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It's not the ISA. Modern Macbooks are power-efficient because they have: - RAM on package - PMIC power delivery - Better power management by OS Geekerwan in

It's not the ISA. Modern Macbooks are power-efficient because they have: - RAM on package - PMIC power delivery - Better power management by OS Geekerwan investigated this a while ago, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0tNtMwYrGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0tNtMwYrGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3FTtvPcc2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3FTtvPcc2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymoiWv9BF7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymoiWv9BF7Q Intel and AMD have implemented these improvements with Lunar Lake and Strix Halo. You can buy an x86 laptop with Macbook-like efficiency right now if you know which SoCs to pick. edit: Correction. I looked at the die image of Strix Halo and thought it looked like it had on-package RAM. It does not. It doesn't use PMIC either. Lunar Lake is the only Apple M-series competitor on x86 at the moment.

mrheosuper 1y ago
By PMIC, did you mean VRM ?, if not, can you tell me the difference between them ?
- txrx0000 1y ago
  I'm not an expert on the topic and don't really know the difference. But in the video they say it can finetune power delivery to individual parts of the SoC and reduce idle power.
  - mrheosuper 1y ago
    Well, Every single CPU need some kind of voltage regulation module to work. About "fine tune" part, this does not relate to PMIC(or VRM) at all, more like CPU design: How many power domain does this CPU have ?
    - audunw 1y ago
      I don’t know how it is for Apple-M, but for chips I’ve worked on, this can definitely relate to PMIC/VRMs. You can tune the voltage you feed to the various power domains based on the clock speed required for those domains at any given time. We do it with on-chip power regulators, but I suppose for Apple M it would perhaps be off-chip PMICs feeding power into the chip.
      - mrheosuper 1y ago
        it's the other way around. You design PMIC for a given CPU, not designing CPU for a given PMIC(but in Apple case, the engineers can work closely together to come up with something balance).
        gimmeThaBeet 1y ago
        I always wondered how to gauge how effective Apple's Dialog carveout was, in terms of was it just instant PMIC department or even effective at building a foundation for them? Given their long relationship, I would think it might be pretty seamless. I assume Apple probably do that more than I know, it is just interesting that their vertical acquisition history feels the most boring and the most interesting. At least looking from the outside, it feels like relatively small pieces develop into pretty big differentiators, like P.A. Semi, Intrinsity and Passif paving the way to their SoCs.
jlei523 1y ago
Intel and AMD have implemented these improvements with Lunar Lake and Strix Halo. You can buy an x86 laptop with Macbook-like efficiency right now if you know which SoCs to pick. This just isn't true. Yes, Lunar Lake has great idle performance. But if you need to actually use the CPU, it's drastically slower than M4 while consuming more power. Strix Halo battery life and efficiency is not even in the same ball park.
- txrx0000 1y ago
  If you look the battery life benchmarks they did at around the 5:00 mark in the third video, you can see that it achieves similar battery life compared to the an M3 Macbook in typical day-to-day use. This reflects the experience most users will have with the device. It's true that the perf/watt is still a lot worse than the latest gen M4 under heavy load, but it's close enough to the M1 and significantly better than prior laptops chips on x86. It is a first gen product like the M1. But it does show the ISA is not as big of a limiting factor as popularly believed.
  - aurareturn 1y ago
    If you look the battery life benchmarks they did at around the 5:00 mark in the third video, you can see that it achieves similar battery life compared to the an M3 Macbook in typical day-to-day use. This reflects the experience most users will have with the device. No. The typical day to day use of LNL is significantly slower than even M1. LNL throttles like crazy when on battery in order to achieve similar battery life. https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-Lunar-Lake-Geekbench-6.3.png?w=1200 https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-...
aurareturn 1y ago
Intel and AMD have implemented these improvements with Lunar Lake and Strix Halo. You can buy an x86 laptop with Macbook-like efficiency right now if you know which SoCs to pick. M4 is about 3.6x more efficient than Strix Halo when under load.[0] On a daily basis, this difference can be more because Apple Silicon has true big.Little cores that send low priority tasks to the highly efficient small cores. For Lunar Lake, base M4 is about 35% faster, 2x more efficient, and actually has a bigger die size than M4.[1] Intel is discontinuing the Lunar Lake line because it isn't profitable for them. I'm not sure how you can claim "Mac-like efficiency". [0]https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF [1]https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-The-Core-Ultra-7-258V-s-multi-core-performance-is-disappointing-but-its-everyday-efficiency-is-good.893405.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-...
- txrx0000 1y ago
  Pardon my loose choice of words regarding the Mac-like efficiency. I was referring to the fact that the battery life is comparable to the M3 in day-to-day use, as demonstrated at around the 5:00 mark in the third video I linked. In the same video, they also measure perf/watt under heavy load, and it's close to the M1, but not the latest gen M4. I think that's pretty good considering it's a first gen product. Regarding the discontinuation, it's still on shelves right now, but I'm not sure if there will be future generations. It would be awfully silly of them to discontinue it as it's the best non-Apple laptop chip you can buy right now if you care about efficiency.
  - aurareturn 1y ago
    In the same video, they also measure perf/watt under heavy load, and it's close to the M1, but not the latest gen M4. I think that's pretty good considering it's a first gen product. Which video and timestamp? Are you aware that LNL throttles heavily when on battery life? On battery life, M1 is a whopping 1.5x faster in single thread.[0] That makes M4 2.47x faster when compared to LNL on battery. So no, LNL is very far behind even M1. That's why there are no fanless LNL laptops. [0]https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-Lunar-Lake-Geekbench-6.3.png?w=1200 https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-... [0]https://www.pcworld.com/article/2463714/tested-intels-lunar-lake-wants-you-to-forget-snapdragon-ever-existed.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2463714/tested-intels-lunar-... [0]https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020
hakube 1y ago
Windows laptops performance while on battery is terrible especially when you put it on power save mode. Macbooks on the other hand doesn't have that problem. It's just like you're using an iPad.

