Apple Announces The Apple Silicon M1: Ditching x86 - What to Expect, Based on A14
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 10, 2020 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Apple
- Apple A14
- Apple Silicon
- Apple M1
From Mobile to Mac: What to Expect?
To date, our performance comparisons for Apple’s chipsets have always been in the context of iPhone reviews, with the juxtaposition to x86 designs being a rather small footnote within the context of the articles. Today’s Apple Silicon launch event completely changes the narrative of what we portray in terms of performance, setting aside the typical apples vs oranges comparisons people usually argument with.
We currently do not have Apple Silicon devices and likely won’t get our hands on them for another few weeks, but we do have the A14, and expect the new Mac chips to be strongly based on the microarchitecture we’re seeing employed in the iPhone designs. Of course, we’re still comparing a phone chip versus a high-end laptop and even a high-end desktop chip, but given the performance numbers, that’s also exactly the point we’re trying to make here, setting the stage as the bare minimum of what Apple could achieve with their new Apple Silicon Mac chips.
The performance numbers of the A14 on this chart is relatively mind-boggling. If I were to release this data with the label of the A14 hidden, one would guess that the data-points came from some other x86 SKU from either AMD or Intel. The fact that the A14 currently competes with the very best top-performance designs that the x86 vendors have on the market today is just an astonishing feat.
Looking into the detailed scores, what again amazes me is the fact that the A14 not only keeps up, but actually beats both these competitors in memory-latency sensitive workloads such as 429.mcf and 471.omnetpp, even though they either have the same memory (i7-1185G7 with LPDDR4X-4266), or desktop-grade memory (5950X with DDR-3200).
Again, disregard the 456.hmmer score advantage of the A14, that’s majorly due to compiler discrepancies, subtract 33% for a more apt comparison figure.
Even in SPECfp which is even more dominated by memory heavy workloads, the A14 not only keeps up, but generally beats the Intel CPU design more often than not. AMD also wouldn’t be looking good if not for the recently released Zen3 design.
In the overall SPEC2006 chart, the A14 is performing absolutely fantastic, taking the lead in absolute performance only falling short of AMD’s recent Ryzen 5000 series.
The fact that Apple is able to achieve this in a total device power consumption of 5W including the SoC, DRAM, and regulators, versus +21W (1185G7) and 49W (5950X) package power figures, without DRAM or regulation, is absolutely mind-blowing.
There’s been a lot of criticism about more common benchmark suites such as GeekBench, but frankly I've found these concerns or arguments to be quite unfounded. The only factual differences between workloads in SPEC and workloads in GB5 is that the latter has less outlier tests which are memory-heavy, meaning it’s more of a CPU benchmark whereas SPEC has more tendency towards CPU+DRAM.
The fact that Apple does well in both workloads is evidence that they have an extremely well-balanced microarchitecture, and that Apple Silicon will be able to scale up to “desktop workloads” in terms of performance without much issue.
Where the Performance Trajectory Finally Intersects
During the release of the A7, people were pretty dismissive of the fact that Apple had called their microarchitecture a desktop-class design. People were also very dismissive of us calling the A11 and A12 reaching near desktop level performance figures a few years back, and today marks an important moment in time for the industry as Apple’s A14 now clearly is able to showcase performance that’s beyond the best that Intel can offer. It’s been a performance trajectory that’s been steadily executing and progressing for years:
Whilst in the past 5 years Intel has managed to increase their best single-thread performance by about 28%, Apple has managed to improve their designs by 198%, or 2.98x (let’s call it 3x) the performance of the Apple A9 of late 2015.
Apple’s performance trajectory and unquestioned execution over these years is what has made Apple Silicon a reality today. Anybody looking at the absurdness of that graph will realise that there simply was no other choice but for Apple to ditch Intel and x86 in favour of their own in-house microarchitecture – staying par for the course would have meant stagnation and worse consumer products.
Today’s announcements only covered Apple’s laptop-class Apple Silicon, whilst we don’t know the details at time of writing as to what Apple will be presenting, Apple’s enormous power efficiency advantage means that the new chip will be able to offer either vastly increased battery life, and/or, vastly increased performance, compared to the current Intel MacBook line-up.
