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
Apple Shooting for the Stars: x86 Incumbents Beware
The previous pages were written ahead of Apple officially announcing the new M1 chip. We already saw the A14 performing outstandingly and outperforming the best that Intel has to offer. The new M1 should perform notably above that.
We come back to a few of Apple’s slides during the presentations as to what to expect in terms of performance and efficiency. Particularly the performance/power curves are the most detail that Apple is sharing at this moment in time:
In this graphic, Apple showcases the new M1 chip featuring a CPU power consumption peak of around 18W. The competing PC laptop chip here is peaking at the 35-40W range so certainly these are not single-threaded performance figures, but rather whole-chip multi-threaded performance. We don’t know if this is comparing M1 to an AMD Renoir chip or an Intel ICL or TGL chip, but in both cases the same general verdict applies:
Apple’s usage of a significantly more advanced microarchitecture that offers significant IPC, enabling high performance at low core clocks, allows for significant power efficiency gains versus the incumbent x86 players. The graphic shows that at peak-to-peak, M1 offers around a 40% performance uplift compared to the existing competitive offering, all whilst doing it at 40% of the power consumption.
Apple’s comparison of random performance points is to be criticised, however the 10W measurement point where Apple claims 2.5x the performance does make some sense, as this is the nominal TDP of the chips used in the Intel-based MacBook Air. Again, it’s thanks to the power efficiency characteristics that Apple has been able to achieve in the mobile space that the M1 is promised to showcase such large gains – it certainly matches our A14 data.
Don't forget about the GPU
Today we mostly covered the CPU side of things as that’s where the unprecedented industry shift is happening. However, we shouldn’t forget about the GPU, as the new M1 represents Apple’s first-time introduction of their custom designs into the Mac space.
Apple’s performance and power efficiency claims here are really lacking context as we have no idea what their comparison point is. I won’t try to theorise here as there’s just too many variables at play, and we don’t know enough details.
What we do know is that in the mobile space, Apple is absolutely leading the pack in terms of performance and power efficiency. The last time we tested the A12Z the design was more than able to compete and beat integrated graphics designs. But since then we’ve seen more significant jumps from both AMD and Intel.
Performance Leadership?
Apple claims the M1 to be the fastest CPU in the world. Given our data on the A14, beating all of Intel’s designs, and just falling short of AMD’s newest Zen3 chips – a higher clocked Firestorm above 3GHz, the 50% larger L2 cache, and an unleashed TDP, we can certainly believe Apple and the M1 to be able to achieve that claim.
This moment has been brewing for years now, and the new Apple Silicon is both shocking, but also very much expected. In the coming weeks we’ll be trying to get our hands on the new hardware and verify Apple’s claims.
Intel has stagnated itself out of the market, and has lost a major customer today. AMD has shown lots of progress lately, however it’ll be incredibly hard to catch up to Apple’s power efficiency. If Apple’s performance trajectory continues at this pace, the x86 performance crown might never be regained.
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Quantumz0d - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
I will wait for that ARM gaming PC soon, wonder who is going to make it, Apple / Nuvia / Centriq / Qcomm / Samsung / Huawei / Mediatek / Marvell ? Please let me know where can I buy that.AArch64 emulates the x86 faster than native, can you please show me some benchmark or the application that it is doing, I want to see it. Please don't write some useless HW trash or SW or compiler math. A simple benchmark or a video will do, much easier for all of us.
grant3 - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
"AArch64 emulates x86 faster than x86 runs software natively. "I'm highly doubtful, especially since this claim has no context. Which AAarch64 chip vs. which x64 chip? (I assume you mean x64 because x86 has been superseded for so long)
If it's already proven that AArch64 is the fastest at running x64 code, then why are you and others not already buying them for their gaming rigs?
Calin - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
Basically the Rosetta-2 will run x86 code on M1 cores fast enough that the better M1 graphics cores will be able to run graphically intensive applications faster than on the 2018 MacBook Air.Also, this is a "work done per watts used" comparison, and the 5nm TSMC processor is better than Intel's 2018 14 nm.
Could an unrestricted x86 behemoth with graphic similar to M1's integrated do better than the M1 running emulation? I bet it is, however the comparison was between the 2018 MacBook Air and the 2020 MacBook Air (so total power limited to some 10 Watts).
Speedfriend - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
AArch64 emulates x86 faster than x86 runs software natively.That is not what they said, they said that in emulation it ran faster than on the old Mac's, which In this case had 2018 Intel processor or dual core.
It is not faster than a current Intel chip
Ladis - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
I remember when Apple switched from Motorola to PowerPC the lowest spec PPC PowerBooks were slow at emulating the Motorola code because the emulator + the app's code didn't fit in the CPU cache. However it's the opposite this time - Apple Silicon's cache is huuuuge. Also as others stated, it's omparing to years old TDP-limited MacBook.Spunjji - Thursday, November 12, 2020 - link
Backwards compatibility isn't going to be a good enough reason for x86 to stick around forever - especially not if power/performance ends up tilting so far towards ARM designs.hlovatt - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
@vladx That is a utterly unfair comment. Anandtech have done in depth independent testing of the A14 chip that is beyond anything else you will find. I think you should apologise to them and retract your comment.Spunjji - Thursday, November 12, 2020 - link
Whereas I have come to expect this sort of baseless accusation from you. I don't understand why you still come here now that reality is increasingly poorly aligned with your team-sports fantasies.augustofretes - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
There's no performance lost at all. The M1 is obviously faster than anything Intel can put on a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro. The A14 is stuck on a phone and its giving processors with a much higher TDP to work with a run for their money.BlackHat - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
Apple compare the M1 against their 2018 MacBook with SkyLake and LPDDR3, no even the 2020 model with Ice Lake, a chip that is heavily throttle, why this if is given "a run for their money"?