4 ms·

Very surprisingly, x86 can be competitive (and in some cases, even winning) in terms of power efficiency; see https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc-9965-ampe

Very surprisingly, x86 can be competitive (and in some cases, even winning) in terms of power efficiency; see https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc-9965-ampereone/5 https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc-9965-ampereone/5.

hggigg 2y ago
If you compare a good x86 to a crap ARM yes. Laptops are populated mostly with crap x86 and good ARM (apart from snapdragon which is a crap ARM)
- emn13 2y ago
  That statement strongly suggests it's the implementation of the ISA that matters more than the ISA, whether that be due to process node, skill and investment by the manufacturer, or perhaps a bit of luck. By good ARM, do you mean specifically (and only) Apple? Given their budgets (both financial and transistor), their very long history and investment into their chips, their deep integration of stuff like memory and GPU, and their tendency to be a process node ahead of their competitors, Apple is a particularly hard example to interpret when it comes to ISA impact. Hard to imagine another company making all those choices, since they all have costs too, which many won't be willing or able to bear, and some of those costs (like the lack of flexibility due to the deep integration) are possibly a non-starter for many niches.
  - sedatk 2y ago
    I think parent means "Ampere" being a bad ARM implementation, and Snapdragon X or Apple M-series being the good ones. It's mentioned in the article too. Ampere performs really poorly on idle (101W vs EPYC's meager 19W). I haven't witnessed that problem on my Snapdragon X laptop. I'm not saying Ampere is bad myself though. It's obviously very competitive being a relatively new player and all. But, it's not as polished for desktop/laptop workloads as it seems.
    - MBCook 2y ago
      19W at idle seems extremely high to me.
MBCook 2y ago
But isn’t that at the high end (when doing lots of work)? I thought the big advantage tended to be when not much was going on, either idle or simple tasks. And that’s where the big ARM advantage in power was.

hggigg 2y ago

If you compare a good x86 to a crap ARM yes. Laptops are populated mostly with crap x86 and good ARM (apart from snapdragon which is a crap ARM)

emn13 2y ago
That statement strongly suggests it's the implementation of the ISA that matters more than the ISA, whether that be due to process node, skill and investment by the manufacturer, or perhaps a bit of luck. By good ARM, do you mean specifically (and only) Apple? Given their budgets (both financial and transistor), their very long history and investment into their chips, their deep integration of stuff like memory and GPU, and their tendency to be a process node ahead of their competitors, Apple is a particularly hard example to interpret when it comes to ISA impact. Hard to imagine another company making all those choices, since they all have costs too, which many won't be willing or able to bear, and some of those costs (like the lack of flexibility due to the deep integration) are possibly a non-starter for many niches.
- sedatk 2y ago
  I think parent means "Ampere" being a bad ARM implementation, and Snapdragon X or Apple M-series being the good ones. It's mentioned in the article too. Ampere performs really poorly on idle (101W vs EPYC's meager 19W). I haven't witnessed that problem on my Snapdragon X laptop. I'm not saying Ampere is bad myself though. It's obviously very competitive being a relatively new player and all. But, it's not as polished for desktop/laptop workloads as it seems.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    19W at idle seems extremely high to me.

MBCook 2y ago

But isn’t that at the high end (when doing lots of work)? I thought the big advantage tended to be when not much was going on, either idle or simple tasks. And that’s where the big ARM advantage in power was.