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Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

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Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#71

Post by dtech »

rob74 wrote: post #23
uniqueuid wrote: post #2

The picture you're painting is far too simple. There are many metrics that play a role for different applications. A modern Nvidia card is magnitudes faster than any CPU and the M1 GPUs. A Nvidia A100 card has HBM memory with ~2TB/s bandwidth. On the other hand, there are areas where a ~5GHz intel CPU is competitive, or even older server chips with AVX can compete. So let's see what happens when Intel and AMD step to…

Both Intel and AMD have the major disadvantage of having (or, let's say, wanting) to maintain x86 backward compatibility - which means not only staying compatible with the almost 45 year old CISC instruction set of the Intel 8086, but also with the whole line of CPUs that came after it. All this ballast makes it harder for them to build an energy-efficient CPU. By contrast, Apple was able to just create a new CPU bas…

This argument goes back 30 years. As far as I know, not a hardware engineer, it's not that much of an issue since the only complicated thing is the decoder, and then it's microcode and not an issue.

The TSO memory guarantee X86 is probably the exception, since Apple supports it on their M1s too for emulation.

Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#72

Post by matwood »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #56
simonh wrote: post #18

Yes, but the reasons are to do with business and investment as much as technology. Apple utterly dominates the mobile phone CPU landscape, and it’s hard to see that changing. The reason is that they capture a huge slice of the profits in mobile phones. Something like 90%. For a while they capture over 100% of profits, because so many of their competitors were operating at a loss. This enables them to make investments…

> Apple utterly dominates the mobile phone CPU landscape, That seems to be an interesting definition of "dominates". 14% of global smartphones from independents. 24% by Apple's claims. A curious kind of domination.

I read that as mobile CPU performance is where Apple dominates. And they do. This is why people have been wondering for years when Apple would put one of their mobile chips (or a derivative) in a laptop.

Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#74

Post by yxhuvud »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #70
yxhuvud wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about waiting until the competitors is actually on the same process node size until declaring the x86 baggage to costly? Most of all, Apple is currently in the lead because they threw money on TSMC to get a virtual monopoly on the smallest node size. How much of that which will remain once the competitors are comparable is an unknown at this point.

What if Apple maintains a lead in process mode though? 3 nm while Intel is at 5, 2 nm while Intel is at 3, etc. I’m glad they have competition from more than just AMD and wish all three the best.

Apple may maintain the lead, but it is done by throwing money at TSMC, not by having better technology by themselves. I'd prefer a situation where the TSMC let all of them have some access to the better node sizes as that would let the company with the better tech sell more.

Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#75

Post by mromanuk »

yxhuvud wrote: post #52
rob74 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Intel and AMD have the major disadvantage of having (or, let's say, wanting) to maintain x86 backward compatibility - which means not only staying compatible with the almost 45 year old CISC instruction set of the Intel 8086, but also with the whole line of CPUs that came after it. All this ballast makes it harder for them to build an energy-efficient CPU. By contrast, Apple was able to just create a new CPU bas…

How about waiting until the competitors is actually on the same process node size until declaring the x86 baggage to costly? Most of all, Apple is currently in the lead because they threw money on TSMC to get a virtual monopoly on the smallest node size. How much of that which will remain once the competitors are comparable is an unknown at this point.

Comparing currently available CPUs on the market is pretty fair.

Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#76

Post by matwood »

pella wrote: post #44
camillomiller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualcomm has been "on track" with desktop level chips based on their mobile platforms for at least four years. I've tested the first Windows on Arm laptop with a series 8 "desktop" Snapdragon in 2018. Yet, they still have to ship anything meaningful. They lake the vertical integration Apple has, and they will never have it. Hard for me to see how competitors (Qualcomm + Microsoft + OEMs) are supposed to go after Appl…

> are supposed to go after Apple in this area, Talent can be poached [1] and Technology can be acquired [2] [1] "Intel Poaches Head Apple Silicon Architect Who Led Transition To Arm And M1 Chips" https://hothardware.com/news/intel-poaches-head-apple-silico... [2] https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/03/qualcomm-comp... ------ The real problem - Apple is slowing down [3][4] [3] "Apple CPU Gains Grind To A Halt…

Doom and gloom for Apple is a common way to get clicks. The M2 in many workloads looks like ~20% increase which is certainly not a slowdown for YoY performance. Additionally, everyone is alway 2 years out from beating what Apple is selling today, ignoring where Apple will be in 2 years.

With that said, of course competitors can catch up with what Apple is doing. Doing things you link to is how, and it's exactly how competition works. We'll have to wait and see what AMD and Qualcom end up actually releasing.

Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#77

Post by gruez »

znpy wrote: post #3

Imho they can as long as they agree to drop some sort if retro-compatibility. Modern cpus being able to run dos software is certainly nice, but it’s probably preventing intel/amd from performing some aggressive restyling and optimisation/refactoring to their isa and its implementation in silicon. Apple on the other hand happily deprecates its own os releases and the hardware supported. Software retro-compatibility is…

>Modern cpus being able to run dos software is certainly nice, but it’s probably preventing intel/amd from performing some aggressive restyling and optimisation/refactoring to their isa

Not really. Most of the legacy instructions are implemented via microcode anyways, so the amount of resources dedicated to legacy support is minimal.

Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#78

Post by kaba0 »

rob74 wrote: post #23
uniqueuid wrote: post #2

The picture you're painting is far too simple. There are many metrics that play a role for different applications. A modern Nvidia card is magnitudes faster than any CPU and the M1 GPUs. A Nvidia A100 card has HBM memory with ~2TB/s bandwidth. On the other hand, there are areas where a ~5GHz intel CPU is competitive, or even older server chips with AVX can compete. So let's see what happens when Intel and AMD step to…

Both Intel and AMD have the major disadvantage of having (or, let's say, wanting) to maintain x86 backward compatibility - which means not only staying compatible with the almost 45 year old CISC instruction set of the Intel 8086, but also with the whole line of CPUs that came after it. All this ballast makes it harder for them to build an energy-efficient CPU. By contrast, Apple was able to just create a new CPU bas…

Do we know whether that x86 backward compatibility is all that problematic? If I’m not mistaken, it is only used as a “public API” even in current CPUs, and on a microcode level it doesn’t have as much relevance.

Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

#80

Post by throwaway4good »

user_named wrote: post #47

Perhaps the competition will instead come from China. Xiaomi, OPPO both make their own chipset now.

China has their infamous five year plans and for 2025 they have a goal of suppying 70% of their own semiconductor demand.

So it is pretty much given that we will see high-end Chinese CPUs by then.

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