normal/good laptop with way better thermals and battery life. I’m not sure what the Uber-high end laptop would look like but surely it would do better than today. The scale needs adjusting. What counts as “too hot”, “too short battery life”, “minimum performance.” It all should have changed. But it didn’t. The industry acts like Macs are magic and therefor incomparable. “Of course that Boeing goes faster, it’s a jet engine plane. You can’t compare that to our cars.” They’re both computers. It can be done. So why are Intel/AMD/Qualcomm getting off the hook to such a degree? I just don’t understand it. It’s almost like Stockholm Syndrome or something. “Intel is nice to us, who are we to complain?”