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Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

hackaday.com

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

#91

Post by hannasanarion »

Danox wrote: post #86
bhouston wrote: 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…

They have control over the OS and the design of the chip, Intel does not…

Intel doesn't have control of the design of their chips?

Jokes aside, I don't think the engineering incentive case can be overstated. Apple has been working to squeeze every milliwatt of energy efficiency out of their chips since they started making their own iphone chips in 2010. Their chip is a win if it lets the user have phone battery longer.

Intel and AMD have never been on a power budget. Their chips are a win if they can crank the benchmark performance numbers just a little higher, electricity cost be damned.

This is what you get when you spend 15 years optimizing for energy efficiency per $ instead of raw power per $: a workstation cpu that doesn't even need a fan.

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

#92

Post by philistine »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #38
re-thc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series. We really need to get over generalization like "phone CPU". Times have changed. Phone or not really isn't the focus. Per core the A series (cough phone) isn't that much slower than equivalent M series. It's literally the same family just with some extra features, more power, etc.

Phone is a sort of short hand for what tradeoffs are likely in the chip. A phone processor is going to prioritize efficiency and thermals over raw performance. Mobile will strike a different balance. While desktop likely prioritizes raw power over performance per watt, thermals be damned!

The biggest tell of the A-series' chip concessions are the ports. A first for Apple, only one USB-C port is Thunderbolt, the other one is USB 2.0 speed. Apple made a computer with a chip made for devices with one port.

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

#93

Post by firecall »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #33

> 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.

For a school laptop it’s a unfortunate omission IMHO.

Cheap wired headphones are the default choice in the classroom, in my experience.

Bluetooth headphones that need charging aren’t really what you want.

It’s easy enough to get cheap USB headphone adapter, but still, I t would nice if it was built in.

Apple knows what they are doing sometimes it seems! :-)

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

#94

Post by baby_souffle »

scarlehoff wrote: post #63
jackdoe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then hundreds of dollars to service when they break Can you explain what do you mean by that? It is quite rare to see broken trrs jack on a laptop, at least I have never experienced one, nor on walkman or anything getting heavy plug/unplug use. I thought it is an issue in reducing the cost to manufacture the case or something.

The jack actually broke on my old xps. Changing it with an aliexpress replacement took about 15 minutes and something like 3€ So yeah, they break, but they are (or used to be?) quite cheap to fix (and this was one of the super thin 13" xps)

> So yeah, they break, but they are (or used to be?) quite cheap to fix (and this was one of the super thin 13" xps)

I had a slim XPS13 and IIRC the headphone jack was on it's own little board. That makes it quick/easy/cheap to repair if you know what you're doing / have the service manual / are comfortable taking it apart.

Not all things are designed that way; sometimes the jack is right on the main board and most people that buy dell laptops are not going to DIY through ali express; they're going to use up phone support time, require a shipping label, technician time ... etc.

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

#95

Post by pertymcpert »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #87
oofbey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Top500 benchmark is biased here. It’s a supercomputing benchmark which means it’s going to heavily weight SIMD and float64 performance, which are things that rarely matter for everyday computing. SIMD has uses in the real world - image or video editing, data crunching, graphics. But consumers basically never use fp64 any more, and so many modern chips have next to zero performance on them. That could easi…

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?

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

#96

Post by ben-schaaf »

xnx wrote: post #72
anticorporate wrote: post #6

Rather than the Hackaday article, which doesn't add anything to the original, here's Jeff's actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2B7oI0FYqo and post: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/excited-for-intel-eff...

Sounds like a good option. Still having fans keeps it way behind the Neo in my mind.

Given how appalling the thermal throttling behaviour is on the Neo - sustained workloads can lose up to 50% performance, making it substantially slower than an M1 Air - you should instead be asking for a fan in the Neo.

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

#97

Post by 15155 »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #54
jackdoe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then hundreds of dollars to service when they break Can you explain what do you mean by that? It is quite rare to see broken trrs jack on a laptop, at least I have never experienced one, nor on walkman or anything getting heavy plug/unplug use. I thought it is an issue in reducing the cost to manufacture the case or something.

Does anyone even do repairs anymore? Swap a motherboard and that's it.

Motherboard companies do hot air work, absolutely.

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

#98

Post by pertymcpert »

geerlingguy wrote: post #28
slashdave wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M4's GPU does not support 64 float. So, yeah. No hardware support, so what are you expecting? The fact that it comes close is pretty impressive.

These tests were done on the CPU cores, not on the GPU. In every test I ran the A18 chip blew past Intel's Core 5 on GPU performance. There were a series of other benchmarks too, but the Hackaday article only highlights HPL as that was the benchmark that changed my perspective on Intel a bit. This was the first X86 chip to trade blows in efficiency (and idle power draw) with Apple's M3/M4 (I don't have any M5 to test…

I really think you should use a more representative benchmark. Heck, even just take Chrome and run some browser benchmark on it like speedometer.

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

#99

Post by 15155 »

jojobas wrote: post #83
15155 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since when is damage covered by warranty?

When you are unable to prove the issue wasn't a workmanship defect, also companies often eat these costs out of goodwill.

Furthermore, the warranty determination isn't free, either: in addition to the repair itself, some (likely multiple) employee's time was spent determining whether or not an issue existed at all, whether or not the issue was covered, whether it could be fixed, and facilitating the whole transaction.

Repairs also don't result in 100% yield. Depending on your company policy you might be eating the whole unit because of a mishap or just plain stubborn components/physical realities.

Repair fees don't cover all of the organizational moving parts required to actually carry out repairs.

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

#100

Post by stouset »

LexGray wrote: post #71
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #33

> 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.

I want to say I’ve broken every headphone jack I ever had. Yanking on them, debris getting in the switch, debris triggering the optical if it had one. 3.5 was never a great design. Too many physical ways for it to break, from static from a loose connection, debris stuck inside like pebbles getting jammed, debris stuck under the switch preventing recognition. False positive or accidental triggers that take a while to…

And every set of headphones I’ve ever had either has an incredibly thick cable or the cable has failed due to repeated wear.

I bought a pair of AirPods and have never looked back. If you have a pair of wired studio headphones, there are a million USB-C adapters you can buy to have this functionality. Or migrate eventually to a set of USB-C native headphones. This is such a non-issue.

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