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Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

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Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#21

Post by Groxx »

pedalpete wrote: post #8

Innovators Dilemma. I think you need to look at this from another angle. Yes, Apple did make some excellent choices, but the market was Intel's to lose. The difference in the chips isn't limited to the 5nm, memory pooling, etc etc. Look at the base x86 vs ARM core architecture, and that is where you'll see the problem Intel had. I'm sure there were discussions inside Intel which went along the lines of one person arg…

Just as a small note, as far as I can tell the PPC -> x86 version of Rosetta was at least partly licensed from "Transitive Corporation" by Apple, not entirely in-house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTransit . I have no idea about Rosetta2 though.

Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#23

Post by oneplane »

It's not just the M1's design, it's what they don't have to do: no need to support anything legacy. You can't change the x86 ISA to the point where it makes a huge difference because it would no longer run x86 code.

Intel can probably make faster stuff than they currently do but then their customers (PC manufacturers for instance) would have to modify all their stuff as well and they don't want to, or at least, won't want the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#24

Post by aarkay »

ibraheemdev wrote: post #7

I just wanted to point out that it is not Apple out of the blue made a chip better than Intel's. They have also been designing chips for quite a while. The APL0098 chip that was used in the original iPhone was introduced back in 2007.

Which also implies that intel had a lot of time to catch up.

Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#26

Post by jibcage »

Groxx wrote: post #21
pedalpete wrote: post #8

Innovators Dilemma. I think you need to look at this from another angle. Yes, Apple did make some excellent choices, but the market was Intel's to lose. The difference in the chips isn't limited to the 5nm, memory pooling, etc etc. Look at the base x86 vs ARM core architecture, and that is where you'll see the problem Intel had. I'm sure there were discussions inside Intel which went along the lines of one person arg…

Just as a small note, as far as I can tell the PPC -> x86 version of Rosetta was at least partly licensed from "Transitive Corporation" by Apple, not entirely in-house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTransit . I have no idea about Rosetta2 though.

Transitive was acquired by Apple, I imagine Rosetta 2 was the product of many of the same engineers.

Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#27

Post by hartator »

oneplane wrote: post #23

It's not just the M1's design, it's what they don't have to do: no need to support anything legacy. You can't change the x86 ISA to the point where it makes a huge difference because it would no longer run x86 code. Intel can probably make faster stuff than they currently do but then their customers (PC manufacturers for instance) would have to modify all their stuff as well and they don't want to, or at least, won't…

They fully support i386 via Rosetta 2 though.

The real explanation is Intel has been complacent and lazy. We had 5 generations of the same chip. Enough is enough.

Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#28

Post by judge2020 »

kortex wrote: post #11

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25257932 My 10,000' view understanding: - Small feature size. M1 is a 5nm process. Intel is struggling to catch up to TSMC's 7nm process - more efficient transistors. 7nm uses finFet. M1 probably uses GAAFET, which means you can cram more active gate volume in less chip footprint. This means less heat and more speed - layout. M1 is optimized for Apple's use case. General purpose c…

> - Small feature size. M1 is a 5nm process. Intel is struggling to catch up to TSMC's 7nm process

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25277124

Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#29

Post by maxioatic »

titzer wrote: post #18

Lots of other comments point out the vertical integration. For raw single-thread performance: 1. ARM64 is a fixed-width instruction set, so their frontend can decode more instructions in parallel. 2. They got one honking monster of an out-of-order execution engine. (630 entries), which feed: 3. 16 execution ports.

I don't fully grasp assembly, instruction sets, and how CPUs work so pardon the silly questions.

I think I understand 1) as since they know the width they can more accurately divide the instructions to more parallel executers (whatever they are - the execution ports?)

2) I believe this allows more "pre-work" to get done before it's actually needed, but then the "pre-work" just chills until

3) these things do the work, and there an abnormally high amount of them?

p.s. Any noob friendly reading is also appreciated!

Re: Ask HN: How did Apple manage to create such a better chip than Intel?

#30

Post by GoldenStake »

kortex wrote: post #11

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25257932 My 10,000' view understanding: - Small feature size. M1 is a 5nm process. Intel is struggling to catch up to TSMC's 7nm process - more efficient transistors. 7nm uses finFet. M1 probably uses GAAFET, which means you can cram more active gate volume in less chip footprint. This means less heat and more speed - layout. M1 is optimized for Apple's use case. General purpose c…

One small correction, TSCM 5nm still uses finFet Samsungs 3nm is being testing with GAAFET and has it slated for 2021. TSMCs roadmap also has it but for 2022, and intel at 2025
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