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Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

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Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#321

Post by jasona123 »

tpoindex wrote: post #287

A better question is which (if any) ARM competitors can achieve comparable performance to M-series? I do understand Apple has tuned the entire platform from cpu/gpu, cache, unified memory, and software to achieve what they offer.

I think the challenge is going to be software, software tuning, and (until everyone builds for both ARM and x64) - translation/emulation. I’ll admit that I haven’t had much experience on the Windows side but I made the leap pretty quickly from the early 2015 MBP to an M1 MBA (like maybe a month after the M1 Macs came out) and it very much was seamless, whereas it still sounds like on the Windows on ARM side it’s been languishing even to this day.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#322

Post by chasil »

averne_ wrote: post #252
daeken wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no AArch32 or Thumb support (A32/T32) on M-series chips. AArch64 (technically A64) is the only supported instruction set. Fun fact: this makes it impossible to run Mario Kart 8 via virtualization on Macs without software translation, since it's A32. How much that does for efficiency I can't say, but I imagine it helps, especially given just how damn easy it is to decode.

It actually doesn't make much difference: https://chipsandcheese.com/i/138977378/decoder-differences-a...

I had not realized that Apple did not implement any of the 32-bit ARM environment, but that cuts the legs out of this argument in the article:

"In Anandtech’s interview, Jim Keller noted that both x86 and ARM both added features over time as software demands evolved. Both got cleaned up a bit when they went 64-bit, but remain old instruction sets that have seen years of iteration."

I still say that x86 must run two FPUs all the time, and that has to cost some power (AMD must run three - it also has 3dNow).

Intel really couldn't resist adding instructions with each new chip (MMX, PAE for 32-bit, many more on this shorthand list that I don't know), which are now mostly baggage.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#323

Post by skeezyboy »

brokencode wrote: post #274
skeezyboy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Apple poured a tonne of that money into R&D and taking the top engineers from Intel, AMD, and ARM, building one of the best silicon teams. how much silicon did Apple actually create? I thought they outsourced all the components?

Outsourced to who? The only companies with the engineers you’d need are the other CPU makers like Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. And none of them make a CPU as efficient as Apple does.

cpu yes, but what about the rest of the iphone?

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#324

Post by Fluorescence »

aurareturn wrote: post #272
Fluorescence wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a waste of time. "directionally correct"... so you don't know and made up some numbers? Great. AMD doesn't "endorse benchmarks" especially not fucking Geekbench for multi-core. No-one could because it's famously nonsense for higher core counts. AMD's decade old beef with Sysmark was about pro-Intel bias.

"directionally correct"... so you don't know and made up some numbers? Great. I never said it was exactly that size. Apple keeps the sizes of their base, Pro, and Max chips fairly consistent over generations. Welcome to the world of chip discussions. I've never taken apart and M4 Pro computer and measured the die myself. It appears no one has on the internet. However, we can infer a lot of it based on previously know…

Their "main benchmark"? Stop making things up. It's no more than tragic fanboy addled fraud at this point.

That three-year old press-release refers to SINGLE CORE Geekbench and not the defective multicore version that doesn't scale with core counts. Given AMD's main USP is core counts it would be an... unusual choice.

AMD marketing uses every other product under the sun too (no doubt whatever gives the better looking numbers)... including Passmark e.g. it's on this Halo Strix page:

https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/ai-pc-portfolio-l...

So I guess that means Passmark is "endorsed" by AMD too eh? Neat.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#325

Post by solardev »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #306
ben-schaaf wrote: post #101

Battery efficiency comes from a million little optimizations in the technology stack, most of which comes down to using the CPU as little as possible. As such the instruction set architecture and process node aren't usually that important when it comes to your battery life. If you fully load the CPU and calculate how much energy a AI340 needs to perform a fixed workload and compare that to a M1 you'll probably find s…

I honestly don't see myself ever leaving Macbooks at this point. It's the whole package: the battery life is insane, I've literally never had a dead laptop when I needed it no matter what I'm doing or where I'm at; it runs circles around every other computer I own, save for my beastly gaming PC; the stability and consistency of MacOS, and the underlying unix arch for a lot of tooling, all the way down to the build qu…

Even the high end ones (Razers, Asus, Surface Books, Lenovos) are mere lookalikes and don't run anywhere as well as the MacBooks. They're hot and heavy and loud and full of driver issues and discrete graphics switching headaches and of course the endless ads and AI spam of modern Windows. No comparison at all...