Apple has claimed that they will completely transition their whole consumer line-up to Apple Silicon within two years, which is an indicator that we’ll be seeing a high-TDP many-core design to power a future Mac Pro. If the company is able to continue on their current performance trajectory, it will look extremely impressive.
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KarlKastor - Monday, November 16, 2020 - link
@techconcDo you think a 4 Core Zen2 was different than a 8 Core Zen2. Yes it is much different. Zen 1 was even much inhomogenous with increasing core count.
Apple can't just put 8 big cores in it and is finished. All cores with one unified L2 Cache? The core interconnect will be different for sure. The cache system too, I bet.
M1 and A14 will be much similar, yes.
But you can't extrapolate from a single thread benchmark to a multi thread practical case. It can work, but don't have to.
The cache system, core interconnect, memeory subsystem, all is much more important with many cores working at the same time.
Kangal - Thursday, November 12, 2020 - link
Hi Andrei,I'm very disappointed with this article. It is not very professional nor upto Anandtech standards. Whilst I don't doubt the Apple A14/A14X/M1 is a very capable chipset, we shouldn't take Apple's claims at face-value. I feel like you've just added more fuel to the fire, that which is hype.
I've read the whole thing, and you've left me thinking like this ARM Chipset is supposedly similar to the 5W TDP we have on iPhones/iPads, and able to compete with 150W Desktop x86 chipsets. While that possible, it doesn't pass the sniff test. And even more convoluted, is that this chipset is supposed to extend the battery life notably (from 10hrs upto 17hrs or 20hrs) by x1.7-x2.0 factor, yet the difference in the TDP is far greater (from 5W compared to 28W) in x4.5-x6.0 difference. So this is losing efficiency somewhere, otherwise we should've seen battery life estimates like 45hrs to 60hrs. Both laptops have the same battery size.
Apple has not earned the benefit of the doubt, instead they have a track-record of lying (or "exaggerating"). I think these performance claims, and estimates by you, really needed to be downplayed. And we should be comparing ACTUAL performance when that data is available. And by that I mean running it within proper thermal limits (ie 10-30min runtime), with more rounded benchmarking tools (CineBench r23 ?), to deduce the performance deficits and improvements we are likely to experience in real-world conditions (medium duration single-core, thermal throttling multi-thread, GPU gaming, and power drain differences). Then we can compare that to other chipsets like the 15W Macbook Air, the 28W MacBook Pro, and Hackintosh Desktops with Core i9-9900k or r9-5950x chipsets. And if the Apple M1 passes with flying colours, great, hype away! But if they fail abysmally, then condemn. Or if it is very mixed, then only give a lukewarm reception.
So please follow up this article, with a more accurate and comprehensive study, and revert back to the professional standards that allow us readers to continue sharing your site with others. Thank you for reading my concerns.
Kangal - Thursday, November 12, 2020 - link
I just want to add, that during the recent announcement by Nvidia, we were lead to believe that the RTX 3080 has a +100% performance uplift over the RTX 2080. Now that tests have been conducted by trustworthy, professional, independent reviewers. Well, it is actually more like +45% performance uplift. To get to the +70% -to- +90% performance uplift requires us to do some careful cherry-picking of data.My fear is that a similar case has happened with the Apple M1. With your help, they've made this look like it is as fast as an Intel Core i9-9900k. I suspect it will be much much much much slower, when looking at non-cherry picked data. And I suspect it will still be a modest improvement over the Intel 28W Laptop chipsets. But that is a far cry from the expectations that have been setup. Just like the case was with the RTX-3000 hype launch.
Spunjji - Thursday, November 12, 2020 - link
@Kangal - Personally, I'm very disappointed in various commenters' tendency to blame the article authors for their own errors in reading the article.Firstly, it's basically impossible to read the whole thing and come away with the idea that M1 will have a 5W TDP. It has double the GPU and large-core CPU resources of A14 - what was measured here - so logically it should start at somewhere around 10W TDP and move up from there.
To your battery life qualms - throw in some really simple estimates to account for other power draw in the system (storage, display, etc.) would get you to an understanding of why the battery life is "only" 1.7X to 2X their Intel models.
