How do they do it?
So, on top of the vertical integration of software/hardware advantage, they have diminished risk.
So, I think it's both a matter of comparing Apples to Oranges (ugh, I would use a less confusing analogy if one came to mind) in that the types and usage and number of cores are different, and also just fairly impressive that they can get that much single threaded performance out of the chip.
That server CPU has a TDP of 165W. That's 2.95W per thread. So pretty much entirely on par with Apple.
Also, I think I've heard people here noting how hyperthreading causes some workloads to go slower (possibly from CPU heat throttling? Dunno) so some people disable it in the BIOS first thing.
So the truth is likely somewhere between 2.95W/thread and 5.90W/core (assuming 165W is even correct, there's comments here noting while AMD and ARM quote max, Intel quotes operating average...).
Apparently the smaller Tempest core from the A12 is being used as the main core in the new Apple Watch. Talk about, uh, synergy.
Pretty awesome, if you think about It. That little watch is more powerful than it appears.
Amber Lake Y (a 2-core part with 4.2 GHz turbo) should achieve similar performance on a single-threaded integer benchmark like that, and it's a 5W part. Still, that's incredibly impressive on Apple's part.
Granted, this probably wouldn't hold up for a more sustained workload since the fanless iPhone's going to hit its thermal limits much more quickly than the full-size laptop, but it's pretty impressive that they're edging this close to Intel anyways (in a much smaller, much lower-power package). It'll be really interesting to see what happens with the more unconstrained A12X that'll likely go into the iPad Pro this year.
[1] https://ark.intel.com/products/97496/Intel-Core-i7-7820HQ-Pr...
Anyway though, it's still _very_ impressive from Apple, but much more believable. Looks like they've got very good engineers working on it. I hope they can scale it to the laptop requirements.
Well, if the iPhone was also on a battery, that was a fair comparison.
I also have benchmarks of Haswell-era hardware which the XS is also very competitive against-- including my personal desktop, which the XS beats in single-core and matches for multi-core. But that one's probably not an entirely fair comparison, given that it's older hardware and the machine wasn't intended to be particularly high-end when I built it.
I'd like to see some more comprehensive benchmarking against Intel... I'd be inclined to do some myself, but I don't have a good benchmarking suite that isn't Geekbench. If only the SPEC benchmarks weren't so stinking expensive...
1: https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/37572/Skylake
2: https://ark.intel.com/products/91169/Intel-Core-i7-6660U-Pro...
Of course there's a different number of cores in each, and the performance of multi-core code will likely differ based on technologies (memory architecture, hyperthreading vs real cores, etc).
If it's accurate, it is still fairly impressive (just not as crazy as it first sounds).
Anandtech is using SpecInt/FP numbers to compare Single core IPC between one A12 BIG core, and one Skylake server CPU core. Per-core power consumption on that Intel chip is 165/28 = 5.89W.
Apple is pushing similar IPC at 3W instead of 5.89W In that context, it's not so unbelievable, but it's still really fucking impressive.
Source: infrastructure operations for a large company using AMD, Intel and ARM CPUs.
Per-core power consumption on that Intel chip is 165/28 = 5.89W.
Apple is pushing similar IPC at 3W instead of 5.89W. In that context, it's not so unbelievable. But it's still really fucking impressive.
By asking developers to port from iOS apps, they have the side effect of getting developers to implement "fully featured" apps, just with a mobile UI. Adobe has already promised they'll be doing this with photoshop and Illustrator, releasing in 2019.
Others will follow suit. Not only will this strengthen the feature set of iOS apps, but it will strengthen the iPad Pro app ecosystem, and apple will simply link the iOS and Mac App Stores, allowing for "universal" apps.
Marzipan will translate them to x86/64 and later when Apple switches to ARM, Marzipan will simply keep these apps on ARM, and change their UI to match.
