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Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

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Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is your actual headline: "Intel just matched Apple Silicon. Seriously." You're basing the headline on a single FP64 test for a $600 laptop. Come on man. If your headline was being honest, it'd say "Apple A18 Pro is still 3-4x more efficient and significantly faster than Intel's low end chip in common tasks". If this isn't an undisclosed sponsored review, then it's just misleading clickbait for Youtube views. It'…

I had three YouTube titles, this one got about 2x the watch time as the other two, so I let YT pick it. For technical readers, I write my blog posts. I don't have to (I lose money hosting that thing and all it's mostly just free training data for Anthropic, OpenAI, et all), but I enjoy writing, so I do it anyway. If you don't like the YT game, please subscribe to the blog's RSS feed. I much prefer text over video.

Just because this title did the best doesn't make it not misleading. If you are a serious reviewer, it wouldn't have been an option in the first place.

You can make an even more outlandish title and get even more views. Doesn't make it right.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Intel's Core 5 320 is almost certainly bigger than the A18 Pro CPU.

They both have 2 P-cores and 4 E-cores.

Yes, they both have the same and Intel cores are known to be bigger than AMD and Apple cores but poor in area/performance.

So I'm not sure what your original post about smaller cores is all about considering that the A18 Pro CPU is almost certainly smaller in actual die size.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is your actual headline: "Intel just matched Apple Silicon. Seriously." You're basing the headline on a single FP64 test for a $600 laptop. Come on man. If your headline was being honest, it'd say "Apple A18 Pro is still 3-4x more efficient and significantly faster than Intel's low end chip in common tasks". If this isn't an undisclosed sponsored review, then it's just misleading clickbait for Youtube views. It'…

I had three YouTube titles, this one got about 2x the watch time as the other two, so I let YT pick it. For technical readers, I write my blog posts. I don't have to (I lose money hosting that thing and all it's mostly just free training data for Anthropic, OpenAI, et all), but I enjoy writing, so I do it anyway. If you don't like the YT game, please subscribe to the blog's RSS feed. I much prefer text over video.

You are trying to launder responsibility for a clickbait title to a computer program. Then you try to shift the topic to the public good you are providing.

I don’t think it’s wrong to use clickbait, but come on, own up to it. You consciously chose to “let [YouTube] pick it.”

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#124
post #8
post #4

The improved efficiency is great! The Apple Neo was still 2x faster for graphics and around 1.4x faster for single core cpu. And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series. It is strange that this chip is so crazy efficient though. I would love to know the details of exactly why it is? It seems like some new tech or process? I do want 1.5x battery life for free out of my nex…

Apple has been working ruthlessly on battery efficiency for a long time because of the phones and their tendency to minimize battery sizes on Macs for thinness. The exact design of the cores, how they’re scheduled, the way background stuff is handled on MacOS. All of it. The chips are made on a fantastic process too, but that alone isn’t it. For example they’ve been putting the ability to drop refresh rate really low…

> their tendency to minimize battery sizes on Macs for thinness.

Is this actually a thing? Macbook Pro goes up to 100 Wh and almost nobody goes above that because it's the highest capacity battery you don't need special permission to have in a carry on at the airport.

> But add in other motherboard components, the screen, the OS, the software and system libraries, all are optimized together to hit those numbers.

I always find this argument weird because there is so little actual "together" having anything to do with it. Are TSMC's current process nodes efficient? Yes. Can you save power by dropping the refresh rate? Yes. Do the teams doing these things need to coordinate with each other somehow rather than each doing their part independently? Not really.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#125
post #44

> no headphone jack I am fully old man screaming at the clouds here, but what does this cost for Dell to include? I insist on a wired headset - telecommunications already barely works, I don't want to add wireless+battery problems into the mix.

3.5mm TRS jacks might cost 10 cents to include and then hundreds of dollars to service when they break. The issue is not the BOM cost.

That’s the cost of doing it too cheaply: I’ve never had an Apple device fail but multiple cheap PCs were obviously designed by some MBA who overrode the mechanical engineers to save $0.10.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#126
post #45

It's long been possible (since Alder Lake at the latest) to tune Intel CPUs for task energy consumption competitive with Apple Silicon, but bone-headed OEMs including Apple always tuned them the other way, wasting a lot of power for tiny performance gains. It is inappropriate to say that you evaluated the perf per watt on a Core Ultra 7 265K because what you really evaluated was how HP, Lenovo, or Dell configured tha…

Max power Intel consumer chips are already losing to Apple chips in raw performance, especially ST. Tuning them for better perf/watt by turning down the Ghz would just make them even less competitive in performance.

- Performance

- Performance/watt

- Die area

These are the 3 things determine a competitive chip. You can increase perf/watt but decrease performance. You can increase performance by giving the chip a lot of cache and transistors but it's more costly to manufacture.

The problem is that Intel chips are losing in all 3 areas simultaneously against Apple chips. They are slower, less efficient, and the CPU cores are bigger physically.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#127

> no headphone jack I am fully old man screaming at the clouds here, but what does this cost for Dell to include? I insist on a wired headset - telecommunications already barely works, I don't want to add wireless+battery problems into the mix.

Agreed, losing the headphone jack on something the size of a phone was already questionable space saving for a bigger battery. But on something the size of a laptop, it is a joke. I'm sure it has more to do with saving $1 per laptop than any user benefit.

More likely just ecosystem consistency.

Selling wired headphones to wireless-iPhone users for wired-MacBooks could (arguably, maybe) create Apple sponsored interoperability dissonance.

MacBook charging mats and wireless Thunderbolt coming in early 2018... /h

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They both have 2 P-cores and 4 E-cores.

Yes, they both have the same and Intel cores are known to be bigger than AMD and Apple cores but poor in area/performance. So I'm not sure what your original post about smaller cores is all about considering that the A18 Pro CPU is almost certainly smaller in actual die size.

It's not about die area at all. It's about the SSD and chipset and WiFi etc. each using power on top of what the CPU uses, and ending up as a much larger percentage of system power draw for a 15W CPU than for the same system with a 60W CPU that has around four times the multi-thread performance by having four times as many of the exact same cores.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Pretty much every general-purpose calculation on your computer that isn’t an integer is done with FP64. AI may not use it and games may prefer FP32 for many things, but your CPU certainly does a ton of FP64 work.

Which workloads?

Literally every workload not named above. It’s the default for a non-integer number.

* Web rendering and almost all web apps (see the JS number type)

* Most things in a game not done on the GPU

* Audio processing

* Most GUI processing/rendering

* Every miscellaneous/scalar calculation these days

Believe it or not, on a CPU this adds up to a lot more than the work you get doing AI processing.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#130
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had three YouTube titles, this one got about 2x the watch time as the other two, so I let YT pick it. For technical readers, I write my blog posts. I don't have to (I lose money hosting that thing and all it's mostly just free training data for Anthropic, OpenAI, et all), but I enjoy writing, so I do it anyway. If you don't like the YT game, please subscribe to the blog's RSS feed. I much prefer text over video.

You are trying to launder responsibility for a clickbait title to a computer program. Then you try to shift the topic to the public good you are providing. I don’t think it’s wrong to use clickbait, but come on, own up to it. You consciously chose to “let [YouTube] pick it.”

I never said it wasn't clickbait.

If you don't like it, either install DeArrow or subscribe to my blog, where I tone it down for the more technical audience. (Or block/ignore my content, no skin off my back!)

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