As for Apple's estimates being "downplayed" - sure, only they provide *actual test data* in here that appears to validate their claims. I don't know why you think CineBench is more "rounded" than SPEC - the opposite is actually true; CineBench does lots of one thing that's easily parallelized, whereas SPEC tests a number of different features of a CPU based on a large range of workloads.
In summary: your desire for this not to be as good as it *objectively* appears to be is what's informing your comment. The article was thoroughly professional. In case you're wondering, I generally despise Apple and their products - but I can see a well-designed CPU when the evidence is placed directly in front of me.
Kangal - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
@SpunjjiFirst of all, you are objectively wrong. It is not debatable, it is a fact. That this article CAN (could, would, has) been read and understood in a manner different to yours. So you can't just use a blanket statement like "you're holding it wrong" or "it's the readers fault". When clearly there are things that can be done to mitigate the issue, and that was my qualm. This article glorifies Apple, when it should be cautioning consumers. I'm not opposed to glorifying things, credit where due.
The fact is Andrei, who representing Anandtech, is assuming a lot of the data points. He's taking Apple's word at face value. Imagine the embarrassment if they take a stance such as this, only to be proven wrong a few weeks later. What should have been done, is that more effort and more emphasis should have been placed on comparisons to x86 systems. My point still stands, that there's a huge discrepancy between "User Interface fluidity", "Synthetic Benchmarks", "Real-world Applications", and "Legacy programs". And also there's the entire point of power-draw limitations, heat dissipation, and multi-threaded processing.
Based on this article, people will see the ~6W* Apple A14 chipset is only 5%-to-10% slower than the ~230W (or 105W TDP) AMD r9-5950x that just released and topped all the charts. So if the Apple Silicon M1 is supposed to be orders of magnitude faster, (6W vs 12W or maybe even more), then you can make the logical conclusion that the Apple M1 is +80% -to- +290% faster when compared to the r9-5950x. That's insane. Yet it could be plausible. So the sensible thing to do is to be skeptical. As for CineBench, I think it is a more rounded test. I am not alone in this claim, many other users, reviewers, testers, and experts also vouch for it. Now, I'm not prepared to die on this hill, so I'll leave it at that.
I realised the answer to the battery life question as I was typing it. And I do think a +50% to +100% increase is revolutionary (if tested/substantiated). However, the point was that Andrei was supposed to look into little details like that, and not leave readers thinking. I know that Apple would extend the TDP of the chip, that much is obvious to me even before reading anything, the issue is that this point itself was never actually addressed.
Your summary is wrong. You assume that I have a desire, to see Apple's products to be lower than claimed. I do not. I am very unbiased, and want the data as clean as possible. Better competition breeds better progress. In fact, despite my reservations against the company, this very comment is being typed on an Early-2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13inch. The evidence that's placed in front of you isn't real, it is a guesstimate at best. There's many red-flags seeing their keynote and reading this article. Personally, I will have to wait for the devices to release, people to start reviewing them thoroughly, and I will have to think twice about digesting the Anandtech version when released. However, I'm not petty enough to boycott something because of subjective reasons, and will likely give Anandtech the benefit of the doubt. I hope I have satisfied some of your concerns.
*based on a previous test by Anandtech.
Spunjji - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
@Kangal - The fact that a reader *can* get through the whole thing whilst imposing their own misguided interpretations on it doesn't mean it's the author's fault for them doing so. Writers can't spend their time reinventing the wheel for the benefit of people who didn't do basic background reading that the article itself links to and/or acknowledge the article's stated limitations.Your "holding it wrong" comparison is a funny one. You've been trying to chastise the article's author for not explicitly preventing people from wilfully misinterpreting the data therein, which imposes an absurd burden on the author. To refer back to the "holding it wrong" analogy, you've tried to chew on the phone and are now blaming the phone company for failing to tell people not to chew on it. It's not a defensible position.
As it stands, he assumes nothing - nothing is taken at face value with regard to the conclusions drawn. He literally puts their claims to the test in the only manner currently available to him at this point in time. The only other option is for him to not do this at all, which would just leave you with Apple's claims and nothing else.
