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ARM should gain about 30% in a single gen to be competitive with Apple/Qualcomm processors. It's going to be interesting to see if they can achieve this. Ultima
by webaholic 3y ago
ARM should gain about 30% in a single gen to be competitive with Apple/Qualcomm processors. It's going to be interesting to see if they can achieve this. Ultimately, competition is good for the consumer. Android phones are so far behind Apple, it is not funny anymore.
- ksec 3y agoThey are not far off. The Cortex X4 Running at 3.3.Ghz on a N4 gets GB6 ~2250. #681.8/Ghz The Apple A17 Running at 3.8 Ghz on a N3 gets GB6 ~2950. #776.3/Ghz On a clock per clock basis, A17 is only about 14% faster. Consider X4 had 15% IPC uplift and resulted in real world 11% performance improvement on GB6. And they are claiming X5 would have the largest YoY IPC uplift, which I think we could consider to be 15%+ or 20%, a Cortex X5 would have similar if not slightly better than A17 performance on a Clock to Clock basis. And it would be good enough for Microsoft / ARM PC.
- aurareturn 3y agoClockspeed is influenced by design choices. ARM can't just crank up the clock speed to match Apple's chip. Another thing I'd like to see is perf/watt.
- eklitzke 3y agoApple lets their CPUs and GPUs run at a higher max frequency/power draw, but you're absolutely right that in clock-to-clock performance they're only marginally better in both CPU and GPU performance.
- aurareturn 3y agoIf you clock CPUs low enough, many CPUs in the past could match Apple in clock-to-clock performance. This is because clock speed does not scale with performance.
- ksec 3y ago>This is because clock speed does not scale with performance. You may want to have a word with AMD and Intel about that. >many CPUs in the past could match Apple in clock-to-clock performance. Are we talking about synthetic benchmarks or real world work loads.
- aurareturn 3y agoClock speed does not scale linearly with performance. Synthetic. Something like Geekbench.
- mort96 3y ago"The absolute top end Android processors get about 76% of the performance of Apple's processors" isn't the strong argument you may think it is tbh. Per clock performance is uninteresting (it's not like performance is linear with clock speed anyway, and target clock speed is a huge part of the CPU, so I don't even understand why you'd want to adjust for it even in principle in this comparison).
- hajile 3y agoPer-clock performance is THE metric. Apple can't sustain those peak clocks for more than a few seconds before throttling down. Once both chips are running at a sustainable 2-2.5GHz, the IPC starts mattering a lot.
- mort96 3y agoIf Apple can't sustain those clock speeds for long, that's reflected in the benchmark result. Benchmarks and real-world performance are the only metrics which matter in the end. And higher clock speed doesn't proportionally improve either real world metrics or benchmark results, so "benchmark score divided by clock speed" is a useless metric.
- hajile 3y agoGeekerwan has a great review that covers this in their iPhone 15 Pro review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSCTlB1dhO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSCTlB1dhO0 The CPU peaked out at 14 Watts in multicore Geekbench. That's close to the peak CPU power consumption of the entire M1 chip in devices many times larger than an iPhone. GeekerWan had it throttling 200-300MHz when simply running specInt/specFP. It essentially throttles down to the same speed of the iPhone 14 at slightly higher wattage. For mobile devices, real-world peak CPU performance hasn't gotten much better than my aging iPhone 12 because most of the extra performance has come at the expense of heat/power.
- ksec 3y agoJust want to say thank you. Sometimes I get tired and I can't be bothered to do their homework to get all the links for them. But I am glad on HN people will fill the gap.
- nathanasmith 3y agoSo the A17 still benchmarks over 30% faster than the Cortex X4 in single threaded tasks. Sounds about right based on my subjective experience.
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]