Re:Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated
by paulmd on Monday October 25, 2021 @09:48PM
(#28995493)
Zen4 will be going head-to-head with Apple A16 on N5P next year and it's pretty doubtful we see Zen4 come out ahead on perf/watt let alone IPC.
It's not all node advantage - Apple designed a much wider core than is feasible with x86. They have an insanely wide reorder buffer and many execution units, and can decode more instructions to keep it all fed. Even with the node shrink allowing you to throw more transistors at it, x86 poses obstacles to using the same approaches as Apple, and they've exhausted most of their own approaches.
It's not all node advantage - Apple designed a much wider core than is feasible with x86. They have an insanely wide reorder buffer and many execution units, and can decode more instructions to keep it all fed. Even with the node shrink allowing you to throw more transistors at it, x86 poses obstacles to using the same approaches as Apple, and they've exhausted most of their own approaches.