4 ms·

Why so defensive about Intel? I think you're the one doing the brand-oriented thinking here.

timschmidt 3y ago
> nothing in Intel's lineup at the time was any good for a laptop. You leave no room for nuance here, friend. And somehow I doubt you're familiar with every single one of Intel's tens of thousands of SKUs over decades. Intel has made a lot of CPUs. They're in lots of laptops. You might consider your wording if you're not trying to be corrected.
- whynotminot 3y ago
  Please correct me then. I'm willing to learn about the Intel laptop chip that Apple could have used to achieve M1 performance and efficiency at the time they switched. You're right that I am not familiar with every one of Intel's SKUs they produced at the time.
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    M1 was released in 2020, that puts it in line with Tiger Lake and Comet Lake, for which I'm seeing 7 different SKUs at 7W TDP. The fastest of which seems to be the Core i7 1180G7, which seems to perform almost as well as the M1 while using about half as much power: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1180g7-vs-apple-m1 https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1180g7-v... Just the first example I grabbed. Intel made quite a few more chips in the 15W and higher envelopes, still under M1's ~20W TDP. I didn't check their embedded SKUs yet. Nor enterprise.
    - whynotminot 3y ago
      Did you make a mistake in your comparison link? Because I've been looking at it for a few minutes now and I don't get it. It doesn't support your contention that Intel was making comparable chips at the time to the M1, I'll say that at the least.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        I guess we're reading different graphs. The one I'm seeing shows Intel producing 70% of the performance with 35% of the power of an M1. That's... checks math... better performance per watt, and lower overall power consumption. If you want more performance, you are free to step up to a 15W version which outperforms the M1 at 70% of it's TDP.
        whynotminot 3y ago
        I think I have a better sense of some of the misunderstanding here. I think you're taking Intel's TDP figures as honest and straightforward, when they really truly aren't. Anandtech has talked about some of Intel's TDP shenanigans before, even for Tiger Lake: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16084/intel-tiger-lake-review-deep-dive-core-11th-gen/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16084/intel-tiger-lake-review...
        timschmidt 3y ago
        I wouldn't call them shenanigans. At least Intel publishes numbers (Apple does not). There are simply a lot of power states Intel CPUs are capable of engaging, and many configuration options about when and under what circumstances to do so. Much of this is configurable by the OEM and is not hard-set by Intel, or even under Intel's control after the processor leaves the fab. The Anandtech article seems to indicate that it's perfectly possible to run this Intel CPU within the advertised 7W TDP, and that it can also be allowed to turbo up to 50W, which I'm sure most OEMs enable. My favorite OEMs provide the knobs to adjust these features.
        whynotminot 3y ago
        So you’re aware of this Intel TDP chicanery but trying to say with a straight face that these chips achieve similar performance and efficiency to the M1. I think that’s pretty disingenuous.
        timschmidt 3y ago
    - nemothekid 3y ago
      It's hard for me to square your statements with actual real world products. The Core i7 1180G7 was the CPU in the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 2 (IIRC), and that laptop got half the battery life of an M2 Pro and a third of the battery life of the M1 air. TDP doesn't seem to be the whole story - the datasheet is one thing, but I've yet to see a reviewer get 30 hours from an Intel laptop.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        For sure there's interesting stuff to talk about here. Intel allows OEMs a lot of configuration with regard to TDP and various ways to measure chip temp accounting for thermal mass of the cooling solution and skin temperature of the device. Many OEMs screw it up. Even the big ones. Lenovo and Apple included. Screen backlight usually has as much to say about battery life as the CPU does. And it's hard to deny Apple's advantage of being fully vertically integrated. Their OS only needs to support a finite number of hardware configurations, and they are free to implement fixes at any layer. Most of my PC laptops make choices which use more power in exchange for modularity and upgradeability as well, like using SODIMMs for ram, and m.2 or SATA removeable storage, all of which consume more power than Apple's soldered on components.
      - mike_hearn 3y ago
        Lots of confounders there. MacOS is probably a lot more power optimized than Windows, given the shared iOS codebase, and OS quality can impact battery life hugely (useless wakeups, etc).
    - Mawr 3y ago
      Ah, taking manufacturer-provided TDP numbers at face value. So much for all the pretending you know anything about CPUs. Your very own source gives the M1 a 75 vs 59 score on power efficiency. They don't seem to provide a benchmark for it, but it should have been a clue regardless. Here's the first result on M1 power efficiency I found https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... : "In single-threaded workloads, Apple’s showcases massive performance and power advantages against Intel’s best CPU. In CineBench, it’s one of the rare workloads where Apple’s cores lose out in performance for some reason, but this further widens the gap in terms of power usage, whereas the M1 Max only uses 8.7W, while a comparable figure on the 11980HK is 43.5W. In other ST workloads, the M1 Max is more ahead in performance, or at least in a similar range. The performance/W difference here is around 2.5x to 3x in favour of Apple’s silicon. In multi-threaded tests, the 11980HK is clearly allowed to go to much higher power levels than the M1 Max, reaching package power levels of 80W, for 105-110W active wall power, significantly more than what the MacBook Pro here is drawing. The performance levels of the M1 Max are significantly higher than the Intel chip here, due to the much better scalability of the cores. The perf/W differences here are 4-6x in favour of the M1 Max, all whilst posting significantly better performance, meaning the perf/W at ISO-perf would be even higher than this." (as if we all didn't already know this)

