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Lots of reasons, but RISC vs CISC has little to do with it. Apple have access to the newest and best fabbing processes from TSMC. That alone can put a chip a g

Lots of reasons, but RISC vs CISC has little to do with it. Apple have access to the newest and best fabbing processes from TSMC. That alone can put a chip a generation ahead in terms of efficiency. Intel foundries have been struggling for years and AMD only get TSMC's scraps a few years later. Increasing clock speed is the easiest way to increase performance, but power increases quadratically with clock speed so it's very inefficient. Apple clock their processors pretty low and instead focused on increasing instructions-per-clock, which is generally more efficient but requires more die area. As an example, a lot of noise was made about the M1's 8-wide decoder, twice as wide as contemporary x86 chips, which is an important bottleneck for IPC. Increasing instructions-per-clock requires much bigger CPU cores, and the dies Apple use for their SoCs are famously enormous. While other chip manufacturers are very conscious of performance/$, Apple's vertical integration gives them wider margins and their customers are much less sensitive to value. So Apple can afford to spend a lot more on bigger chips that are on par in performance but have much greater efficiency.

jorvi 2y ago
> Increasing instructions-per-clock requires much bigger CPU cores, and the dies Apple use for their SoCs are famously enormous. While other chip manufacturers are very conscious of performance/$, Apple's vertical integration gives them wider margins and their customers are much less sensitive to value. So Apple can afford to spend a lot more on bigger chips that are on par in performance but have much greater efficiency. This is the money shot. Margins on Android phones are often in the single digit percentages, they have even had periods where they’re negative. Qualcomm or Mediatek could easily make phat chips but there would be almost no market for them. I am very curious what the actual performance of the Snapdragon X is going to be. Laptop margins are often just as thin, so it can’t be too expensive a chip either..
- mmaniac 2y ago
  Apparently[1] Snapdragon X is cost-competitive with Intel. That article discusses Raptor Lake on Intel 7, which is known to have razor thin margins, but Meteor Lake is reportedly expensive too. Intel's uncompetitive foundries continue to be an millstone around their neck. I'm sceptical of Snapdragon X's real world performance until these things actually ship. There's a lot of big promises made. Intel promises big too. [1]https://videocardz.com/newz/snapdragon-x-series-chips-cost-only-half-as-much-as-intel-raptor-lakes-with-battery-life-up-to-98-higher https://videocardz.com/newz/snapdragon-x-series-chips-cost-o...

jorvi 2y ago

> Increasing instructions-per-clock requires much bigger CPU cores, and the dies Apple use for their SoCs are famously enormous. While other chip manufacturers are very conscious of performance/$, Apple's vertical integration gives them wider margins and their customers are much less sensitive to value. So Apple can afford to spend a lot more on bigger chips that are on par in performance but have much greater efficiency. This is the money shot. Margins on Android phones are often in the single digit percentages, they have even had periods where they’re negative. Qualcomm or Mediatek could easily make phat chips but there would be almost no market for them. I am very curious what the actual performance of the Snapdragon X is going to be. Laptop margins are often just as thin, so it can’t be too expensive a chip either..

mmaniac 2y ago
Apparently[1] Snapdragon X is cost-competitive with Intel. That article discusses Raptor Lake on Intel 7, which is known to have razor thin margins, but Meteor Lake is reportedly expensive too. Intel's uncompetitive foundries continue to be an millstone around their neck. I'm sceptical of Snapdragon X's real world performance until these things actually ship. There's a lot of big promises made. Intel promises big too. [1]https://videocardz.com/newz/snapdragon-x-series-chips-cost-only-half-as-much-as-intel-raptor-lakes-with-battery-life-up-to-98-higher https://videocardz.com/newz/snapdragon-x-series-chips-cost-o...