Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

Re:Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for ... by kllrnohj on Monday June 22, 2020 @05:50PM (#23607235)

Look at the A12's power/frequency chart: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14892/a12-fvcurve.png

Increase frequency by 30% and the A12 will also be hitting 10 watts per core - the end of that graph is going real vertical real fast.

Since Zen 2 and A12/A13 are all on the same TSMC process this shouldn't be that surprising...

> I expect at least a 50% per core performance increase

Based off of what evidence? That'd be an unheard of improvement. TSMC isn't even claiming anything close to that at a pure transitor switching frequency for 5nm? They are predicting 15% frequency gain (at the same complexity and power) or a 20% power reduction (at the same frequency and complexity) over their 7nm process.

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Re:Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for ... by phonon on Monday June 22, 2020 @09:01PM (#23608857)

I meant cumulatively. I'm assuming a "A14x+" on 5 nm. Comparison to A13.

So a A14x+ (15 W+)

30% frequency increase vs A13, because of higher TDP +

10% IPC increase (larger caches, design tweaks) +

15% Frequency increase, due to 5 nm.

A i7-1065G7 costs Apple something like $400. The A13 costs something like $60 to manufacture. Apple is highly motivated.

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Re:Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for ... by nicoburns on Monday June 22, 2020 @07:04PM (#23607965)

> They are predicting 15% frequency gain (at the same complexity and power)

My intuition is that 50% might be overoptimistic. But going from iPad to Laptop thermal constraints, you'd expect a big increase in frequency just from clocking the thing higher, no?

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Re:Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for ... by imtringued on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @06:56AM (#23612281)

Apple would lose their edge over Intel because most of the efficiency gains come from the lower frequency.

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Re:Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for ... by nicoburns on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @10:41AM (#23614502)

> Apple would lose their edge over Intel because most of the efficiency gains come from the lower frequency.

Presumably that would only apply when the cores are actually running at full-throttle though. For casual use there could still be considerable gains if the processors are better at power management (which they most likely are, as they've had to hyper-optimised for this for phones).

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