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The idea that ARM solves power issues seems a bit overblown and driven by Apple purchasing the most advanced nodes sooner than competitors, causing people to as

The idea that ARM solves power issues seems a bit overblown and driven by Apple purchasing the most advanced nodes sooner than competitors, causing people to associate the efficiency gain with the architecture even though a lot of it is the silicon process. Edit: Also Apple can and does do away with legacy support which is less about the architecture and more about expectations of what is included vs. deprecated. The push to ARM seems like it will result in a loss of support and control in the users' hands (converting expectations of PCs into those of smartphones) but now I'm really into speculative territory...

lend000 3y ago
This is probably largely accurate -- not to mention the fact that Apple has been using efficiency cores longer than x86 competitors.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  The efficiency cores actually aren't the primary thing that makes M-series chips so power efficient, even though they help. Even when you're ripping big data apart the chips do it faster than nearly anything else on the consumer market, while managing to be far more efficient as well. It's not just the process node, it's stuff like decoding multiple instructions in parallel being simpler due to the architecture.
DinaCoder98 3y ago
Is there any evidence that x86 can compete with arm on per-watt computation?
- error_logic 3y ago
  I don't have numbers, just a hint-motivated question of how much improvement Apple's silicon has seen post-M1 compared to the competition. I've been lead to believe x86 has improved more in the same time period, but I'm too far removed from the details to back it up.
- ksec 3y ago
  >Is there any evidence that x86 can compete with arm on per-watt computation? x86 vs ARM? Yes. Plenty x86 vs Apple's Implementation of AArach64 from A14 to A16? Not yet. We will soon have news from Intel and AMD Zen 5.
robocat 3y ago
> most advanced nodes That's overly simplistic. It is the whole ecology of optimising for low-power usage on mobile that makes ARM so efficient. An advanced node does make a difference of course, but it is all the other choices made for efficiency that stack up e.g. big.LITTLE and the OS support for it. You can still get power efficient ARM on older nodes.
- error_logic 3y ago
  Yeah this is sort of what I was trying to allude to with legacy support but I guess I should've generalized to their control over the ecosystem and efficient interaction between components.
qball 3y ago
>causing people to associate the efficiency gain with the architecture even though a lot of it is the silicon process. They also cause people to associate higher performance with the architecture, when high-performance ARM is something more or less unique to Apple. Qualcomm (as in, best case for performance that you can actually order a tray of 1000 CPUs from) is several years behind what Apple/Intel/AMD currently offers and as such is simply not competitive with x86 (even in performance/watt); that is one of three reasons why there are very few ARM laptops (the second one is that Qualcomm refuses to do drivers properly, and the third is that their price/performance ratio is positively abysmal). Sure, they're getting better with the acquisition of ex-Apple engineers through Nuvia, but there's still quite a ways to go before they're actually competitive. ARM isn't a magic "make my computer faster" button; chip designers are doing the heavy lifting for any architecture.
bevekspldnw 3y ago
Well, what I want specifically is an M-series Mac Studio equivalent CPU perf/watt I can pair with a dedicated GPU, running linux without jumping through hoops.

lend000 3y ago

This is probably largely accurate -- not to mention the fact that Apple has been using efficiency cores longer than x86 competitors.

LoganDark 3y ago
The efficiency cores actually aren't the primary thing that makes M-series chips so power efficient, even though they help. Even when you're ripping big data apart the chips do it faster than nearly anything else on the consumer market, while managing to be far more efficient as well. It's not just the process node, it's stuff like decoding multiple instructions in parallel being simpler due to the architecture.

DinaCoder98 3y ago

Is there any evidence that x86 can compete with arm on per-watt computation?

error_logic 3y ago
I don't have numbers, just a hint-motivated question of how much improvement Apple's silicon has seen post-M1 compared to the competition. I've been lead to believe x86 has improved more in the same time period, but I'm too far removed from the details to back it up.
ksec 3y ago
>Is there any evidence that x86 can compete with arm on per-watt computation? x86 vs ARM? Yes. Plenty x86 vs Apple's Implementation of AArach64 from A14 to A16? Not yet. We will soon have news from Intel and AMD Zen 5.

robocat 3y ago

> most advanced nodes That's overly simplistic. It is the whole ecology of optimising for low-power usage on mobile that makes ARM so efficient. An advanced node does make a difference of course, but it is all the other choices made for efficiency that stack up e.g. big.LITTLE and the OS support for it. You can still get power efficient ARM on older nodes.

error_logic 3y ago
Yeah this is sort of what I was trying to allude to with legacy support but I guess I should've generalized to their control over the ecosystem and efficient interaction between components.

qball 3y ago

>causing people to associate the efficiency gain with the architecture even though a lot of it is the silicon process. They also cause people to associate higher performance with the architecture, when high-performance ARM is something more or less unique to Apple. Qualcomm (as in, best case for performance that you can actually order a tray of 1000 CPUs from) is several years behind what Apple/Intel/AMD currently offers and as such is simply not competitive with x86 (even in performance/watt); that is one of three reasons why there are very few ARM laptops (the second one is that Qualcomm refuses to do drivers properly, and the third is that their price/performance ratio is positively abysmal). Sure, they're getting better with the acquisition of ex-Apple engineers through Nuvia, but there's still quite a ways to go before they're actually competitive. ARM isn't a magic "make my computer faster" button; chip designers are doing the heavy lifting for any architecture.

bevekspldnw 3y ago

Well, what I want specifically is an M-series Mac Studio equivalent CPU perf/watt I can pair with a dedicated GPU, running linux without jumping through hoops.