Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated

Re:Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated by musicale on Monday October 25, 2021 @05:27PM (#28993355)

Are you saying that if another company, say AMD, had access to TSMC's 5nm process than it would easily achieve comparable performance/watt to what Apple has done with the M1 series?

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Re:Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated by dragontamer on Monday October 25, 2021 @05:42PM (#28993502)

I'm saying that 15.5% of the 17% difference from Apple A14 to Apple A15 is accounted for in the TSMC N5 to TSMC N5p upgrade (Aka: 10% fewer watts at 5% higher clock rates).

The bulk of efficiency gains has been, and for the foreseeable future will be, the efficiency of the underlying manufacturing process itself.

There's still a difference in efficiency above-and-beyond the 15.5% from the A14 to the A15. But its a small fraction of what the __process__ has given.

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Traditionally, AMD never was known for very efficient designs. AMD is more well known for "libraries", and more a plug-and-play style of chip-making. AMD often can switch to different nodes faster and play around with modular parts (see the Zen "chiplets"). I'd expect AMD to come around with some kind of chiplet strategy (or something along those lines) before I expect them in particular to take the efficiency crown.

NVidia probably would be better at getting high-efficiency designs. They're on a weaker 8nm Samsung process yet still have extremely good power/efficiency curves.

I like AMD's chiplet strategy though as a business, and as a customer. Its a bit of a softer benefit, and AMD clearly has made the "Infinity Fabric" more efficient than anyone expected it could get.

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