I mean we were suspecting for some time that smartphone processors have reached parity with laptop class ones. MacBook Neo proved it.

Not clear how both Amd and Intel not only lost the smartphone fight but also lost in their own field (aka servers, laptops, desktops)

15 years ago if I told you that windows would be running better on ARM you would call me crazy.

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throwa356262 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

According to CPU bench, the Neo CPU is about the same speed as a mid range intel laptop CPU from 4 years ago.

Apple A18 Pro (Q1 2026): Multithread 11977, Single Thread 4043

Intel Core i5-1235U (Q1 2022): Multithread 12605, Single Thread 3084

On the high-end we got i9-13900KS at about 60k, M5 Max 18 scores about the same. But when you move on to server CPUs like Threadripper and EPYC things are about 3x faster.

Lets see if the brand new Arm AGI changes this situation in a few months.

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attentive 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I look at those numbers and think that A18 pro is 25% faster as single thread is what matters for UX.

browserbench speedometer 3.0 on A18 pro - 33, Intel Core i5-1235U - 22

i9-13900KS gets about 33

M4 Pro - 44-50

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throwa356262 4 days ago | parent [-]

You can't compare raw CPU speed by measuring different browsers on different OSes :)

Try this:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/6693vs7115vs7229vs7232/...

	▲	whatever1 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That is why I mentioned that the litmus test was to put the mobile processor on a real laptop. Not the synthetic benchmarks. The laptop is in the hands of customers and they are happy for the performance they get.
	▲	attentive 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You can pick the same browsers i.e. brave or chrome. Also, let's not forget about unified memory impact. Raw cpu benchmarks are only one side of the complex system.

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adgjlsfhk1 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

it's worth noting that the neo is running at 3W compared to 15W for the i5. Just putting an $8 thermal pad on the neo gives you a 20-30% perf improvement by letting it run 5W continuous.

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adrian_b 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For now, in server applications the ARM CPUs can win when the workloads are not computationally intensive, i.e. they consist mostly in data transfers and searches, for example in Web servers, database servers, storage servers, networking appliances, etc.

There still are applications where ISA matters, like technical/scientific computing, where the performance can be dominated by array operations or operations with big numbers. For such workloads the x86 CPUs with AVX-512 can provide a performance per watt and per dollar that cannot be reached by the current ARM-based CPUs.

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4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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