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Comment by TheArcane | Hacker News Reader

The best strategic decision Apple has made in the last 15 years is to vertically integrate and build their own processors.

M-series is so far ahead of the game than an air-cooled M4 has better single-core performance than the best desktop PC chip money can buy. Incredible.

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I don't understand why the non-Apple world has been so slow to copy Apple here. Are there any Windows or Linux laptops that match even the oldest M1 machines in battery life and performance?

I get that Apple has an advantage over companies like Dell and Lenovo in that they also build the OS but then there are Linux computer companies that have the source for everything and their machines are usually even worse from a performance / watt perspective.

I guess it exists, especially on the Chinese market, but the apps just are not there. Windows ARM is as popular as Windows Mobile 7

Then forget Windows. There are lots of ARM-based Linux machines out there and I don't know of any that can match the performance / watt that Apple gets.

So where are apps?

On the hard drive? I'm not sure what you are asking.

So not on the Macintosh HD...

I guess I still don’t know what you are asking. Mac apps will be on the Mac disk.

For what exists, I guess that'd be the case, but for useful apps...

The other CPU catch back after several months, the Apple Silicon is a good marketing prowess, the reality is that Apple CPUs wins because they are the first on to be produced on a new lithography node, because Apple can book a larger quantity than anyone else. When the other CPU manufacturer produce CPUs on the same CPU node, the performance is matched.

Here Jim Keller explain why CPU architecture doesn't matter a lot in performance now: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-...

CPU architecture probably doesn't matter.

But then I'm back to my original question: where are the Linux or Windows machines with great battery life and good performance. Is there anything like what Apple sells at Walmart: a 13.3" MacBook Air with the M1 chip, retina display, and 8 GB of RAM for $700. This is a very old machine at this point and still very hard to beat.

He does talk about why Apple is doing so well. Architecture, but Apple has IC process, top-level designers, a wide well balanced design and RAM bandwidth advantages.

I'm saying all this as a frustrated ThinkPad buyer. It's been 3.5 years since the first M1 machines went on the market and I still can't buy a ThinkPad as good as the Apple computers of that generation. I have to remember to power off completely before putting my ThinkPad in my bag otherwise I will have a very hot laptop, fans at full, with 50% battery remaining by the time I get to work.

Sometimes it feels like Apple is the only company even trying. It sucks.

Is it still true? My Ryzen desktop is a lot faster than my M1 Mini. A laptop Ryzen won't be as fast as my desktop, but it should be close?

Regardless, it certainly feels like an own goal that AMD or Intel hasn't yet released a CPU with at least 256 bit wide on package RAM. They'd be able to capture a higher percentage of the BOM cost of the laptop if they did so on top of the speed benefits.

The M1 used in the original MacBook Air has a TDP of around 10 watts. I don't track this closely, but AFAIK there aren't any good performing chips on the PC side of the world that can beat that.

I don't really track this directly, but periodically I look for passively cooled (fanless) laptops. I haven't looked into Ryzen, but it would be a very nice surprise if there are fanless Ryzen laptops out there.

TDP is a lie. M1 can draw up to 100W. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

The real world implications of these number matter more than the numbers themselves.

If you tell me TDP is a lie, I’ll believe you.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that there still aren’t any great fanless laptops from anybody other than Apple. I was attributing it to TDP, but maybe it’s something else.

Did you paste the wrong link? That is about M1 Max, which is a very different, much bigger, chip.

Indeed the M1 not max draw 30W max, there is a link in the article I sent, my mistake.

> The other CPU catch back after several months, the Apple Silicon is a good marketing prowess, the reality is that Apple CPUs wins because they are the first on to be produced on a new lithography node, because Apple can book a larger quantity than anyone else.

Uh, but M2 on TSMC's N5 node is faster and more efficient than AMD's products fabbed with TSMC's N4 node. Edit: more efficient in general, but I meant "faster" in comparison with AMD's latest laptop chips.

> Here Jim Keller explain why CPU architecture doesn't matter a lot in performance now: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-...

Let's see what he has to say:

> But instruction sets only matter a little bit - you can lose 10%, or 20%, [of performance] because you're missing instructions.

20% is quite a lot in the current competitive landscape. Jim Keller is stuck thinking like it's 10+ years ago.

> but I meant "faster" in comparison with AMD's latest laptop chips.

The 7940HS is way faster than the M2. Efficiency is harder to compare since TDP doesn't mean anything theses days.

In cinebench, or in (eg) compiling or JVM/Javacode/other bytecode workloads etc?

because even in cinebench the m3 max is already ahead in cinebench 2024 let alone R23...

https://www.notebookcheck.net/R9-7940HS-vs-Apple-M3-Max-16-C...

We were talking about the M2.

The M3 max is on TSMC N3B, which have a +30% of transistor density compared to the TSMC nodes AMD is using (N4).

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