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> It has nothing to do with their architecture.

That it has zero to do with the architecture is a bold assertion (and seems unlikely).

In any event Apple would not have been able to manufacture / buy an x86 on 5nm so the architecture has quite a lot of influence on the performance of the latest Apple laptops.

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I made the following thought experiment. If we downscale the M1 to a 8b transistor chip and make it use 14nm technology, would it still be faster than an i9 chip? I don't think so.

I think so. 3900X has 9.89b transistors and it is still faster than the i9.

Problem is your thought experiment doesn't work because you've ignored:

- The TDP of the M1 and the i9

- How each has utilised die area (e.g how much is devoted to CPU / GPU and accelerators)

When we see the version of the M1 for the larger MacBook Pros then the gap will become even bigger.

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