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Apple’s M1 chips already offered improvements compared to their previous generation Intel chips, and Intel hasn’t exactly been innovating in the last 2 years. B

Apple’s M1 chips already offered improvements compared to their previous generation Intel chips, and Intel hasn’t exactly been innovating in the last 2 years. By all accounts, they have been ahead of Intel, at the very least. I’m not exactly sure how Apple was “behind the state of the art” and has caught up. Can you explain?

nicoburns 4y ago
> I’m not exactly sure how Apple was “behind the state of the art” and has caught up. Can you explain? The M1 was when they caught up. They were behind the state of the art (of laptop/desktop chip performance) with their A series chips starting with the A4. They gradually caught up over the course of several years to the point that when they released the M1 chip (which was really not that different to the A15) they were slightly ahead.
- objclxt 4y ago
  > They were behind the state of the art (of laptop/desktop chip performance) with their A series chips starting with the A4 ...but A series chips were never intended for laptops or desktops? And by all accounts, the A series nearly always out-competed comparable QC Snapdragon chips.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    They weren't... but evidence is that that's only because they didn't have competitive performance for those applications. Once the performance caught up they did choose to put them in laptops and desktops.
    - cma 4y ago
      A chips had more relaxed memory ordering that couldn't work well for emulating x64. M chips can toggle the memory ordering guarantees.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        I mean that's true. But that doesn't prevent comparing performance of natively compiled ARM binaries in A chips vs natively compiled x64 binaries on x64 chips.
    - qwytw 4y ago
      I think A chips were quite considerably ahead of low-power Intel chips (e.g. the i7 in MBA) several years before M1 was released. But I guess they didn't believe they could scale it up to compete with higher power i7/i9s shipped in pro macbooks.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        I suspect it just took them several years to do it. It's no small task!
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  Yeah, as the other person says, it’s weird to combine A-level chips which were mobile only (minus that short stint where they put it in a Mac Mini before the M1 was ready) with the M-level chips. Sure, they’re all “Apple Silicon” but the chips should be compared to their equivalents, M-level with Intel/AMD and A-level with Snapdragon/Exonys. We don’t really compare Snapdragon to Core any other time, as they both optimize for vastly different things. I would also argue that Apple is continuing to make big boosts in their A-level chips compared to their mobile counterparts.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    I thought the M-level and A-level chips are pretty much identical CPU cores (just different numbers of them). As such it seems reasonable to me to compare single-threaded performance between A-level and Intel/AMD (making allowances for power envelopes). And indeed one could compare Snapdragon, except they're quite far behind.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
coder543 4y ago
> Intel hasn’t exactly been innovating in the last 2 years. What on earth are you talking about?! Alder Lake was a huge step up for Intel, and Raptor Lake has improved things more than I would have expected as well. Before Alder Lake, Intel's CPUs honestly sucked. AMD still seems to have a modest competitive advantage in terms of efficiency and battery life (making AMD not that far off from where Apple is in hours of practical battery life when doing something other than looking at a static screenshot for hours on end), but Intel makes up for that with performance, and as I recall, Alder Lake is still more efficient than what Intel had before in laptops. Sapphire Rapids is also a huge innovation compared to what Intel had been doing for years in the server market. Intel has also been introducing some really interesting GPU products now to bring competition to AMD and Nvidia, but it will probably take another generation or two to iron things out. If none of that is "innovation", then I don't know what is! The last 2 years are the first time Intel has really been innovating in the past 5+ years! When M1 came out, it was awesome. Since then, Intel and AMD have released processors that are significantly more competitive, while M2 was a mediocre step forward. I appreciate my M2 MBA, but Apple Silicon needs a huge upgrade with M3 to remain competitive. For a lot of legitimate use cases, there are at least half a dozen Windows laptops coming out right now that I would instantly pick over a MacBook, and the same would not have been said 2 years ago.
- ksec 4y ago
  > If none of that is "innovation", then I don't know what is! Generally speaking HN's average knowledge on Hardware isn't exactly up to date to say the least.
- jyrkesh 4y ago
  > For a lot of legitimate use cases, there are at least half a dozen Windows laptops coming out right now that I would instantly pick over a MacBook, and the same would not have been said 2 years ago. Would you mind listing a couple? I'd prefer to buy a Windows machine for my next laptop, but I've been SO burned by hibernation bugs, CPU throttling, battery issues, etc. And I've had an OG 13" M1 MBP from work for the past year or so, and the performance and battery life have been unreal to that point that I'm very much considering one of these 14" M2 MBPs for myself.

