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Comment by sydthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Intel is a process node behind

When you normalize for that, isn’t the power usage they equal?

What is your point? Intel failed to execute on their own Fabs? That intel needs to use TSMC's fabs to get parity? That Intel can't get access to TSMC's best fabs? The end result is the same. Intel has chips that are 3 years behind in power efficiency.

Well the point is that they're neck and neck while being a fab behind. If the fab catches up they might be greatly ahead. Its a big if but it adds context.

The power consumption is a critical issue on a laptop, unless you're one of those laptop users that never works on battery in which case you could get a lot more bang for your buck with a desktop.

LISTEN YOU GEN Z PUNK, YOU DONT KNOW ABOU TTHE REAL TIK TOK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model

Too bad Intel dropped the tick-tock model years ago.

What reputable chip analyst expects Intel's fabs catch up to TSMC in the next 3 years?

The point is obvious.

M1 is not more powerful due to a better design, but simply due to more modern manufacturing process.

Otherwise you would see a much larger gap in performance.

So it's merely equally as good as the previous market leader's flagship product in every way except litography, where it exceeds them?

Are you implying that's not something to be impressed about just because lithography is not a property of the architecture?

Your comment is unclear.

Apple's contribution to M1 was the design. TSMC built the next gen fabs, and gets credit for the manufacturing.

You can't compare viability or success of the processor design when you compare cross fab generations. It's apples to oranges.

You can state that M1 is better, which is true, but it doesn't follow at all that it's due to the design component.

It could very well be that moving Intel's design to TSMC's fab would lead to it running circles around M1

I mean this is pretty obvious stuff, but these threads always end up full of people that don't understand hardware very well

That’s just not true. The RISC instruction set has a growing advantage in performance per watt. There’s a reason no one is producing low-power x86 chips.

Surely it's a shrinking advantage? x86 CPUs have been microcode based for a long time, and the hardware to convert x86 instructions to micro ops is a relatively fixed cost that diminishes over time with process shrinks?

> It could very well be that moving Intel's design to TSMC's fab would lead to it running circles around M1

Or not. There is no reason to believe Apple design has not been a major contribution to the performance. Sure TSMC process is a major component but to quote yourself it does not follow that that explains all of it. It could very well be that a hypothetical Apple design to Intel fab would still run circles around current Intel chips (or not). What we do know is system architecture is sufficiently different, and that it is likely to have a material impact on performance.

Can you really separate the “design” from how it’s manufactured?

Intel famously followed a "tik-tock" development cycle where they would move their existing designs to their next gen fabs, before updating the design.

So yes, you absolutely can separate them, and that's how it was historically done. Though Intel fell behind on this philosophy.

And those transitions were not seamless. Intel controlled the whole stack so they made it seem like it was. You obviously can’t separate design and manufacture at this level and scale, to even suggest it displays a massive lack of understanding of how this space operates.

If you don’t know how the space operates, why are you commenting?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundry_model

Why would you normalize for that? The subject at hand is the product performance. Could Intel's design turn out better in future generations? Perhaps. I think to consider weighing which process node was used for the CPU changes the subject to Intel's prospects as a CPU designer/manufacturer.

If we normalize for Moore's law then historic processors would compare much more favorably.

In fact it's a bit unfair to Apple to compare this sample unit to last year's production model.

As a consumer, I would not normalize for that.

I don’t know about equal. It would certainly be better.

But the problem is that’s hypothetical. The article is comparing products available today. And that’s what Intel has to compete with.

Intel touted this as their “answer” to the M1. They may have overplayed their hand. Maybe should have held that marketing point for next year.

Who cares? Better is better.

I don’t care why something is better as long as it doesn’t require human sacrifice, just that it’s better. And the M1 beats the snot out of anything x86 without qualification. Add on that you can get it in a Mac Mini for $600 and ding ding ding Apple wins.

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