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Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

macworld.com

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Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#321

Post by newaccount74 »

The_Colonel wrote: post #280
newaccount74 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Apple's way of price discrimination. They want to offer computers at every price point, but they don't want to build a dozen different models. So their entry level machines are a great deal -- you get the quality of a 5000€ machine for just 2500€ if you can live with limited storage. But if you want enough storage, you're paying the full price... I'm not a fan of their policy, because the result is that lots of…

> So their entry level machines are a great deal -- you get the quality of a 5000€ machine for just 2500€ if you can live with limited storage. It sounds really weird to talk about 2500 EUR laptop as "entry level". > They want to offer computers at every price point They don't offer anything under 1000 EUR.

It's the entry level configuration of that model.

Apple is doing the same as car companies: Make the base price of each model as low as possible and then charge ridiculous sums for extras.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#322

Post by bayindirh »

zht wrote: post #320
bayindirh wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my experience in the olden Athlon XP days. Even though you give the extra voltage and give enough cooling, the CPU starts to encounter many internal errors and needs to re-run a lot of instruction trains to get sane results. This causes heat and load spikes, and while you get no errors, the increased frequency doesn't give you any real world performance gains. Returning a to a slower configuration actuall…

Athlon was 20 years ago. It feels unfair to generalize across time and architectures

It's not about architecture. It's about physics. Once you pass a certain threshold, electron/current leaks and escapes start to wreak havoc inside any silicon. So beyond voltage, current and temperature, you're limited by the silicon itself.

I stopped overclocking systems after Athlon XP. This is why I gave that example.

Even without overclocking and overheating, I've seen and still seeing partially cooked processors which shut-down half of their FPU pipelines to stay reliable albeit with orders of magnitude lower performance.

CPUs are much more complex with their MCE and more advanced microcode structures ever, and there's much more than meets the eye.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#323

Post by theshrike79 »

philistine wrote: post #241
friedman23 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 watts, so basically I have no reason to use this over a desktop. The battery life on the m1 macbooks is a game changer. I don't need more power out of my laptop I need it to be cool to the touch and last at least 9 hours with normal usage.

With those laptops, we're back to the days of the luggables. It's a desktop you can carry, with some caveats in terms of performance related to the choice of parts. Apple is truly playing a different game.

Apple in-housing their chip design was a brilliant move. The A-series processors were a good indication what was coming up, but still the M1 blew me away.

Still waiting to see what they'll do with Mac Pro + M-series. Do they go for a M2 or just slap a dozen M1s in parallel =)

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#324

Post by Macha »

barbacoa wrote: post #133
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just marketing fluff in terms of measurements. Most agree that in terms of gate size, intel’s 7nm is similar to TSMCs 5nm. So you could say that Intel moving to 5 would give them a 30% boost but the TSMC goes to 3nm.

Intel renamed their nodes, "Intel 7nm" is what they were previously called "Intel 10nm". So the node numbers are now (semi) compatible between Intel and TSMC.

To be clear, the node formerly known as Intel 10nm is now called Intel 7. There's no unit attached, which is probably for the best, as what was being measured in nanometers previously was super subjective and varied per manufacturer.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#325

Post by Macha »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #165
adam_arthur wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is unclear. Apple's contribution to M1 was the design. TSMC built the next gen fabs, and gets credit for the manufacturing. You can't compare viability or success of the processor design when you compare cross fab generations. It's apples to oranges. You can state that M1 is better, which is true, but it doesn't follow at all that it's due to the design component. It could very well be that moving Intel'…

That’s just not true. The RISC instruction set has a growing advantage in performance per watt. There’s a reason no one is producing low-power x86 chips.

Surely it's a shrinking advantage? x86 CPUs have been microcode based for a long time, and the hardware to convert x86 instructions to micro ops is a relatively fixed cost that diminishes over time with process shrinks?

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#326

Post by [deleted] »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #136
smoldesu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. ARM has traditionally had issues scaling it's clock speed even when given ample cooling and power, history suggests that the only way they'll significantly improve performance is with new fab technology, engineering a better design, or expanding horizontally (eg. adding more cores).

Apple has an architectural license, which is why they are so insistent on calling them "Apple Silicon" in branding instead of ARM. The only thing the Apple M1 has in common with ARM is the instruction set. The actual core design? Completely Apple. No Cortex X1s or A73s in there. Apple does use the stock ARM M3 in a few places IIRC but that's a very-low-power ~100mhz part for managing some internals. Also, as for who…

[deleted]

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#327

Post by deaddodo »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #136
smoldesu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. ARM has traditionally had issues scaling it's clock speed even when given ample cooling and power, history suggests that the only way they'll significantly improve performance is with new fab technology, engineering a better design, or expanding horizontally (eg. adding more cores).

