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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sonny73n - Saturday, November 14, 2020 - link
We all know Apple is always BS. Somehow their BS always work on some people.Alej - Saturday, November 14, 2020 - link
@sonny73n: really man, who is ‘we all’? That doesn’t include the andand tech writers for sure in that ‘all’. They didn’t find this BS.But alright, fine, let’s not listen to Apple, let’s listen to anybody else NON-Apple: check the leaked M1 benchmarks, single core and multi core through the roof. Integrated GPU compute scores on par with discrete Radeon 580X. Octane X GPU renderer devs stating that they can fit scenes with 100+GB worth of textures in those 16GB UMA. Affinity Photo devs saying that they have increase several fold the equivalent tier from previous generation. DaVinci Resolve having 5x in some parts of their editing. (Again these are not Apple’s statements).
Will it beat the latest RTX cards? Of course not... in the same sense that the latest RTX power hungry constantly thermal throttled crazy heavy laptops won’t last the 20hrs a MacBook Pro M1 can. The two at aiming at different goals.
Also, all the ‘general purpose’ or ‘not general purpose’ comparison or chit chat... what the heck is that coming from. I’m just a normal user, I boot my machine and launch ANY GENERAL PURPOSE program... and it runs faster, better, leaner, quieter; but then I’ll complain? “fine, but it’s maybe not general purpose so I’ll go to these other systems that do exactly the same but slower, but hey, they are REAL general purpose”.
Excuse me the rant vibe, I understand there’s the blind sheep Apple following and the gratuitously apple haters. There’s a middle ground, just look at the numbers for the fun of it... and actually, maybe even don’t if the device wouldn’t even be something to be considered for purchase. You know why I never go around Lamborghini shops bashing or criticizing their cars? Because I’m honestly not interested in buying one.
novastar78 - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
You got man!The question I have it, can it run Crysis?
This is all just Apple fan boys getting worked up. I'll most likely never own an Apple product so for us old guys this is just fluff.
Its just an ARM chip with a PowerVR GPU (that they stole). Not seeing the big deal here except for the Appleites
Spunjji - Thursday, November 12, 2020 - link
@novastar78 - "Its just an ARM chip with a PowerVR GPU (that they stole). Not seeing the big deal here except for the Appleites"One of the world's most popular and influential computer manufacturers is producing an ARM-based chip that beats the pants off Intel's best in terms of power-efficiency *and* performance, and slaps AMD around for power... and that's NBD to you? Okay. I guess you're just not that interested in tech 🤷♂️
vais - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
@Spunjji - three times hurray for jumping to conclusions! But it's not really your fault, the benchmarks don't say they are only single threaded... M1 will absolutely be more power efficient than both Intel and AMD - but to have more performance total, when all are running all cores at normal power? People's daydreams will be shattered when real benchmark results are released.star-affinity - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
@vaishttps://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4648107
Daydream?
vais - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
I'm not convinced by geekbench results. If we look there, Snapdragon 865 is half the single-core performance of 5900X.If that was true and actually translated to real world performance, a lot of services would have transitioned to those fabled ARM chips.
Spunjji - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
@vais - "If that was true and actually translated to real world performance, a lot of services would have transitioned to those fabled ARM chips" - have you even paid attention to what's happening with Graviton?https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-a...
Alej - Saturday, November 14, 2020 - link
@Spunjji just wanted to chime in as I have noted the effort at keeping it all quiet and factual. Not jumping to hasty conclusions and pointing out facts/numbers where available. I was already convinced but even got extra pointers out of the sometimes out of whack discussions.Hats off, that’s hard work.
GeoffreyA - Sunday, November 15, 2020 - link
100%. Spunjji is always bringing sense and sanity back to conversations, and he's critical and objective. I always look forward to his comments.