The improved efficiency is great!

The Apple Neo was still 2x faster for graphics and around 1.4x faster for single core cpu. And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series.

It is strange that this chip is so crazy efficient though. I would love to know the details of exactly why it is? It seems like some new tech or process?

I do want 1.5x battery life for free out of my next laptop. Who wouldn’t?

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MBCook 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Apple has been working ruthlessly on battery efficiency for a long time because of the phones and their tendency to minimize battery sizes on Macs for thinness.

The exact design of the cores, how they’re scheduled, the way background stuff is handled on MacOS. All of it. The chips are made on a fantastic process too, but that alone isn’t it. For example they’ve been putting the ability to drop refresh rate really low when nothing changes to more and more of their machines.

It could be that the Intel chip is close, IDK.

But add in other motherboard components, the screen, the OS, the software and system libraries, all are optimized together to hit those numbers. And any of those alone or in combination could be part of the differences.

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oofbey 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think the Top500 benchmark is biased here. It’s a supercomputing benchmark which means it’s going to heavily weight SIMD and float64 performance, which are things that rarely matter for everyday computing. SIMD has uses in the real world - image or video editing, data crunching, graphics. But consumers basically never use fp64 any more, and so many modern chips have next to zero performance on them. That could easily skew the numbers in intel’s favor.

	▲	geerlingguy 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I run a number of other benchmarks for a better comparison (linked from my blog post: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/111). The Intel chip holds its own for multicore in less bursty workloads, where the fans help.
	▲	Archit3ch 8 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> consumers basically never use fp64 any more They do in audio processing. ;)

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booi 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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kzrdude 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, it seems to be a new process, 18A. (18 Ångström, allegedly). Manufactured in North America. If the shiny video they did didn't fool me, it's a two sided wafer process, power grid on one side, then the silicon wafer (with through-silicon vias), then transistors, then signal layers.

The processor is this one: Intel Core 5 processor 320 https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/246018/... in the Wildcat Lake series.

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re-thc 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series.

We really need to get over generalization like "phone CPU". Times have changed. Phone or not really isn't the focus.

Per core the A series (cough phone) isn't that much slower than equivalent M series. It's literally the same family just with some extra features, more power, etc.

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MBCook 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect that the comment is more about this not being Apple’s best standard consumer CPU for computers, which would be the M5 (though to your point that’s also in iPads).

It’s good Intel can match anything while staying cool and efficient. That’s a great step. But I’d like to see them match the M5.

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dghlsakjg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Phone is a sort of short hand for what tradeoffs are likely in the chip. A phone processor is going to prioritize efficiency and thermals over raw performance. Mobile will strike a different balance. While desktop likely prioritizes raw power over performance per watt, thermals be damned!

	▲	pseudosavant 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Of course, that same "phone" processor gets to operate with battery and thermal headroom of a laptop in the Macbook Neo. The bigger trade-offs are due to the device the chip operates within.

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LoganDark 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Phones have markedly different thermal limits compared to desktop or even laptops. A laptop CPU can easily suck 30W or more while a phone might not ever reach 10W.