Apple has an architectural license, which is why they are so insistent on calling them "Apple Silicon" in branding instead of ARM. The only thing the Apple M1 has in common with ARM is the instruction set. The actual core design? Completely Apple. No Cortex X1s or A73s in there. Apple does use the stock ARM M3 in a few places IIRC but that's a very-low-power ~100mhz part for managing some internals. Also, as for who…

> Edit: On that note, it's kind of ironic how every Android phone has the DNA of a company Apple cofounded and initially led.

You do realize that the ARM architecture existed for almost a decade before Apple was involved, right? From 1981-1990.

Apple was involved with ARM Ltd, the company that was formed when the chip division was rolled out of Acorn; not in the design of the original chips. Apple wasn’t significantly involved until the ARM6. Considering Microsoft was as involved with the StrongARM project, most of which has long since been integrated into the mainline ARM architecture, you could argue their DNA is just as integrated. By your logic, at least.

> Both based on Apple's higher-performing core designs than ARM stock

ARM’s vanilla cores aren’t intended to be high performance cores. They never sought that out until the recently started X-series, which even still isn’t designed to operate in the same envelope as Apple Silicon. Their designs have always been primarily focused on power efficiency with a secondary focus on drop-in generality.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#328

Post by ipython »

asdff wrote: post #226
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple (if they were willing to expose a more wild side) should make an "M1 Pro Max Unlocked" board (or something like that) and just sell it as a bare, microATX board. It could cost exactly the same as the Mac mini for all I care, but if PC builders could use it in crazy cases and with liquid (or even liquid nitrogen) cooling, that would be so cool.

Would love a liquid cooled mac.

They have already done it, almost twenty years ago now: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2565453/new-power-mac-...

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#329

Post by gjsman-1000 »

dmitriid wrote: post #236
zepto wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They have in fact increased the performance of their cores with every single generation since the A4. I think the point about Android commentators is that they may not have been following Apple’s silicon development closely enough to know this, especially if they think that the M1 is the first in the line.

> may not have been following Apple’s silicon development closely enough to know this, especially if they think that the M1 is the first in the line. It's not just Android commentators. A surprising amount of people have the view that Qualcomm/Google/ will surely come up with better CPUs in a couple of years. Apple has been doing this for more than 10 years. They probably spent 4 or 5 years designing A4 before it cam…

Apple does not just have that history, but also has the benefit of scale that others lack. The M1? It was literally just the A14X, the sequel to the A12X used in their iPad Pros, but Apple rebranded it.

Qualcomm is not going to make a better ARM Windows processor anytime soon. They had five years of exclusivity on Windows on ARM. Every single device they released was massively overpriced, had crappy performance, and until very recently, could not run 64-bit x86 programs at all (only 32-bit was translatable).

Someone is of course going to remind me that they bought Nuvia, and so Nuvia will change the boat around. I'm a skeptic. Judging by previous pricing, I believe that Qualcomm's chips and royalties result in disproportionately expensive hardware (every Windows on ARM machine to date, the cost of devices with Snapdragon 888+), and may not be competitive cost-wise as much as some would hope.

Also, Nuvia was designed for server processors, and is being retooled into a mobile processor. I'm going to bet that it's better than Qualcomm's current lot, but I doubt the single-core performance will be very strong compared to Apple. Qualcomm claims it will be "competitive with M-series," which considering M2 is going to be coming out before Nuvia isn't good news. Also, Qualcomm famously claimed that their Windows on ARM Snapdragon device was "competitive" with a mobile Core i5, but that was quickly laughed off the table when it went to reviews.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#330

Post by mmmBacon »

marcan_42 wrote: post #282
mmmBacon wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again yield; not sure how many people understand how big yield would be even Apple. At some yield you can’t support the demand. None of what was written above makes a lot of sense unless Apples just burning fab cycles. They might be but I kind of doubt it since it would seriously impact device cost and would take up slots in the fab leading to longer lead times. Not even Apple can dictate all their chips to be P1 at…

I'm not guessing. They are different dies. There is no need to write a hypothetical wall of text and get it wrong; you can just look up die shots or chip package shots or device trees and know they're different dies. This information is well known. There's a massive difference in size and aspect ratio between all 3 dies. It would not be cost efficient to fab M1 Max dies and sell them as M1 Pro. The M1 Max is explicit…

If the metal isn’t there it won’t show up in device tree because it physically isn’t connected on the die. So device tree as you keep pointing out cannot tell you if it’s same die or not. Also the device can be there and not be in device tree meaning the devices memory location was omitted from device tree when the device tree blob was built.

It may well be that they have different die. But that’s usually an expensive way to do things. Usually you want downgrade paths for devices that don’t yield.

Source: 23 years in semiconductor industry.

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