The laws of physics apply to everyone
That is obviously true, but a ridiculous argument, there are plenty examples of systems performing better and using less power than the competition.
For years Intel chips used twice the power for similar performance compared to AMD Ryzen. And in the Buldozer days it was the same except the other way around.
Arm has designed chips for efficiency for a decade before the first smartphones came out, and they’ve kept their eye on the ball the entire time since.
It’s no wonder Arm is way more energy efficient than X86, and Apple made by far the best Arm CPU when M1 arrived.
The great advantage of Apple is that they are usually a node ahead
Yes that is an advantage, but so it is for the new Intel Arrow Lake compared to current Ryzen, yet Arrow Lake use more power for similar performance. Despite Arrow Lake is designed for efficiency.
It’s notable that Intel was unable to match Arm on power efficiency for an entire decade, even when Intel had the better production node. So it’s not just a matter of physics, it is also very much a matter of design. And Intel has never been able to match Arm on that. Arm still has the superior design for energy efficiency over X86, and AMD has the superior design over Intel.
Intel has had a node disadvantage regarding Zen since the 8700K… From then on the entire point is moot.
From then on the entire point is moot.
No it’s not, because the point is that design matters. When Ryzen came out originally, it was far more energy efficient than the Intel Skylake. And Intel had the node advantage.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i7-8700k/16.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/core-i7-6700k.c1825
Ryzen was not more efficient than skylake. In fact, the 1500x was actually consuming more energy in nT workloads than skylake while performing worse, which is consistent with what I wrote. What Ryzen was REALLY efficient at was being almost as fast as skylake for a fraction of the price.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M3-Max-16-Core-Processor-Benchmarks-and-Specs.781712.0.html
Will you look at that, in nT workloads the M3 Max is actually less efficient than competitors like the ryzen 7k hs. The first N3 products had less than ideal yields so apple went with a less dense node thus losing the tech advantage for one generation. That can be seen in their laughable nT performance/watt. Design does matter however, and in 1T workloads Apple’s very wide design excells by performing very well while consuming lower energy, which is what I’ve been saying since this thread started.
Not to mention ARM chips which by and large were/are more efficient on the same node than x86 because of their design: ARM chip designers have been doing that efficiency thing since forever, owing to the mobile platform, while desktop designers only got into the game quite late. There’s also some wibbles like ARM insn decoding being inherently simpler but big picture that’s negligible.
Intel just really, really has a talent for not seeing the writing on the wall while AMD made a habit out of it out of sheer necessity to even survive. Bulldozer nearly killed them (and the idea itself wasn’t even bad, it just didn’t work out) while Intel is tanking hit after hit after hit.
