71–80 of 112 posts
“new architecture on new process node almost as fast as competitor’s flagship from a year prior, from two process nodes ago” power efficiency aside (which admittedly is non-trivial), this is not that big a deal or particularly interesting, imo.
Apple’s lead is almost unfathomable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
Now it’s a whole other discussion of if that’s a good thing or not. But I personally like to believe that everyone should be able to develop as a hobbyist. The commercialization of software is often at odd with it’s users. Not so much when people are doing things for themselves and for fun.
Just my 2¢
Earlier quoted context omitted.
if I write a bit of software and target ARM64 and it cannot run on x86. Does that mean that x86 has a specific purpose now and is no longer a general purpose CPU?
That's not the same thing. An instruction set is an inherent aspect of a CPU; you can't have a CPU without one. Also, you can emulate or translate instruction sets between general-purpose CPUs, or in most cases just recompile the higher-level source code. The underlying logic will be executed regardless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
if I write a bit of software and target ARM64 and it cannot run on x86. Does that mean that x86 has a specific purpose now and is no longer a general purpose CPU?
That's not the same thing. An instruction set is an inherent aspect of a CPU; you can't have a CPU without one. Also, you can emulate or translate instruction sets between general-purpose CPUs, or in most cases just recompile the higher-level source code. The underlying logic will be executed regardless.
Oh, yes, you can.
The following examples of
– Transport triggered architecture
– Dataflow architecture
– Optical and quantum computing
represent viable, general purpose (not general availability), albeit experimental, CPU's without instruction sets. That is, none of them have anything similar to «movq $1, %r0» or «add.w %r2, %r0, %r1».
FPGA's are another and a more conventional example of a general purpose (even if specialised) CPU without an instruction set.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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…
your overall point is valid, but it’s somewhat misleading to compare single core performance alongside total SoC power.
If you run Geekbench 5 or 6 on an M1, the total package power ranges 0.3w - 5w, mostly staying below 3w. Intel and AMD can use 10x or more power to achieve similar or lower Geekbench scores.
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.
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…
Also, even without that there is ish which can run most x86 software.