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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?

#451

Post by hajile »

fluoridation wrote: post #334
deaddodo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If x86 just officially said “we’re cutting off 32-bit legacy” one day (similar to how Apple did), they could toss out 95% of the crap that makes them power inefficient. Just think of the difference dropping A10 offered for memory efficiency. “Modern Standby” could be made to actually work, ACPI states could be fixed, a functional wake-up state built anew, etc. Hell, while it would allow pared down CPUs, you could hav…

>If x86 just officially said “we’re cutting off 32-bit legacy” one day (similar to how Apple did), they could toss out 95% of the crap that makes them power inefficient. Where do you get this from? I could understand that they could get rid of the die area devoted to x86 decoding, but as I understand it x86 and x86-64 instructions get interpreted by the same execution units, which are bitness blind. What makes you th…

Intel has proposed APX to address this. It does away with some of the 32-bit garbage that complicates design for no good payoff. Most importantly, it increases from 16 to 32 registers and allows 3-register instructions (almost all x86 instructions are 1-register or 2-register instructions). This would strip out tons of MOV instructions which was proven with AMD64 to have a decent impact on performance.

Reduced I-Cache, uop cache, and decoder pressure would also have a beneficial impact. On the flip side, APX instructions would all be an entire byte longer than their AMD64 counterparts, so some of the benefits would be more muted than they might first appear and optimizing between 16 registers and shorter instructions vs 32 registers with longer instructions is yet another tradeoff for compilers to make (and takes another step down the path of being completely unoptimizable by humans).

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

#452

Post by simonh »

skeezyboy wrote: post #331
giantrobot wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple bought PA Semi a long time ago. They have a significant silicon development group. Their architecture license (they were an early investor in ARM) for ARM means they get to basically do whatever they want using the ARM ISA. The SoCs in pretty much all their devices are designed in-house.

what about all the components and sensors

Apple has bought startups with various technologies like Anobit, that developed advanced flash memory controllers, and have funded development efforts by partners. For example Apple worked hand in glove with Sharp to develop the tech for their 5K display panels. They also now have their own cellular chip designs in some models, in their quest for independence from Qualcomm. That’s all from memory, I’m sure there are many more examples.

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

#453

Post by simonh »

RossBencina wrote: post #206
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 thought they just acquired P.A. Semi, job done.

When they bought PA Semi the company worked on IBM Power architecture chips. It was very much the team Apple was after, not any one particular technology.

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

#454

Post by hajile »

lelanthran wrote: post #380
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.

> Maybe Intel should invent desktop+mobile OS and design bespoke chips for those. Wouldn't it be easier for Intel to heavily modify the linus kernel instead of writing their own stack? They could even go as far as writing the sleep utilities for laptops, or even their own window manager to take advantage of the specific mods in the ISA?

Intel was working with Nokia to heavily invest into Meego OS until it was killed by Elop+Microsoft.

If it hadn't been killed, it may have become something interesting today.

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

#455

Post by akho »

E39M5S62 wrote: post #397
akho wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers would imply 50W consumption at idle (for typical battery capacities). That's insane. I've used Linux laptops since ~2007, and am well aware of the issues. 12x is well beyond normal.

At least on Thinkpads over the years, I've never seen anything remotely close to that either. I've had my Thinkpad x260 power draw down to 2.5 watts at idle, and around 4 or 5 watts with a browser and a few terminals open. That was back in 2018! With the hot-swappable battery on the back, I could go for 24 hours of active use without concern.

I get below 5W at idle (ff and emacs open, screen at indoor brightness, wifi on) on my gen11 framework. Going from 8 to 5 required some tinkering.

I don't think I ever saw 50W at all, even under load; they probably run an Ultra U1xxH, permanently turbo-boosted.

For some reason. Given the level of tinkering (with schedulers and interrupt frequencies), it's likely self-imposed at this point, but you never know.

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

#456

Post by noisy_boy »

To those who are using the newer MacBook pros, how easy and seamless it is to run Linux on it via Parallels etc without going all the way to Asahi etc? Like if i'm super comfortable with Linux, can I just get near native Linux desktop experience and forget that all of it is running on top of MacOS?

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

#457

Post by simonh »

twilo wrote: post #318
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…

Apple purchased Palo Alto Semi which made the biggest difference. One of their best acquisitions ever in my opinion… not that they make all that many of those anyway.

> One of their best acquisitions ever in my opinion…

NeXT? But yes, I completely get what you’re saying, I just couldn’t resist. It was an amazingly long sighted strategic move, for sure.

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

#458

Post by kjkjadksj »

noisy_boy wrote: post #456

To those who are using the newer MacBook pros, how easy and seamless it is to run Linux on it via Parallels etc without going all the way to Asahi etc? Like if i'm super comfortable with Linux, can I just get near native Linux desktop experience and forget that all of it is running on top of MacOS?

Why bother with that? Macos is a unix OS already.

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

#459

Post by int_19h »

deaddodo wrote: post #282
prmoustache wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a fairly common issue on Linux to be missing hardware acceleration, especially for video decoding. To be fair, usually the linux itself has hardware acceleration available but the browser vendors tend to disable gpu rendering except on controlled/known perfectly working combinations of OS/Hardware/Drivers and they have much less testing in Linux. In most case you can force enabling gpu rendering in about:confi…

The only browser I’ve ever had issues with enabling video acceleration on Linux is Firefox. All the Blink-based ones just work as long the proper libraries are installed and said libraries properly detect hardware support.

When I enabled HW acceleration on my Linux laptop to see how much it would improve battery life in Linux, my automated test (which is basically just browsing Reddit) would start crashing every 20 minutes or so.

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

#460

Post by akvadrako »

anthonypasq wrote: post #437
maxsilver wrote: post #374

> Why haven’t AMD/Intel been able to catch up? Is x86 just not able to keep up with the ARM architecture? When can we expect a x86 laptop chip to match the M1 in efficiency/thermals?! AMD kind of has, the "Max 395+" is (within 5% margin or so) pretty close to M4 Pro, on both performance and energy use. (it's in the 'Framework Desktop', for example, but not in their laptop lineup yet) AMD/Intel hasn't surpassed Apple…

I just recently was trying to buy a laptop and was looking at that chip, but like you said, not available in anything except framework desktops and a weird tablet thats 2.5x expensive as a macbook. Its competitive on paper, but is still completely infeasible at the moment.

There is only the HP ZBook Ultra G1a.

Some Chinese companies have also announced laptops with it coming out soon.

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