> nothing in Intel's lineup at the time was any good for a laptop. You leave no room for nuance here, friend. And somehow I doubt you're familiar with every single one of Intel's tens of thousands of SKUs over decades. Intel has made a lot of CPUs. They're in lots of laptops. You might consider your wording if you're not trying to be corrected.

whynotminot 3y ago
Please correct me then. I'm willing to learn about the Intel laptop chip that Apple could have used to achieve M1 performance and efficiency at the time they switched. You're right that I am not familiar with every one of Intel's SKUs they produced at the time.
- timschmidt 3y ago
  M1 was released in 2020, that puts it in line with Tiger Lake and Comet Lake, for which I'm seeing 7 different SKUs at 7W TDP. The fastest of which seems to be the Core i7 1180G7, which seems to perform almost as well as the M1 while using about half as much power: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1180g7-vs-apple-m1 https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1180g7-v... Just the first example I grabbed. Intel made quite a few more chips in the 15W and higher envelopes, still under M1's ~20W TDP. I didn't check their embedded SKUs yet. Nor enterprise.
  - whynotminot 3y ago
    Did you make a mistake in your comparison link? Because I've been looking at it for a few minutes now and I don't get it. It doesn't support your contention that Intel was making comparable chips at the time to the M1, I'll say that at the least.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      I guess we're reading different graphs. The one I'm seeing shows Intel producing 70% of the performance with 35% of the power of an M1. That's... checks math... better performance per watt, and lower overall power consumption. If you want more performance, you are free to step up to a 15W version which outperforms the M1 at 70% of it's TDP.
      - whynotminot 3y ago
        I think I have a better sense of some of the misunderstanding here. I think you're taking Intel's TDP figures as honest and straightforward, when they really truly aren't. Anandtech has talked about some of Intel's TDP shenanigans before, even for Tiger Lake: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16084/intel-tiger-lake-review-deep-dive-core-11th-gen/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16084/intel-tiger-lake-review...
        timschmidt 3y ago
        I wouldn't call them shenanigans. At least Intel publishes numbers (Apple does not). There are simply a lot of power states Intel CPUs are capable of engaging, and many configuration options about when and under what circumstances to do so. Much of this is configurable by the OEM and is not hard-set by Intel, or even under Intel's control after the processor leaves the fab. The Anandtech article seems to indicate that it's perfectly possible to run this Intel CPU within the advertised 7W TDP, and that it can also be allowed to turbo up to 50W, which I'm sure most OEMs enable. My favorite OEMs provide the knobs to adjust these features.
        whynotminot 3y ago
        So you’re aware of this Intel TDP chicanery but trying to say with a straight face that these chips achieve similar performance and efficiency to the M1. I think that’s pretty disingenuous.
        timschmidt 3y ago
  - nemothekid 3y ago
    It's hard for me to square your statements with actual real world products. The Core i7 1180G7 was the CPU in the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 2 (IIRC), and that laptop got half the battery life of an M2 Pro and a third of the battery life of the M1 air. TDP doesn't seem to be the whole story - the datasheet is one thing, but I've yet to see a reviewer get 30 hours from an Intel laptop.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      For sure there's interesting stuff to talk about here. Intel allows OEMs a lot of configuration with regard to TDP and various ways to measure chip temp accounting for thermal mass of the cooling solution and skin temperature of the device. Many OEMs screw it up. Even the big ones. Lenovo and Apple included. Screen backlight usually has as much to say about battery life as the CPU does. And it's hard to deny Apple's advantage of being fully vertically integrated. Their OS only needs to support a finite number of hardware configurations, and they are free to implement fixes at any layer. Most of my PC laptops make choices which use more power in exchange for modularity and upgradeability as well, like using SODIMMs for ram, and m.2 or SATA removeable storage, all of which consume more power than Apple's soldered on components.
    - mike_hearn 3y ago
      Lots of confounders there. MacOS is probably a lot more power optimized than Windows, given the shared iOS codebase, and OS quality can impact battery life hugely (useless wakeups, etc).
  - Mawr 3y ago
    Ah, taking manufacturer-provided TDP numbers at face value. So much for all the pretending you know anything about CPUs. Your very own source gives the M1 a 75 vs 59 score on power efficiency. They don't seem to provide a benchmark for it, but it should have been a clue regardless. Here's the first result on M1 power efficiency I found https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... : "In single-threaded workloads, Apple’s showcases massive performance and power advantages against Intel’s best CPU. In CineBench, it’s one of the rare workloads where Apple’s cores lose out in performance for some reason, but this further widens the gap in terms of power usage, whereas the M1 Max only uses 8.7W, while a comparable figure on the 11980HK is 43.5W. In other ST workloads, the M1 Max is more ahead in performance, or at least in a similar range. The performance/W difference here is around 2.5x to 3x in favour of Apple’s silicon. In multi-threaded tests, the 11980HK is clearly allowed to go to much higher power levels than the M1 Max, reaching package power levels of 80W, for 105-110W active wall power, significantly more than what the MacBook Pro here is drawing. The performance levels of the M1 Max are significantly higher than the Intel chip here, due to the much better scalability of the cores. The perf/W differences here are 4-6x in favour of the M1 Max, all whilst posting significantly better performance, meaning the perf/W at ISO-perf would be even higher than this." (as if we all didn't already know this)