Re:Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
by klelatti on Friday April 23, 2021 @02:14PM
(#26917514)
Sigh. I'm typing this on an Apple "prior" product which has a two year old microarchitecture and is built on Intel 10nm (roughly the same as TSMC 7nm) - it's absolutely a modern x86 processor and a valid comparison - and it's left in the dust by the M1.
I'm not sure that they can easily add more cores to the M1. If they can, that would also raise the TDP. And adding more cores does not increase performance linearly, even if the architecture is made for it.
Also keep in mind that comparing it to 14nm Intel processors with an architecture from a decade ago is a fair comparison when comparing M1 vs prior Apple products, but is not a fair comparison when comparing it against what x86 can do in general. You would need a modern x86 processor targeting the same watt usage to have a completely valid comparison. As discussed in the thread above.
So yeah, it's a great processor for its target. And it likely will also be a very strong processor when scaled up - it bodes well for the future of ARM. But don't extrapolate the performance too linearly, that is likely to be misleading.