Re:Apple Silicon M1 Disruption
by kergonath on Sunday December 06, 2020 @08:01PM
(#25328315)
I don’t think these goals are exclusive. I am not sure about the M1, but the A13 and A14 are doing quite well in SPEC benchmarks. If they have compromised these scores, it’s not obvious to me.
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I don't think they've compromised on SPEC performance at Apple, but I think they've chased it too hard at Intel. I'm sure I'd rather have more iTLB entries and more L1i cache than that third 512x512 FMA unit, if that's a trade that can be made.
Re:Apple Silicon M1 Disruption
by stephencanon on Sunday December 06, 2020 @10:34PM
(#25329088)
Second, not third, and chasing benchmark scores (instead of real workloads) would result in exactly the trade off you’re asking for; most pieces of SPEC will barely benefit from the second AVX512 FMA at all.
Sorry I misinterpreted. Isn’t this a reflection of the primary markets for both companies, though? When Intel is trying to sell chips for HPC clusters and expensive workstations, impractical vector units can make sense. Clearly Apple is not bothered by that and has a more balanced micro architecture for more common use cases.