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Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
271–280 of 323 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wrong, the majority of Apple’s thermal efficiency comes from superior design which in turn comes from the fact that they were able to design it from the ground up with no backwards compatibility requirements (since they don’t have any customers of the chip besides themselves).
This is false. Apples arm chips are compatible with the normal arm instruction set. Evidenced by Linux trivially running on it.
Well it’s an ARM chip. it’s still not backwards compatible..
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#273Reading this thread, the delusional thinking is thick!
I’m hearing that we need to wait until Intel moves to 5nm to really compare. When that means that the whole PC market cedes the crown to Apple, who is not slowing down. Apple is on its second generation on 5nm and the x86 crowd as yet to show any response!
That it’s only because Apple is on 5nm that they’re competitive. Which is crazy, since we can directly compare slightly older chips made on a 7nm process and Apple comes out way ahead.
That the competitors like Qualcomm are not optimizing for performance. When the reality is much simpler. The benchmarks are this bad from Qualcomm because they’re optimizing for their wallets.
The reality is simple: for a decade, Apple has had the fastest phones, and the fastest tablets. Are you PC guys ready to admit Apple has the fastest computers?
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#274In general what I see as a massive issue for ARM and big win for x86 is standardization (or in case of ARM lack of) - Can you run ARM system on any ARM processor, or are you limited by core architecture, endianness (BE/LE), and RAM addressing, forcing you to recompile for specific SoC? I honestly don't know what are the exact limitations. - Can you boot any ARM processor in one specific way like x86 processor? No you…
That used to be true, but ARM has been standardizing these aspects now for a long time. Modern ARM systems can use ACPI for example.
Android phones have different builds because the hardware varies a lot, and because the OS is an integrated part of the product offering. It's not like the PC space where the hardware makers can't compete by better integrating the OS.
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#275You're looking in the wrong place. The magic comes from TSMC, not Apple. Apple's major innovation is in using their unrivaled bank account to pay TSMC for exclusivity on their newest fabrication technology. As competitors gain access to that TSMC technology they will match or beat Apple's performance. And if Intel succeeds in reclaiming the fabrication technology lead from TSMC (we'll see) then Intel will beat Apple'…
To reach 87% of the perf of a 12900K at a max clock of 3.2 GHz versus the 12900K‘s monstrous 5.2 GHz, the M1 has something like a 75% IPC advantage. Are you seriously claiming that you expect a single node shrink from Intel 10nm (roughly equivalent to TSMC 7nm) to Intel 7nm (equivalent TSMC 5nm, the M1’s node) to give Intel an enormous 75% increase in IPC such that they’d be able to compete on performance per watt by…
I'm not claiming that I think the parent's claim is true, but Intel really fucked up 10nm, and I mean worse than they fucked up the shrink to 14nm which fundamentally changed their unit economics.
So let's be clear, it's not like the good old days where Intel might get ahead by moving to 65nm earlier. TSMC 5nm is competing against Intel 10nm at a point where Intel 10nm can't really beat Intel 14nm. I know the actual measurements are bullshit (I've got flak for complaining about angstroms before) but TSMC 5nm is a long way ahead.
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
> X86 throws at least one more limiter just for good measure: the TSO memory model, which causes memory effects to have dependencies between them in cases where they wouldn’t on arm. Apple's M1 supports TSO (on ARM, obviously).
Isn't that only used to support x86 emulation (i.e. apps for the older macs)?
Yea, and that emulation is fast as all hell !
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#277You're looking in the wrong place. The magic comes from TSMC, not Apple. Apple's major innovation is in using their unrivaled bank account to pay TSMC for exclusivity on their newest fabrication technology. As competitors gain access to that TSMC technology they will match or beat Apple's performance. And if Intel succeeds in reclaiming the fabrication technology lead from TSMC (we'll see) then Intel will beat Apple'…
lol this will age well. i remember designing CPUs at intel when they had like a ~2.5 gen process lead (literally 4-5 years) and the result was still barely better than competition. what outsiders don’t realize is intel management never had to deal with competition. they spent their entire careers fighting each other in petty internecine political battles. if you think intel vs amd is a feud, you haven’t seen intel ar…
(Ex-Intel, agree)
What do you think of the new management? Too difficult to turn the tanker?
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comparing currently available CPUs on the market is pretty fair.
That is definitely true, but you can't reach any conclusion on the cost of the x86 baggage by comparing different process nodes. It has way too much influence on the end result to be ignored. In a few months we will have both AMD and Apple on the same size, so we will finally get some idea of how the baggage compare then. It won't be a long situation, Apple will relatively soon after release a new on a smaller size a…
You have had the same fab processes for years on phone chips and Apple was winning every year. The fact the chip is in the chassis of a computer does not suddenly change the game in favour of AMD.
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#279Reading this thread, the delusional thinking is thick! I’m hearing that we need to wait until Intel moves to 5nm to really compare. When that means that the whole PC market cedes the crown to Apple, who is not slowing down. Apple is on its second generation on 5nm and the x86 crowd as yet to show any response! That it’s only because Apple is on 5nm that they’re competitive. Which is crazy, since we can directly compa…
Your comment is needlessly argumentative. No one is saying they aren't good chips.
Also if it isn't the process it arguably makes it easier for them to catch up because other than the semi-cultural stuff like EDA tooling changing a design is much easier than changing a process.
Now they have a real target to hit I expect the gap to close, especially if Intel can convert their IDM concept into a real battle with TSMC
Re: Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?
#2801. Apple literally pays billions to TSMC to build a new fab 2. So Apple gets exclusive rights to those new fabs for the first 2 years 3. As a result, Apple gets access to the latest performance benefits of the newest nodes 2 years before anyone else 4. Additionally, since Apple chips are SoC - EVERYTHING (gpu, memory controller, memory, cpu, etc) gets fabbed on thr newest highest performing node. This has never been…
Then why was Apple winning against every other phone chip before they got access to 5nm? The M1 is the first time Apple has had exclusive access to a node in its decades plus history of making chips, and yet it has had the fastest chips for a decade.