It would be an interesting comparison. Non-apple silicon has definitely not been great and lags behind significantly. Would be very interesting to see what Android would be like on more modern CPU tech.
If you're exclusively referring to the handheld market though, then you're mostly right. Apple's big lead in this generation is mostly because of how fast they were able to buy out the world's 5nm node. The only real "Android" manufacturer doing the same thing is Samsung, which is only because they have the means to fab their own chips.
APUs with Zen and Zen 2 cores were absolutely not outperforming the M1's Firestorm cores.
>In SPECint2006, we’re now seeing the M1 close the gap to AMD’s Zen3, beating it in several workloads now, which increasing the gap to Intel’s new Tiger Lake design as well as their top-performing desktop CPU, which the M1 now beats in the majority of workloads.
In the fp2006 workloads, we’re seeing the M1 post very large performance boosts relative to the A14, meaning that it now is able to claim the best performance out of all CPUs being compared here.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
You can't spend a decade pretending that performance doesn't matter, only to rear your head again when Moore's law is sputtering out and gasping for air. Apple's power over the industry is unchecked right now, meaning they can play all sorts of petty tricks to gaslight mainstream manufacturers into a playing different game. ARM is the first step in that direction, and I for one couldn't be more happy with the hardware I own. Well, maybe if I sold my Macbook Air...
Given that Apple took the power/heat drop with the transition from 7nm to 5nm instead of a performance increase, that's just not as relevant as it could have been if they had gone the other way.
However, that M1 is still running with a significant frequency and power draw deficit vs the Ryzen as well.
>During average single-threaded workloads on the 3.2GHz Firestorm cores, such as GCC code compilation, we’re seeing device power go up to 10.5W with active power at around 6.3W.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
However, you compete with the performance you have today, not some theoretical performance you might have if your chip was made differently.
I still don't understand your argument here though. It's impressive because Apple was able to get first dibs on next generation technology? Should I be applauding their engineers or fearing their supply chain managers?
> However, you compete with the performance you have today, not some theoretical performance you might have if your chip was made differently.
Sure, but there's not much fun in bragging about how your V8 demolished a 4-stoke. Plus, as the market for silicon fabs continues to heat up, Apple's lead on logistics isn't going to be so noticeable. They've also painted themselves into a bit of a scalar issue, too: the M1 occupies a bit of an ARM sweet spot right now. As far as I can tell, Apple's only choice for making a more powerful machine is to use better silicon: which won't be available until 4nm/3nm starts to hit production in Q32022, at the earliest.
The M1's performance lead wasn't created by a move from TSMC 7nm to TSMC 5nm.
See, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27184236
The Firestorm cores in the M1 in the M1 get their performance from (among other things) having a very wide core that performs more instructions in a single clock cycle, despite running the cores much more slowly than AMD does.
There's a good break down of that and other design advantages here:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
Zen2 would be incredible on 5nm. IMHO the improvements we saw with geforce 30XX series and zen 2 were 80% the switch to 7nm tsmc. I'd fully expect another jump if nvidia and amd were able to get their hands on 5nm, but it's apple exclusive for now :(.
Well, at least we get huge investments in chip manufacturing thanks to apple throwing money at tsmc.
So no, it's the the same wattage, but it's similar enough to be a valid point of comparison, especially for a chip that appears in laptops half the price of the base Macbook Air. Plus, as time goes on, AMD seems to be getting better about power management. If you take a look at the latest reviews for the Surface Laptop 4 with Ryzen, many reviewers were surprised to find that it lasted nearly 17 hours of video playback.