As it is, the article indicates that the architecture inside the A14 chip is capable of single-core results comparable to AMD and Intel's best. It tells us nothing about how M1 will perform in its complete form in full applications compared with said chips, and the article acknowledges that. The sensible thing to do is /interpret the results according to their stated limitations/, not "be sceptical" in some generic and uncomprehending way.
I think this best sums up the problem with your responses here: "The evidence that's placed in front of you isn't real, it is a guesstimate at best". Being an estimate doesn't make something not real. The data is real, the conclusions drawn from it are the estimates. Those are separate things. The fact that you're conflating them - even though the article is clear about its intent - indicates that the problem is with how you're thinking about and responding to the article, not the article itself. That's why I assumed you were working from a position of personal bias - regardless of that, you're definitely engaged in multiple layers of flawed reasoning.
Kangal - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
@SpunjjiI agree, it is not the writers fault for having readers misinterpret some things. However, you continue fail to acknowledge that a writer actually has the means and opportunity to greatly limit such things. It is not about re-inventing the wheel, that's a fallacy. This is not about making misguided people change their minds, it is about allowing neutral readers be informed with either tangible facts, or putting disclaimers on claims or estimates. I even made things simple, said that Andrei simply needed to address that the figures are estimates so that the x86 comparisons aren't absurd.
"You're holding it wrong" is an apt analogy. I'm not chewing on the phone, nor the company. I've already stated my reservations (they've lied before, and aren't afraid of exaggerating things). So you're misguided here, if you actually think I was even defending such a position. I actually think you need to increase your reading comprehension, something that you actually have grilled me on. Ironic.
I have repeated myself several times, there are some key points that need to be addressed (eg/ legacy program performance, real-world applications, multi-threaded, synthetic benchmarks, and user experience). None of these have been addressed. You said the article acknowledges this, yet you haven't quoted anything. Besides, my point was this point needed to be stressed in the article multiple times, not just an off-hand remark (and even that wasn't made).
Being an estimate doesn't make something not real. Well, sure it does. I can make estimates about a certain satellites trajectory, yet it could all be bogus. I'm not conflating the issue, you have. I've displayed how the information presented could be misinterpreted. This is not flawed reasoning, this is giving you an example of how loosely this article has been written. I never stated that I've misinterpreted it, because I'm a skeptical individual and prefer to dive deeper, read back my comments and you can see I've been consistent on this point. Most other readers can and would make that mistake. And you know what, a quick look on other sites and YouTube, well it shows that is exactly what has happened (there are people thinking the MBA is faster than almost all high-end desktops).
I actually do believe that some meaningful insights can be gathered by guesstimates. Partial information can be powerful, but it is not the complete information. Hence, estimated need to be taken with a pinch of salt, sometimes a little, other times a lot. Any professional who's worth their salt (pun intended) will make these disclaimers. Even when writing Scientific Articles, we're taught to always put disclaimers when making interpretations. Seeing the quality of writing drop on Anandtech begs one to not defend them, but to pressure them instead to improve.
varase - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
Remember that M1 has a higher number of Firestorm cores which produce more heat - though not as much as x86 cores.There may be some throttling going on - especially on the fanless laptop (MacBook Air?).
Jeez ... think of those compute numbers on a fanless design. Boggles the mind.
Whenever you compare computers in the x86 world at any performance level at all, the discussion inevitably devolves into, "How good is the cooling?" Now imagine a competitor who can get by with passive heat pipe/case radiation cooling - and still sustain impressive compute numbers. Just the mechanical fan energy savings alone can go a good way to preserving battery life, not to mention a compute unit with such a lower TDP.
hecksagon - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
These benchmarks don't show time as an axis. Yes the A14 can compete with an i7 laptop in bursty workloads. Once the iPhone gets heat soaked performance starts to tank pretty quickly. This throttling isn't represented in the charts because these are short benchmarks and the performance isn't plotted over time.Zerrohero - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
Do you think that the M1 performance with active cooling will “tank” like A14 performance does in an iPhone enclosure?Do you understand how ridiculous your point is?