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Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

arstechnica.com

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Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#41

Post by smoldesu »

f6v wrote: post #17
smoldesu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not surprising, anyone who sells iPhones is going to need a lot of chips. Gelsinger wasn't half wrong anyways - outside the consumer hardware market Apple is a no-show.

> outside the consumer hardware market Apple is a no-show. I don’t have the data, but tech companies are often full of Macs. Sometimes I also see small businesses running iMacs.

Indeed, to an almost comical extent. I worked at a Mac-only shop that spent 50+ engineering hours per-month debugging the Darwin runtime. Our product didn't ship to Mac either, so we were basically fanagling a Win32 + Linux server toolchain to work on a platform we didn't support.

Tech companies count as consumers, and many consume the Apple product even if it's to their detriment.

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#42

Post by GeekyBear »

DCKing wrote: post #37
GeekyBear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did not expect ARM would take so long to catch up with even the Apple M1 or the same core designs in the Apple A14. As mentioned in the article, you might want to pay attention to the traditional difference between what ARM promises and what it delivers. > these launch events have a history of making performance claims that don't align with what actually arrives in consumers' hands

Sure, but it's worth noting that the Cortex X3 in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is _almost_ at the level of the A14 in single core performance, just not quite there. Even if the performance bump is less than promised, they will still equal it.

It's also worth comparing process nodes.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is on TSMC 4nm compared to the A14 on TSMC 5nm.

Also, the Cortex X4 spec projections are based on the second gen TSMC 3nm process node that isn't in volume production yet. If the M3 is announced (as rumored) next week at WWDC on the first gen TSMC 3nm, we'll have some basis for comparison (at least as far as projected specs go).

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#43

Post by m0shen »

scns wrote: post #40
vlovich123 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone curious, iPhones ship 234 million a year, Watch around 60 million, iPad another 20 million. Not sure about Apple TV but let's assume that's 0. That's over 300 million CPUs a year. I doubt the total chip number for the industry though - Intel alone ships ~100M. But it's clear Apple is very likely the largest manufacturer of CPUs. * Correction: MediaTek shipped 350M units in 2020 and Qualcomm shipped 319M (d…

Correcting yourself, two thumbs up. Margins per CPU shipped? My first, thought was APL at least 7x MTK but i must be so far off here.

Yeah margin per processor shipped is a different question, and Apple probably does very well here.

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#44

Post by brookst »

smoldesu wrote: post #30
qwytw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iphone and Macs are obviously huge in the enterprise market though.

If I had a dime for every lifestyle product that was "obviously huge in the enterprise" I could fund the next WeWork in a cash deposit.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3644494/2021-the-year-...

> By 2021, this migration had become a trend. IDC claimed macOS device use across US enterprises reached 23% while iPhones accounted for 49% of business smartphones and iPads accounted for most tablets used in the workplace.

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#45

Post by Aromasin »

giantrobot wrote: post #36
Aromasin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of an unfair statement but I do see where he's coming from. Apple make consumer phones and laptops, professional workstations, wearables, headphones, and TV/Home products. We've yet to see an M series chip for products in any of the following fields: Cloud Computing, Computer Vision, Data Center Solutions, Edge Computing, High Performance Computing, IT Infrastructure, Network Connectivity, Robotics, Securi…

> How can you call them the number one chip maker when they don't compete in any of those markets, Because they produce north of 300 million SoCs every year. They may not end up the number one chipmaker every single year but they're in the top ten and depending on other companies' demand vs Apple's demand may end up number one.

If we're talking about manufacturing volume as the sole definition for "number one chip maker", then the idea that Apple might be first is frankly laughable. If we discounted pure foundries (TSMC, UMC, Global Foundries) they'd struggle to scrape top 5 at the best of times. Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD and the like work in the range of billions, or near enough. Currently Intel has 76.7% of the laptop chip market share alone; that's before you start considering their server, edge, and network markets. If we start including trailing edge chips, from the likes of Texas Instruments, Micron, Broadcom, etcetera, then Apple would be a small drop in the pond. Even if Apple ate up the entire consumer market, they'd still struggle to compete with the rest of the industry on volume.

I don't think people appreciate the obscene number of leading edge chips that go into the industrial sectors. I've seen more chips go into a single Industry 4.0 factory than I have to an entire states Micro Center inventory.

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#46

Post by smoldesu »

brookst wrote: post #44
smoldesu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a dime for every lifestyle product that was "obviously huge in the enterprise" I could fund the next WeWork in a cash deposit.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3644494/2021-the-year-... > By 2021, this migration had become a trend. IDC claimed macOS device use across US enterprises reached 23% while iPhones accounted for 49% of business smartphones and iPads accounted for most tablets used in the workplace.

Having enterprise customers and being a lifestyle product is not mutually exclusive, especially in American business.

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#47

Post by brookst »

smoldesu wrote: post #46
brookst wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3644494/2021-the-year-... > By 2021, this migration had become a trend. IDC claimed macOS device use across US enterprises reached 23% while iPhones accounted for 49% of business smartphones and iPads accounted for most tablets used in the workplace.

Having enterprise customers and being a lifestyle product is not mutually exclusive, especially in American business.

You're obsessed with this "lifestyle" designation. Ok, fine. Apple's a lifestyle company, whatever that means.

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#48

Post by smoldesu »

brookst wrote: post #47
smoldesu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having enterprise customers and being a lifestyle product is not mutually exclusive, especially in American business.

You're obsessed with this "lifestyle" designation. Ok, fine. Apple's a lifestyle company, whatever that means.

Apple is obsessed with their lifestyle designation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE

They publish ads and write all their copy with the intention of framing their products as anything other than a computer.

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#49

Post by brookst »

smoldesu wrote: post #48
brookst wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're obsessed with this "lifestyle" designation. Ok, fine. Apple's a lifestyle company, whatever that means.

Apple is obsessed with their lifestyle designation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE They publish ads and write all their copy with the intention of framing their products as anything other than a computer.

This seems to offend you for some reason.

Apple's just doing age-old value selling, where you promote the benefits of a product rather than the features. See https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/value-based-selling

Re: Arm announces the Cortex X4 for 2024, plus a 14-core M2-fighter

#50

Post by als0 »

dagmx wrote: post #32
GeekyBear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did not expect ARM would take so long to catch up with even the Apple M1 or the same core designs in the Apple A14. As mentioned in the article, you might want to pay attention to the traditional difference between what ARM promises and what it delivers. > these launch events have a history of making performance claims that don't align with what actually arrives in consumers' hands

Part of that though is that Qualcomm etc tend to skimp versus the recommended cache values.

This. Vendors skimp on cache size because of overall cost. But cache size is just as critical as CPU core when it comes to performance. Apple doesn't sell chips to anyone else, so they have no pressure to have small caches.
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