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Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

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Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#61
post #60

iPhone 13 Pro, with A15 Bionic, scored around 2250 Geekbench 6 single core. M2 Max, more-so around 2800. These two chips are comparable because they use the same microarchitecture, and it indicates a ~20-25% uplift in single core mostly just through pushing more power through the chip. If they can drive the same increase with an M3 chip based on the A17 Pro microarchitecture, a single-core score of 3500 is within rea…

I can't wait for AMD chips on 3nm so we can see if it really is "just the advantage of the process" like a lot of folk say.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think people understand what a big leap this going to be for their CPU cores.

Why's that? Will they run Windows? Linux?

Nuvia was a company founded by Gerard Williams in 2020 to build an ARM data center chip with a very high performance/watt profile. He was previously at Apple running the chip unit in some of the crucial years for Apple Silicon. Qualcomm bought Nuvia in 2021, and Williams is VP Engineering now. They are going to present the first Snapdragons with the Nuvia cores in October, probably in the wild at CES. Smartphone, watch, PC, IOT, etc. Data center after that. I expect it will bring Qualcomm much closer to Apple on the CPU part of the SoC. So yes, Windows PCs that can get closer to MacBooks in battery life and CPU performance. Linux at your own risk probably, because they have had a deal with Microsoft on this for a while.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's that? Will they run Windows? Linux?

Nuvia was a company founded by Gerard Williams in 2020 to build an ARM data center chip with a very high performance/watt profile. He was previously at Apple running the chip unit in some of the crucial years for Apple Silicon. Qualcomm bought Nuvia in 2021, and Williams is VP Engineering now. They are going to present the first Snapdragons with the Nuvia cores in October, probably in the wild at CES. Smartphone, wat…

And also, I should mention, ARM is suing over this, and wants Qualcomm to destroy all that IP or negotiate a new licensing agreement.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#64
post #11

I find articles like this really vexing because this isn't a general-purpose CPU, it's just a chip meant to run the software that Apple allows on the App Store. Most of the software I use day-to-day can't run on it by design. It's kind of depressing that the most advanced mobile CPU technology (that can only be fabbed by a single company in a far-away country) is monopolized by a company that heavily restricts the so…

Perhaps we should then view NSO Group as liberators, freeing software from the tyranny of evil corporations. /s

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#65
post #11

I find articles like this really vexing because this isn't a general-purpose CPU, it's just a chip meant to run the software that Apple allows on the App Store. Most of the software I use day-to-day can't run on it by design. It's kind of depressing that the most advanced mobile CPU technology (that can only be fabbed by a single company in a far-away country) is monopolized by a company that heavily restricts the so…

I’m glad someone else feels this way. I absolutely hate those YouTube videos talking about the “4K 30min total render” bs. Show me a M-chip MacBook that doesn’t balk when running Docker, or chug when opening a fat codebase in WebStorm. Sure the chips are fast when they run the stuff Apple designed for it, but they don’t seem any faster to me in my work. I will give them efficiency though. I love not having to carry t…

I mean, the M1 chip in my Macbook Pro runs absolute circles around the Intel one that I had in the previous generation, and they were released within a year of each other, so... I honestly do not know what you're talking about.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#66
post #29
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games made with a controller in mind are miserable experiences on a touchscreen. Phones are awkward and uncomfortable to hold like a controller, the lack of physical buttons provides no tactile feedback on where to press, the lack of shoulder buttons means overloading your thumbs with even more inputs, and your fingers obscure half the screen. And if the implication is that they'll port those iOS games to Mac, then I…

I don't think they expect people to seriously play Resident Evil 4 with touch controls. I imagine most people who actually complete the game will use either the controllers that attach to the side of the phone like a Switch, controllers that have a mount on top to hold the phone, a normal Bluetooth controls like a Dualshock with their phone in some other dock, or stream everything to an Apple TV.

I have been surprised they have not been more aggressive with the chips in AppleTV and signed more deals to port games to the platform. In some ways Apple is well positioned to be a player in the game space, but they seem to lack the commitment and flexibility required to make it work.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And a dev account is like $100/year. It’s bad that they can gatekeep like this, I agree. I should just be able to put whatever on the hardware I buy. But the expense in practical terms, immediate pragmatic terms, is negligible compared to what it unlocks.

I disagree. $100/yr to put what might be a very simple little toy application is not worth it. Sure, that toy might inspire more, and it could even lead to a promising career, but it’s a stretch to argue it was worth it when it could just as easily never be utilized. The promise of general purpose computing and open source as well is that it empowers all kinds of users. Oh how badly I want to tweak little things abou…

Compared to the cost and power of any of the hardware and software we are talking about it is insignificant.

If you want to do toy programming on a budget there are a million arduino-like things out there.

I recently saw calculations on the price of say, just iOS alone. It being equivalent to multiple Manhattan projects. Regardless of how accurate that estimate is, the general point remains.

Do I think Apple should make developing for non-distribution on the iPhone free? Yes. Do I think there is an argument that is almost a moral obligation? Possibly.

But what you get for like 30 cents a day with a developer account is mind boggling. I mean, that was the initial point wasn’t it? These are insanely capable and meticulously engineered pieces of technology.

Edit: I can even argue it is an ethical obligation that Apple should allow all users to install non App Store apps if they explicitly so choose. And I have argued that in the past.

But I separate this from the evaluation of the value proposition offered by an Apple Developer account.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#68
post #11

I find articles like this really vexing because this isn't a general-purpose CPU, it's just a chip meant to run the software that Apple allows on the App Store. Most of the software I use day-to-day can't run on it by design. It's kind of depressing that the most advanced mobile CPU technology (that can only be fabbed by a single company in a far-away country) is monopolized by a company that heavily restricts the so…

The security policy of the OS and the performance characteristics of the SoC are two different things.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#69
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they're bringing AAA games like Resident Evil 4 Remake and Assassin's Creed Mirage to the iPhone, complete with raytracing support, so it looks like it'll be a golden age of Apple gaming soon enough.

Games made with a controller in mind are miserable experiences on a touchscreen. Phones are awkward and uncomfortable to hold like a controller, the lack of physical buttons provides no tactile feedback on where to press, the lack of shoulder buttons means overloading your thumbs with even more inputs, and your fingers obscure half the screen. And if the implication is that they'll port those iOS games to Mac, then I…

The new iPhones can now connect to a monitor via USB-C, so with that and a Bluetooth controller you’ve got a good stew going.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#70
post #12
post #6

“ There is a catch though: Apple's A17 Pro operates at 3.75 GHz, according to the benchmark, whereas its mighty competitors work at about 5.80 GHz and 6.0 GHz, respectively.” This is why numbers like this don’t matter when you say the performance is within 10%

Could you expand on that? Why does GHz matter? Performance should be measured as a black box, with the metric being the time it takes to accomplishing some task.

You just look at final performance metrics, ghz/mhz matter back in the 90s. Now you can’t just say higher freq means better because architecture all different
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