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    Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

    (www.macrumors.com)
    1080 points antipaul | 12 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.953s | source | bottom
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    maz1b ◴[12 Nov 20 02:16 UTC] No.25065664[source]▶
    This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years.

    For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and not to mention the fan noise.

    Looking forward to a version from Apple that is made for actual professionals, but I imagine these introductory M1 based devices are going to be great for the vast majority of people.

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    1. hbbio ◴[12 Nov 20 07:55 UTC] No.25067539[source]▶
    It's also funny that Johny Srouji and probably others in his team come from the team at Intel in Israel that "saved" Intel in the early 2000s by designing the Intel Core architecture which is still used by Intel today.

    cf. Anandtech article from 2003:

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/1083/2

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    2. kar1181 ◴[12 Nov 20 08:25 UTC] No.25067698[source]▶
    Did not know that, and indeed the pentium m / core / core 2 series microarches have done incredibly well.

    I've become something of CPU collector in recent years, and I have a nice line of p6 cpus from thePentium Pro -> Pentium 2 -> Pentium 3 -> Pentium M -> Core 2 that conveniently sidesteps those awful Netburst p4 CPUs.

    It feels like this (p6+) microarch has finally run out of road and needs a rethink. What 'saved' intel was a change in philosophy rather than chasing MHz they chased power savings. And with Apple's new chips that history is repeating itself (and appears to be with a similar outcome).

    It's an exciting time for hardware again because Intel and AMD are going to have to react to this and I think there's still legs to x86, it's survived everything thats been thrown at it so far...

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    3. Fnoord ◴[12 Nov 20 08:59 UTC] No.25067881[source]▶
    Some people are priceless. One of the designers of Ryzen, Jim Keller [1], for example.

    [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/12689/cpu-design-guru-jim-kel...

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    4. Tsiklon ◴[12 Nov 20 11:04 UTC] No.25068606[source]▶
    Jim also lead the team behind the Apple A4 and A5 SOCs - Apple's first venture into designing their own Silicon.

    Edit: hadn't clicked through to your article. my comment is redundant

    5. jodrellblank ◴[12 Nov 20 12:02 UTC] No.25068889[source]▶
    And now he’s left Intel https://www.anandtech.com/show/15846/jim-keller-resigns-from...
    6. m12k ◴[12 Nov 20 12:29 UTC] No.25069084[source]▶
    It's fascinating to see history repeated - the architecture and design with the most power efficiency generally also turns out to be the one that can be pushed furthest for performance when you want to go that route.
    7. nuker ◴[12 Nov 20 12:38 UTC] No.25069160[source]▶
    > I've become something of CPU collector in recent years, and I have a nice line of p6 cpus from thePentium Pro

    I bought i486DX for $20 month ago, as a memo of my first CPU.

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    8. pantulis ◴[12 Nov 20 16:19 UTC] No.25071395[source]▶
    "I think there's still legs to x86, it's survived everything thats been thrown at it so far..."

    Also, some one, some day, had to disrupt it. Maybe this is it, maybe not.

    9. intricatedetail ◴[12 Nov 20 17:22 UTC] No.25072083{3}[source]▶
    I got a Pentium 100 last month with a motherboard and a psu. I plan to run W95. It's going to be fun!
    10. intricatedetail ◴[12 Nov 20 17:24 UTC] No.25072112[source]▶
    It is sad that engineers like him are not multi billionaires, but it all gets pocketed by investors, who don't even pay the same tax as people who actually do the work...
    11. Skunkleton ◴[12 Nov 20 18:09 UTC] No.25072729[source]▶
    That's an interesting observation. It holds true in other areas as well. For example, we have lots of high horsepower cars as the result of R&D effort into high efficiency engines.
    12. fiftyfifty ◴[12 Nov 20 18:44 UTC] No.25073224[source]▶
    It's also worth pointing out that Apple is also benefitting from TSMC's latest and best fab processes. Intel is not only behind architecturally but in manufacturing too:

    https://www.macworld.com/article/3572624/tsmc-details-its-fu...