mrheosuper 1y ago

By PMIC, did you mean VRM ?, if not, can you tell me the difference between them ?

txrx0000 1y ago
I'm not an expert on the topic and don't really know the difference. But in the video they say it can finetune power delivery to individual parts of the SoC and reduce idle power.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  Well, Every single CPU need some kind of voltage regulation module to work. About "fine tune" part, this does not relate to PMIC(or VRM) at all, more like CPU design: How many power domain does this CPU have ?
  - audunw 1y ago
    I don’t know how it is for Apple-M, but for chips I’ve worked on, this can definitely relate to PMIC/VRMs. You can tune the voltage you feed to the various power domains based on the clock speed required for those domains at any given time. We do it with on-chip power regulators, but I suppose for Apple M it would perhaps be off-chip PMICs feeding power into the chip.
    - mrheosuper 1y ago
      it's the other way around. You design PMIC for a given CPU, not designing CPU for a given PMIC(but in Apple case, the engineers can work closely together to come up with something balance).
      - gimmeThaBeet 1y ago
        I always wondered how to gauge how effective Apple's Dialog carveout was, in terms of was it just instant PMIC department or even effective at building a foundation for them? Given their long relationship, I would think it might be pretty seamless. I assume Apple probably do that more than I know, it is just interesting that their vertical acquisition history feels the most boring and the most interesting. At least looking from the outside, it feels like relatively small pieces develop into pretty big differentiators, like P.A. Semi, Intrinsity and Passif paving the way to their SoCs.

jlei523 1y ago

Intel and AMD have implemented these improvements with Lunar Lake and Strix Halo. You can buy an x86 laptop with Macbook-like efficiency right now if you know which SoCs to pick. This just isn't true. Yes, Lunar Lake has great idle performance. But if you need to actually use the CPU, it's drastically slower than M4 while consuming more power. Strix Halo battery life and efficiency is not even in the same ball park.

txrx0000 1y ago
If you look the battery life benchmarks they did at around the 5:00 mark in the third video, you can see that it achieves similar battery life compared to the an M3 Macbook in typical day-to-day use. This reflects the experience most users will have with the device. It's true that the perf/watt is still a lot worse than the latest gen M4 under heavy load, but it's close enough to the M1 and significantly better than prior laptops chips on x86. It is a first gen product like the M1. But it does show the ISA is not as big of a limiting factor as popularly believed.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  If you look the battery life benchmarks they did at around the 5:00 mark in the third video, you can see that it achieves similar battery life compared to the an M3 Macbook in typical day-to-day use. This reflects the experience most users will have with the device. No. The typical day to day use of LNL is significantly slower than even M1. LNL throttles like crazy when on battery in order to achieve similar battery life. https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-Lunar-Lake-Geekbench-6.3.png?w=1200 https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-...

aurareturn 1y ago

Intel and AMD have implemented these improvements with Lunar Lake and Strix Halo. You can buy an x86 laptop with Macbook-like efficiency right now if you know which SoCs to pick. M4 is about 3.6x more efficient than Strix Halo when under load.[0] On a daily basis, this difference can be more because Apple Silicon has true big.Little cores that send low priority tasks to the highly efficient small cores. For Lunar Lake, base M4 is about 35% faster, 2x more efficient, and actually has a bigger die size than M4.[1] Intel is discontinuing the Lunar Lake line because it isn't profitable for them. I'm not sure how you can claim "Mac-like efficiency". [0]https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF [1]https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-The-Core-Ultra-7-258V-s-multi-core-performance-is-disappointing-but-its-everyday-efficiency-is-good.893405.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-...

txrx0000 1y ago
Pardon my loose choice of words regarding the Mac-like efficiency. I was referring to the fact that the battery life is comparable to the M3 in day-to-day use, as demonstrated at around the 5:00 mark in the third video I linked. In the same video, they also measure perf/watt under heavy load, and it's close to the M1, but not the latest gen M4. I think that's pretty good considering it's a first gen product. Regarding the discontinuation, it's still on shelves right now, but I'm not sure if there will be future generations. It would be awfully silly of them to discontinue it as it's the best non-Apple laptop chip you can buy right now if you care about efficiency.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  In the same video, they also measure perf/watt under heavy load, and it's close to the M1, but not the latest gen M4. I think that's pretty good considering it's a first gen product. Which video and timestamp? Are you aware that LNL throttles heavily when on battery life? On battery life, M1 is a whopping 1.5x faster in single thread.[0] That makes M4 2.47x faster when compared to LNL on battery. So no, LNL is very far behind even M1. That's why there are no fanless LNL laptops. [0]https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-Lunar-Lake-Geekbench-6.3.png?w=1200 https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Intel-... [0]https://www.pcworld.com/article/2463714/tested-intels-lunar-lake-wants-you-to-forget-snapdragon-ever-existed.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2463714/tested-intels-lunar-... [0]https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020

hakube 1y ago

Windows laptops performance while on battery is terrible especially when you put it on power save mode. Macbooks on the other hand doesn't have that problem. It's just like you're using an iPad.