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.
- 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.