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#326

Post by skeezyboy »

brokencode wrote: post #312
ChrisGreenHeur wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arm exists, it is unknown how much tech apple gets from Arm.

Arm licenses their designs to everybody. They are okay, but you are never going to make market leading processors by using the Arm designs.

The M1 and M2 were beating the best-in-class i7 when they were relased IIRC

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#327

Post by AlexandrB »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #306
ben-schaaf wrote: post #101

Battery efficiency comes from a million little optimizations in the technology stack, most of which comes down to using the CPU as little as possible. As such the instruction set architecture and process node aren't usually that important when it comes to your battery life. If you fully load the CPU and calculate how much energy a AI340 needs to perform a fixed workload and compare that to a M1 you'll probably find s…

I honestly don't see myself ever leaving Macbooks at this point. It's the whole package: the battery life is insane, I've literally never had a dead laptop when I needed it no matter what I'm doing or where I'm at; it runs circles around every other computer I own, save for my beastly gaming PC; the stability and consistency of MacOS, and the underlying unix arch for a lot of tooling, all the way down to the build qu…

> Like, would I prefer an older-style Macbook overall, with an integrated card reader, HDMI port, ethernet jack, all that? Yeah, sure.

Modern MacBook pros have 2/3 (card reader and HDMI port), and they brought back my beloved MagSafe charging.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#328

Post by [deleted] »

zipityzi wrote: post #284
BirAdam wrote: post #250

First, Apple did an excellent job optimizing their software stack for their hardware. This is something that few companies have the ability to do as they target a wide array of hardware. This is even more impressive given the scale of Apple's hardware. The same kernel runs on a Watch and a Mac Studio. Second, the x86 platform has a lot of legacy, and each operation on x86 is translated from an x86 instruction into RI…

This seems mostly misinformed. 1) Apple Silicon outperforms all laptop CPUs in the same power envelope on 1T on industry-standard tests: it's not predominantly due to "optimizing their software stack". SPECint, SPECfp, Geekbench, Cinebench, etc. all show major improvements. 2) x86 also heavily relies on micro-ops to greatly improve performance. This is not a "penalty" in any sense. 3) x86 is now six-wide, eight-wide,…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#329

Post by stuaxo »

throwup238 wrote: post #110
ben-schaaf wrote: post #101

Battery efficiency comes from a million little optimizations in the technology stack, most of which comes down to using the CPU as little as possible. As such the instruction set architecture and process node aren't usually that important when it comes to your battery life. If you fully load the CPU and calculate how much energy a AI340 needs to perform a fixed workload and compare that to a M1 you'll probably find s…

> All that to say: M1 is pretty fast, but the reason the battery life is better has to do with everything other than the CPU cores. That's what AMD and Intel are missing. A good demonstration is the Android kernel. By far the biggest difference between it and the stock Linux kernel is power management. Many subsystems down to the process scheduler are modified and tuned to improve battery life.

It's a shame they are so bad at upstreaming stuff, and run on older kernels (which in turn makes upstreaming harder).

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#330

Post by lenkite »

aurareturn wrote: post #192
lenkite wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, Apple CPU's are even optimized for Apple software GC calls like Retain/Release objects. It seems if you want optimal performance and power efficiency, you need to own both hardware and software. Looks like general purpose CPUs are on the losing train. Maybe Intel should invent desktop+mobile OS and design bespoke chips for those.

It seems if you want optimal performance and power efficiency, you need to own both hardware and software. Does Apple optimize the OS for its chips and vice versa? Yes. However, Apple Silicon hardware is just that good and that far ahead of x86. Here's an M4 Max running macOS running Parallels running Windows when compared to the fastest AMD laptop chip: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/13494385?baseli...…

Not really sure whether it makes a difference, but the Parallel VM is running Windows Pro, while the Windows OS on ASUS Gaming Laptop is running Windows Home.
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