nicoburns 4y ago

> I’m not exactly sure how Apple was “behind the state of the art” and has caught up. Can you explain? The M1 was when they caught up. They were behind the state of the art (of laptop/desktop chip performance) with their A series chips starting with the A4. They gradually caught up over the course of several years to the point that when they released the M1 chip (which was really not that different to the A15) they were slightly ahead.

objclxt 4y ago
> They were behind the state of the art (of laptop/desktop chip performance) with their A series chips starting with the A4 ...but A series chips were never intended for laptops or desktops? And by all accounts, the A series nearly always out-competed comparable QC Snapdragon chips.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  They weren't... but evidence is that that's only because they didn't have competitive performance for those applications. Once the performance caught up they did choose to put them in laptops and desktops.
  - cma 4y ago
    A chips had more relaxed memory ordering that couldn't work well for emulating x64. M chips can toggle the memory ordering guarantees.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      I mean that's true. But that doesn't prevent comparing performance of natively compiled ARM binaries in A chips vs natively compiled x64 binaries on x64 chips.
  - qwytw 4y ago
    I think A chips were quite considerably ahead of low-power Intel chips (e.g. the i7 in MBA) several years before M1 was released. But I guess they didn't believe they could scale it up to compete with higher power i7/i9s shipped in pro macbooks.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      I suspect it just took them several years to do it. It's no small task!
mynameisvlad 4y ago
Yeah, as the other person says, it’s weird to combine A-level chips which were mobile only (minus that short stint where they put it in a Mac Mini before the M1 was ready) with the M-level chips. Sure, they’re all “Apple Silicon” but the chips should be compared to their equivalents, M-level with Intel/AMD and A-level with Snapdragon/Exonys. We don’t really compare Snapdragon to Core any other time, as they both optimize for vastly different things. I would also argue that Apple is continuing to make big boosts in their A-level chips compared to their mobile counterparts.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I thought the M-level and A-level chips are pretty much identical CPU cores (just different numbers of them). As such it seems reasonable to me to compare single-threaded performance between A-level and Intel/AMD (making allowances for power envelopes). And indeed one could compare Snapdragon, except they're quite far behind.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

coder543 4y ago

> Intel hasn’t exactly been innovating in the last 2 years. What on earth are you talking about?! Alder Lake was a huge step up for Intel, and Raptor Lake has improved things more than I would have expected as well. Before Alder Lake, Intel's CPUs honestly sucked. AMD still seems to have a modest competitive advantage in terms of efficiency and battery life (making AMD not that far off from where Apple is in hours of practical battery life when doing something other than looking at a static screenshot for hours on end), but Intel makes up for that with performance, and as I recall, Alder Lake is still more efficient than what Intel had before in laptops. Sapphire Rapids is also a huge innovation compared to what Intel had been doing for years in the server market. Intel has also been introducing some really interesting GPU products now to bring competition to AMD and Nvidia, but it will probably take another generation or two to iron things out. If none of that is "innovation", then I don't know what is! The last 2 years are the first time Intel has really been innovating in the past 5+ years! When M1 came out, it was awesome. Since then, Intel and AMD have released processors that are significantly more competitive, while M2 was a mediocre step forward. I appreciate my M2 MBA, but Apple Silicon needs a huge upgrade with M3 to remain competitive. For a lot of legitimate use cases, there are at least half a dozen Windows laptops coming out right now that I would instantly pick over a MacBook, and the same would not have been said 2 years ago.

ksec 4y ago
> If none of that is "innovation", then I don't know what is! Generally speaking HN's average knowledge on Hardware isn't exactly up to date to say the least.
jyrkesh 4y ago
> For a lot of legitimate use cases, there are at least half a dozen Windows laptops coming out right now that I would instantly pick over a MacBook, and the same would not have been said 2 years ago. Would you mind listing a couple? I'd prefer to buy a Windows machine for my next laptop, but I've been SO burned by hibernation bugs, CPU throttling, battery issues, etc. And I've had an OG 13" M1 MBP from work for the past year or so, and the performance and battery life have been unreal to that point that I'm very much considering one of these 14" M2 MBPs for myself.