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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?

#361

Post by alt227 »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #339
stego-tech wrote: post #319

There’s a number of reasons, all of which in concert create the appearance of a performance gap between the two: * Apple has had decades optimizing its software and hardware stacks to the demands of its majority users, whereas Intel and AMD have to optimize for a much broader scope of use cases. * Apple was willing to throw out legacy support on a regular basis. Intel and AMD, by comparison, are still expected to run…

Fair enough, but Apple Silicon is not a specialist chip in the way a SPARC chip was. It's a general purpose SoC & SiP stack. There is nothing stopping Intel being able to invest in SoC & SiP and being able to maintain backward compatibility while providing much better power/performance for a mobile (including laptop and tablet), product strategy. They could also just sit down with Microsoft and say "Right, we're goin…

> Right, we're going to go in an entirely different direction, and provide you with something absolutely mind-blowing, but we're going to have to do software emulation for backward compatibility and that will suck for a while until things get recompiled, or it'll suck forever if they never do

For an example of why this doesnt work, see 'Intel Itanium'.

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

#362

Post by jmkni »

thisiswhy1 wrote: post #357

A friend at grad school was asking me for advice -- he had an "in" at Intel -- make $250k and do nothing. A friend had promised a basically no-show position for him. My friend was debating between this $250k/yr no-show position at Intel (no growth) vs something elsewhere which was more demanding but would provide more growth. This isnt the only no-show position I've heard about at Intel. That is why Intel cannot catc…

How could Intel possibly benefit from that?

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

#363

Post by Eric_WVGG »

DanielHB wrote: post #280
jonwinstanley wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge reason for the low power usage is the iPhone. Apple spent years incrementally improving efficiency and performance of their chips for phones. Intel and AMD were more desktop based so power efficiency wasnt the goal. When Apple's chips got so good they could transition into laptops, x86 wasn't in the same ballpark. Also the iPhone is the most lucrative product of all time (I think) and Apple poured a tonne of t…

I don't think it is so much efficiency of their chips for their hardware (phones) so much as efficiency of their OS for their chips and hardware design (like unified memory).

I have heard that Apple Silicon chips are designed around the retain-release cycle that goes back to NeXT and is still here today (hidden by ARC compilation), but I don't think that's the whole story. Back when the M1's came out, many benchmarks showed virtualized Windows blowing the doors off of market-equivalent x86 CPUs.

Also, there's the obvious benefits of being TSMC's best customer. And when you design a chip for low power consumption, that means you've got a higher ceiling when you introduce cooling.

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

#364

Post by alt227 »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #185
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…

A huge reason for the low power usage is the iPhone. Apple spent years incrementally improving efficiency and performance of their chips for phones. Intel and AMD were more desktop based so power efficiency wasnt the goal. When Apple's chips got so good they could transition into laptops, x86 wasn't in the same ballpark. Also the iPhone is the most lucrative product of all time (I think) and Apple poured a tonne of t…

> A huge reason for the low power usage is the iPhone.

No, the main reason for better battery life is the RISC architecture. PC on ARM architecture has the same gains.

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

#366

Post by RajT88 »

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.

Apple is vertically integrated and can optimize at the OS and for many applications they ship with the device.

Compare that to how many cooks are in the kitchen in Wintel land. Perfect example is trying to get to the bottom of why your windows laptop won't go to sleep and cooks itself in your backpack. Unless something's changed, last I checked it was a circular firing squad between laptop manufacturer, Microsoft and various hardware vendors all blaming each other.

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

#367

Post by Eric_WVGG »

stego-tech wrote: post #319

There’s a number of reasons, all of which in concert create the appearance of a performance gap between the two: * Apple has had decades optimizing its software and hardware stacks to the demands of its majority users, whereas Intel and AMD have to optimize for a much broader scope of use cases. * Apple was willing to throw out legacy support on a regular basis. Intel and AMD, by comparison, are still expected to run…

> Software in x86 world is not optimized, broadly, because it doesn’t have to be. The demoscene shows what can be achieved in tight performance envelopes, but software companies have never had reason to optimize code or performance when next year has always promised more cores or more GHz.

This is why I get so livid regarding Electron apps on the Mac.

I’m never surprised by developer-centric apps like Docker Desktop — those inclined to work on highly technical apps tend not to care much about UX — but to see billion-dollar teams like Slack and 1Password indulge in this slop is so disheartening.

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

#368

Post by alt227 »

fafhnir wrote: post #201

I have the same experience here with my MacBook Air M1 from 2020 with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. After three years, I upgraded to a MacBook Pro with M3 Pro, 36GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage. I use this as my main machine with 2 displays attached via a TB4 dock. I'm working in IT and I get all new machines for our company over my desk to check them, and I observed the exact same points as the OP. The new machines are eith…

> there is no alternative to a Mac nowadays

I need to point this out all the time these days it seems, but this opinion is only valid if all you use is a laptop and all you care about is single core perfomance.

The computing world is far bigger than just laptops.

Big music/3d design/video editing production suites etc still benefit much more from having workstation PCs with higher PCI bandwidth, more lanes for multiple SSDs and GPUs, and high level multicore processing performance which cannot be matched by Apple silicon.

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

#369

Post by jmkni »

mnw21cam wrote: post #184
mkl wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can. There are a bunch listed in this article: https://www.ultrabookreview.com/6520-fanless-ultrabooks/ Fanless x86 desktops are a thing too, in the form of thin clients and small PCs intended for business use. I have a few HP T630s I use as servers (I have used them as desktop PCs too, but my tab-hoarding habit makes them throttle a bit too much for my use - they'd be fine for a lot of people).

Do you have a version of that web page for people who want to run Linux? That'd be particularly helpful.

I've been experimenting with Asahi Linux recently on a spare M2 Air I have lying around, honestly very impressed. It's come on a lot since I last tried it a year or so ago

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

#370

Post by alt227 »

chvid wrote: post #83

I don't think there is a single thing you can point to. But overall Apple's hardware/software is highly optimized, closely knit, and each component is in general the best the industry has to offer. It is sold cheap as they make money on volume and an optimized supply chain. Framework does not have the volume, it is optimized for modularity, and the software is not as optimized for the hardware. As a general purpose c…

> As a general purpose computer Apple is impossible to beat

Only if all you care about is having a laptop with really fast single core performance. Anything that requires real grunt needs a workstation or server which Apple silicon connot provide.

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