Look at this from this POV:

- Apple started on custom ARM many years ago.

- Apple isn't really smaller then Amd, and Amd also rewrote and restructured their architecture some years ago.

- Apple hired many greatly skilled people with experience (e.g. which worked before with Intel)

- Apples uses state of the art TSMC production methods, Intel doesn't and the "slow" custom chips from China and Russia don't use that either as they want to have chips controlled by them produced with methods controlled by them. (TSMC production methods are based on tech not controlled by Taiwan).

- Apples had a well controlled "clean" use-case, where they bit by bit added more support. This includes that they could drop hardware 32 bit support and don't have any extensions they don't need for their Apple products, this can make thinks a lot easier. On the other hand x86 has a lot of old "stuff" still needing support and use cases are much less clear cut (wrt. thinks like how many PCI lanes need to be supported, how much RAM, etc.). This btw. is not limited to their CPUs but also (especially!) their GPUs and GPU drivers.

So while Apple did a grate job it isn't really that surprising.

Do you mean "TSMC production methods are based on tech controlled by Taiwan", or "TSMC production methods are based on tech not controlled by China/Russia"?

Update: after reading the thread I think I understand that you meant TSMC production relies on tech/equipment from ASML, which is not controlled by Taiwan.

Good point overall - the performance of Rosetta 2 helped facilitate much of this and - at least from what I've read - does seem to be surprising to folks in the space. So that also helped them out.

Apple is designing processors and GPUs at least since iPad2's tri-core GPU. They're neither coming out of the blue, nor newbies in this game.

Sometimes it's hard to figure out all of the things left out of the plans that were stolen. Some engineer saw something not working, looked at the plans, and then noticed where the plans were wrong. The change gets implemented, but the plans don't get updated. Anyone receiving the plans will not have those changes. Becareful of those plans that fall of the back of trucks.

The whole point behind the effort of China and Russia is to have a CPU under their control, starting with the design but also including the manufacturing.

And TSMC uses technology for their nodes which is not under their control at all.

The amount of expertise China already has and will accumulate in the next decades should not be underestimated.

Note it's also not under TSMC's control - a lot of fab technology comes from other suppliers like ASML in Europe.