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292 points kaboro | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.548s | source
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parsimo2010 ◴[] No.25059497[source]
I accept that the performance of Apple's chips have increased rapidly in the last few years, but the benchmarks that they are using to compare to various x86 CPUs makes me suspicious that they are cherry-picking benchmarks and aren't telling the whole story (either in the Stratechery article or the Anandtech they got the figures from).

Why am I suspicious? THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY THAT A 5W PART LIKE THE A14 IS FASTER THAN A 100W PART LIKE THE i9-10900k! I understand they are comparing single threaded speed. I'll accept that the A14 is more power efficient. I'll acknowledge that Intel has been struggling lately. But to imply that a low power mobile is straight up faster than a high power chip in any category makes me extremely suspicious that the benchmark isn't actually measuring speed (maybe it's normalizing by power draw), or that the ARM and x86 versions of the benchmark have different reference values (like a 1000 score for an ARM is not the same speed of calculation as a 1000 score on x86). It just can't be true that the tablet with a total price of $1k can hang with a $500 CPU that has practically unlimited size, weight and power compared to the tablet, and when the total price to make it comparable in features (motherboard, power supply, monitor, etc) makes the desktop system more expensive.

Regardless of whether it's an intentional trick or an oversight, I don't think that the benchmark showing the mobile chip is better than a desktop chip in RAW PERFORMANCE is true. And that means that a lot of the conclusions that they draw from the benchmark aren't true. There is no way that the A14 (nor the M1) is going to be faster in any raw performance category than a latest generation and top-spec desktop system.

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reaperducer ◴[] No.25060485[source]
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY THAT A 5W PART LIKE THE A14 IS FASTER THAN A 100W PART LIKE THE i9-10900k!

An A14 is both faster and lower power than a 6502.

Also, why are you shouting? It's just computers. It's not important.

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1. trimbo ◴[] No.25063564[source]
Same as a Cray XMP! That baby used 345 kilowatts.

But comparing against 40 year old technology has nothing to do with comparing against current offerings.

We'll just have to wait a week to see how it fares compiling Chrome.

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2. npunt ◴[] No.25063751[source]
While it's Intel's latest, the i9-10900k is hardly a current offering - its yet another spin of Skylake, a 5 year old CPU design, and using a variant of Intel's 14nm, a 6 year old litho process.

The i9 has a density of ~44mT/mm2 versus the M1's 134mT/mm2 (3x)

The i9 has ~9.2B transistors, compared to the M1's 16B (174%)

The M1 is two generations ahead on lithography and has a more sophisticated CPU design than Intel. It'll do fine.

3. MrRadar ◴[] No.25063754[source]
> Same as a Cray XMP!

That reminds me of this classic bit of technology humor, the Apple Product Cycle[1]. It doesn't ring quite as true today as when it was first posted, but the broad strokes are still similar. Specifically it appears we're on the stage where "The haters offer their assessment. The forums are ablaze with vitriolic rage. Haters pan the device for being less powerful than a Cray X1 while zealots counter that it is both smaller and lighter than a Buick Regal. The virtual slap-fight goes on and on, until obscure technical nuances like, “Will it play multiplexed Ogg Vorbis streams?” become matters of life and death."

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20061028040301/http://www.mister...