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Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

chipsandcheese.com

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Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#81

Post by wamatt »

pdpi wrote: post #48
bluGill wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need ARM? There is nothing magic, most CPUs are an internal instruction set with a decoder on top. bad as x86 is, decoding is not the issue. they can make lower power use x86 if they want. They can also make mips or riskv chips that are good.

There's nothing special about ARM, sure. Hence "for whatever reason". Still, ARM is a known quantity, and the leading alternative to x86 for desktop CPUs. The article is titled "reaching desktop performance". We know how Apple's hardware performs on native workloads. We know how it performs emulating x86 workloads (and why). Surely "... and this is how this hardware measures up against the other guys trying to achiev…

>I can't be the only person who reads "reaching desktop performance" and wonders "you mean comparable to the M1, or to the M3 Ultra?"

You're not. IMHO it's a fairly obvious, narrow and uncontroversial observation (and hence why its the top comment). That said, I personally still enjoyed the back and forth as many others one could imagine. There can be value in the counterarguments from multiple other usernames, as this facilitates sharpening reasoning for the conclusion from readers. (even when the original premise stays in tact)

The lack of others agreeing could be the result of many reasons. IMHO, a not insignificant one could be the incentive structure skews heavily towards lurking as HN rightfully disincentives "me too" type replies and not everyone always has something interesting to add

2c not an epistemologist ymmv

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#83

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

voidmain0001 wrote: post #67

Already usurped by Arm C1 Ultra. https://www.androidauthority.com/arm-c1-cpu-mali-g1-gpu-deep...

The C1 Ultra looks really powerful. 128 kb L1D cache on it's own is a ~10% IPC improvement that should let it pull firmly ahead of the x86 competition which is very stuck at 32kb due to the legacy 4k page size.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#84

Post by GoblinSlayer »

ghosty141 wrote: post #53
amelius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say my company makes systems for in-flight entertainment, with content from my company. I am looking for a CPU. I don't want to confront my users with "Please enter your Apple ID" or any other unexpected messages that I have no control over. Is Apple M series an option for me?

Why should it be? All he is saying: We currently have products in a similar product category (arm based desktop computers) that are widely used and have known benchmark scores (and general reviews) and it would make sense if I publish a new cpu for the same product category ("Reaching Desktop Performance" implies that) that I'd compare it to the known alternatives. In the end you can just run Asahi on your macbook, t…

Does Apple allow benchmarks on Asahi Linux?

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#85

Post by CyberDildonics »

adrian_b wrote: post #25
Incipient wrote: post #7

Without being a cpu geek, a lot of the branch prediction details go over my head, however generally a good review. I liked the detail of performance on more complex workloads where IPC can get muddy when you need more instructions. I feel these days however, for any comparison of performance, power envelope needs to be included (I realise this is dependent on the final chip)

ARM Cortex-X925 achieves indeed a very good IPC, but it has competitive performance only in general-purpose applications that cannot benefit from using array operations (i.e. the vector instructions and registers). The results shown in the parent article for the integer tests of SPEC CPU2017 are probably representative for Cortex-X925 when running this kind of applications. While the parent article shows AMD Zen 5 ha…

I don't know where the focus on vector instructions comes from. 6 128-bit instructions per clock is not bad at all. 512 bit wide vector instruction being used are exotic.

What most people want is interactivity and fast web pages which doesn't have much to do with wide vector instructions (except possibly for optimized video decoding).

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#86

Post by jayd16 »

pdpi wrote: post #14
ezst wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only matter (to me, at least) if those Apple chips were propping up an open platform that suits my needs. As things stand today, procuring an M chip represents a commitment to the Apple software ecosystem, which Apple made abundantly clear doesn't optimize for user needs. Those marginally faster CPU cycles happen on a time scale that anyway can't offset the wasted time fighting MacOS and re-building decade…

Sure. Insofar as Apple Silicon beats these things, "I'll take less powerful hardware if it means I'm not stuck with the Apple ecosystem" is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff to make. Two things, though. First, I don't like making blind tradeoffs. If what I need (for whatever reason) is a really beefy ARM CPU, I'd like to know what the "Apple-less tax" costs me (if anything!) Second, the status quo is that Apple Silicon…

The problem is you can't really compare things apples to apples anyway. You're always comparing different builds and different OSes to get a sense of CPU performance.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#87

Post by geerlingguy »

pdpi wrote: post #2

Kind of weird to see an article about high-performance ARM cores without a single reference to Apple or how this hardware compares to M4 or M5 cores.

Chips and Cheese focuses on architecture and chip design, and I think a lot of the tooling is less refined on macOS, so the comparison graphs can't quite get the same depth on Apple's chips. That's just a guess.

But I did some comparisons when I tested the same Dell GB10 hardware late last year: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/dells-version-dgx-spa...

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#88

Post by GoblinSlayer »

charcircuit wrote: post #63
amelius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not produce general purpose computing parts. This is an industry blog, not a consumer oriented blog.

M4 and M5 are literally general purpose computing parts. Apple literally owns the most profitable general purpose computing platform with the iPhone.

iPhone is an Apple controlled computing platform.

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#89

Post by joha4270 »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #83
voidmain0001 wrote: post #67

Already usurped by Arm C1 Ultra. https://www.androidauthority.com/arm-c1-cpu-mali-g1-gpu-deep...

The C1 Ultra looks really powerful. 128 kb L1D cache on it's own is a ~10% IPC improvement that should let it pull firmly ahead of the x86 competition which is very stuck at 32kb due to the legacy 4k page size.

I'm sorry, I'm clearly missing something but why would page size impact L1 cache size?

Re: Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

#90

Post by charcircuit »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #88
charcircuit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M4 and M5 are literally general purpose computing parts. Apple literally owns the most profitable general purpose computing platform with the iPhone.

iPhone is an Apple controlled computing platform.

That does not stop it from being intended for general purpose use cases as opposed to targeted ones like gaming.
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