5 ms·

> When properly cooled, the Intel silicon tends to perform a lot better. Of course, but the average Joe does not want to wear ear protection when running their

> When properly cooled, the Intel silicon tends to perform a lot better. Of course, but the average Joe does not want to wear ear protection when running their laptop. Nor do they want the battery to last 40 minutes or have it be huge brick, or have to pour liquid nitrogen on it to not get it to not thermal throttle. Apple innovated by making chips that fit the form and function most people need in their personal devices. They don't need to be the absolute fastest, but innovation isn't solely tied to the computing power of a processor. It make sense that Intel excels in the market segment where people do need to wear ear protection to go near their products. If they need to crank in an extra 30 watts to achieve their new better compute then so be it. We don't know the specifics of the conversations between Apple and Intel. Hopefully for Intel it was just the fact that they didn't want to innovate for personal computing processors and not that they couldn't.

timschmidt 3y ago
It seems like you think I'm trying to dunk on Apple. I am not. Apple Silicon is a great first showing for them. Performance simply isn't better than Ryzen APUs running in the same power envelope. And power usage is what you'd expect of silicon running on the latest node. Further, some of Apple's choices - bringing memory on package, only two display outputs - caused regressions for their users compared to the previous Intel offerings. I wouldn't call what Apple did innovation - they followed predictable development trajectories - more integration. They licensed ARM's instruction set, Imagination's PowerVR GPU, most of the major system busses (PCIe, Thunderbolt, USB 3, Displayport, etc), they bonded chiplets together with TSMC's packaging and chip-to-chip communication technologies, and they made extensions (like optional x86 memory ordering for all ARM instructions which removes a lot of the work of emulation). Incidentally, Apple kicked off it's chip design efforts by purchasing PA Semi. Those folks had all the power management chip design expertise already. But again, it's been a good first showing for Apple. I think they were smart to ship on-package DRAM in a consumer device. Now is about the right time for the CPU to be absorbing DRAM, as can be seen by AMD's 3D VCache in another form. And it's cool for Apple folks to have their own cool thing. Yay y'all. But I've run Linux for 20 years, I've run Linux on every computer I can get my hands on in that time, and through that lens, Apple silicon performs like any x86 APU in a midrange laptop or desktop. And as regards noise, I never hear the fans on my 7800x3D / 3090Ti, and it is very very noticeably faster than my M1 Mac. Apple Silicon's great, it's just for laptops and midrange desktops right now.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > I wouldn't call what Apple did innovation - they followed predictable development trajectories - more integration By this yardstick, nobody in semiconductors has ever innovated.
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    Well to be fair there is an awful lot of copying and extending in place.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > to be fair there is an awful lot of copying and extending in place That's how technology proliferates. The point is if the M1 wasn't innovative, that rules out pretty much everything AMD, Intel and potentially even NVIDIA have done in the last three decades.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        Did they do anything in those three decades that hadn't been dreamt of and projected out sometime in the 60s? Architecturally, sure doesn't seem like it. I'd say a lot more innovation happens on the process side. Manufacturing. All the architecture changes look like things mainframes did decades ago.
- charrondev 3y ago
  Somehow you are comparing Apple’s first gen laptop/iPad chip to a a desktop setup requiring 10x the power consumption and 10x the physical size (for the chips and all the cooling required). The power envelope for these chips is very different and they prioritize different things.
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    That's my point. You got it. Go you.
ericmay 3y ago
It's always curious to me how Apple's superior products are somehow some other company's fault.

timschmidt 3y ago

It seems like you think I'm trying to dunk on Apple. I am not. Apple Silicon is a great first showing for them. Performance simply isn't better than Ryzen APUs running in the same power envelope. And power usage is what you'd expect of silicon running on the latest node. Further, some of Apple's choices - bringing memory on package, only two display outputs - caused regressions for their users compared to the previous Intel offerings. I wouldn't call what Apple did innovation - they followed predictable development trajectories - more integration. They licensed ARM's instruction set, Imagination's PowerVR GPU, most of the major system busses (PCIe, Thunderbolt, USB 3, Displayport, etc), they bonded chiplets together with TSMC's packaging and chip-to-chip communication technologies, and they made extensions (like optional x86 memory ordering for all ARM instructions which removes a lot of the work of emulation). Incidentally, Apple kicked off it's chip design efforts by purchasing PA Semi. Those folks had all the power management chip design expertise already. But again, it's been a good first showing for Apple. I think they were smart to ship on-package DRAM in a consumer device. Now is about the right time for the CPU to be absorbing DRAM, as can be seen by AMD's 3D VCache in another form. And it's cool for Apple folks to have their own cool thing. Yay y'all. But I've run Linux for 20 years, I've run Linux on every computer I can get my hands on in that time, and through that lens, Apple silicon performs like any x86 APU in a midrange laptop or desktop. And as regards noise, I never hear the fans on my 7800x3D / 3090Ti, and it is very very noticeably faster than my M1 Mac. Apple Silicon's great, it's just for laptops and midrange desktops right now.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> I wouldn't call what Apple did innovation - they followed predictable development trajectories - more integration By this yardstick, nobody in semiconductors has ever innovated.
- timschmidt 3y ago
  Well to be fair there is an awful lot of copying and extending in place.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > to be fair there is an awful lot of copying and extending in place That's how technology proliferates. The point is if the M1 wasn't innovative, that rules out pretty much everything AMD, Intel and potentially even NVIDIA have done in the last three decades.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      Did they do anything in those three decades that hadn't been dreamt of and projected out sometime in the 60s? Architecturally, sure doesn't seem like it. I'd say a lot more innovation happens on the process side. Manufacturing. All the architecture changes look like things mainframes did decades ago.
charrondev 3y ago
Somehow you are comparing Apple’s first gen laptop/iPad chip to a a desktop setup requiring 10x the power consumption and 10x the physical size (for the chips and all the cooling required). The power envelope for these chips is very different and they prioritize different things.
- timschmidt 3y ago
  That's my point. You got it. Go you.

ericmay 3y ago

It's always curious to me how Apple's superior products are somehow some other company's fault.