Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, the M1 chip is very good, the question here is what made the M1 perform better than a i9 and I would argue it is because of the 5nm technology. If the M1 had only 8b transistors and was using 14nm technology I really doubt that it would beat the i9.
5nm and 14nm are marketing names, not x^2/y^2 times better statistics. If you normalize them (i.e. actually look at transistor density) you'll find the difference is much smaller than you'd expect. TSMC 5nm is indeed the better process though but it alone isn't the primary driver of what makes the M1 good. Flipping it around I'm not as sure the i9 would come out on top all other things being equal between the 2. I'm…
Of course there are, and those people are computer engineers or electrical engineers (and I'm sure many software folks as well, there are a lot of smart people in the world).
>How people think they can just boil it down to just is honestly confusing.
I would wager you a bar tab that those people are all ill-informed developers. I am no expert in software, let alone hardware, but I am always suprised how often I see professional developers bemoan the fact that their laptop 'uses 12 gigs of ram' to run the OS + a few chrome tabs. A huge amount of devs don't know how their OS manages memory, let alone the ins and outs of the design and operation of modern microprocessors.