If you've been watching Apple closely over the last few years, you'll notice that they're consolidating their API's across macS and iOS. Things like Metal and AppKit and UIKit and so on are beginning to converge. This is all setting the stage for Marzipan.
They announced the "first half" of what they intend during the WWDC 2018 keynote. But the second half will be announced only after they reveal ARM Macs, and then "surprise - all the iOS apps you see now are available here, too. They automagically get UI adaptations for mac!"
So I do think that Apple is probably going to ARM, but they need to be very careful in the steps they are taking and they need to have a really compelling offer so that users are willing to go through the transition.
But it's not the point, main point is that I think statement that current A12 is close (to whatever reasonable %) to top desktop chips is simply not true. I didn't see any concrete evidence of it, and everyone just seem to like this idea, that's why it was talked much lately. I'm all for great advantages and all that, but I still must use common sense, 3-4W vs 150+ W - that's too much.
Per-core power consumption on that Intel chip is 165W/28cores = 5.89W
Apple is pushing similar IPC at 3W instead of 5.89W. In that context, it's not so unbelievable, and it's still really fucking impressive.
And that's my point, Apple already has very impressive thing going on, no need to smudge it with sensationalists statements.
2. The mobile phone industry is fiercely competitive while the PC industry has Intel and their near-monopoly.
The more likely explanation is that there is an exponential difficulty curve in CPU optimization and performance that Apple and their admittedly talented engineers are climbing very quickly.
When an Ax chip hits true desktop performance sooner than later, the limit of physics is going to slow down Apple just like it has Intel and AMD. There isn’t any magic they are going to be able to do that suddenly gives them a 2x IPC gain or huge frequency advantage.
The fact that someone can come up with a chip of similar performance to Intel’s isn’t that amazing. The fact that they can do so without needing a fan is.
> The performance measurement was run in a synthetic environment (read: bench fan cooling the phones) where we assured thermals wouldn’t be an issue for the 1-2 hours it takes to complete a full suite run.
Still darn impressive, as in the real world you won’t be doing anything with your phone that maxes out the SoC for 2 hours straight.
If you could pump up the TDP and frequency of the Ax chips to actual desktop class and throw a heatsink on so you don't get thermally throttled, I am sure Apple's chips would be competitive.
It's an inevitability that we'll see a desktop-class Ax powered Macbook at some point soon-ish. When that happens we can start making legitimate comparisons.
There may be a physical limit to the size of transistors but the limit of computing performance is not ‘what Intel is doing’. There’s more to performance than instructions per second or clock frequencies. In fact these don’t lead to the same performance at all as ARM is RISC and x64 is CISC.
Add the GPU and Direct X, and Encode/Decode functionality I know this is not the subject, the ARM processors simply cannot keep up. The author did also mention the limitations of the comparison also as mentioned above the Skylake Xeon is capable of running Hex channel ECC Memory with huge capacity that alone will outpace everything on ARM it's not a fair share of comparison at all. GB is an OS level optimized bench. There's simply no comparison point that exists.
Like I'd say to the author do a 4D render bench like Cinebench then we talk on this. He should at-least have mentioned the uarch part. Also on a side note, Apple underselling the chips ? That's really first, since Apple always over promises. Their latest meltdown on the MacBooks with low quality/specced VRM throttling the CFL machines is a joke.
I expect the primary difference one will find is that Intel has more "large" cores in their chips (full fledged cores) and the comparable instructions have some "gotchas" (like the flag mention) which make them harder to retire early in the pipeline. Toshiba made a funny comment at one of the Microprocessor forums that for their microprocessors, if you only compare the instructions that both they and Intel implement, the Toshiba processor is better in every way.
What is clearly true though is that compatibility aside, ARM chips are becoming serious contenders in the desktop/laptop space sooner than I expected them too.
A burst for a few seconds is ok on a phone, but not on a server or workstation.
Here, the prehistoric nature of x86 actually drags it down because of poor predictability