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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

The Great x86 CPU Stagnation? ARM seems to have made some great leaps forward in recent years.

I don't have a feeling ARM offerings are significantly cheaper than x86. There really isn't much magic, a transistor costs the same to manufacture under a given process, regardless of the ISA.

In that, RISC-V might get some edge, because ARM licensing is expensive, but I don't think licensing is a significant cost for the x86 crowd.

OTOH, the server ARM people are really pushing it: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/sound-the-siyrn-ampereone-192...

But Altra's ain't cheap.

Top AMD consumer x86 CPU over 4.5 generations:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2966vs3238vs3598vs3862v...

I think the article is just about server CPUs getting better but the price is keeping them from being significantly better for the price. Of course, in these markets, any increase in power is justified such that the buyers are not price sensitive.

not really, there have been some systems built on top of ARM chips that have been impressive, but the chip hardware tech hasn't changed much differently than their x86 counterparts

ARM has seen increased adoption, but the chips themselves aren't much different than 4-5 years ago.

I’m ignorant about this. Can a Qualcomm or Samsung chip match Intel’s raw power?

The leading Arm chip (by apple) is arguably the best in class.

Much of Apple's success in the area seems to stem from the fact that they're simply buying other parties out of the latest manufacturing processes, e.g. https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/05/15/apple-has-a-stran...

So if others want to compete, they'll always be a few years behind, since the fab capacity is reserved to Apple. So any competitor either has to magically improve the architecture dramatically - which they can't, since that would require an architectural license which Apple has, but most others don't - or find a fab that can compete with TSMC's latest tech both in terms of price and available volume.

Apple's chips are very power efficent, yes, but the article and parent are talking/asking about raw power. Despite all the Intel hate the past 5 years, I don't think there's been even a moment where another company's leading chip has outperformed Intel's in benchmarks.

See for example https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4922vs5022vs5008vs5189/...

>125W

And that is a lie, to achieve those scores it turbos and consumes 300W+ at turbo.

Today, right now, is a moment where AMD's enterprise product are outperforming Intel's in benchmarks.

Except for a very small set of specific use cases, I think anyone recommending Xeon for enterprise solutions is professionally negligent.

The M2 Pro isn't doing too bad when you consider you're comparing a laptop chip with 14+ hour battery life against Intel's latest and greatest, high-TDP desktop CPU with twice as many cores. On a performance-per-core basis it's not even far behind.

If the TDP is an accurate measure, then the M1 appears to be about as efficient as 12th gen Intel: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html#all-cpu

I wonder if there's some shenanigans going on there. Max TDP in an M1 is surely far lower than the max TDP of an i7-1255U, which it outperforms. Most M1 systems don't even have fans but can perform at max performance for extended times. U-series i7s can also be run fan-less, but performance will be compromised?

Umm, I added a readily available consumer CPU from a different company to your comparison chart.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5022vs5008vs5189vs5031/...

I'm well aware of Apple’s success since I’m surrounded by their devices at home. It seems to me it can’t be attributed only to ARM. What I wonder is where’re someone can match Intel on Intel’s playing field, like supplying ARM chips to laptop manufacturers that are better than Intel.

Is there anything ISA-related in this ? Hardly

Using the last ASML's technology is a big part of the situation Using on-chip memory is another

Coincidentally Ampere One was announced today and it looks pretty mediocre.

What looks mediocre about it? They're making BIG claims about density and power usage at scale

If they doubled performance and doubled power that's not good.

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