Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a barn burner

Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by hnburnsy on Thursday November 04, 2021 @12:36PM (#29109289)

I see this comparison all the time in articles about Intel, but until I can build a desktop with M1 Pro/Max, they are meaningless.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by ksec on Thursday November 04, 2021 @01:01PM (#29109670)

That is the difference between a consumer review and tech review. They may be meaningless to consumers, but they are meaningful for those of us only want to learn about tech.

This it the same with Graviton 2 on Servers.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by PragmaticPulp on Thursday November 04, 2021 @08:29PM (#29114121)

> They may be meaningless to consumers, but they are meaningful for those of us only want to learn about tech.

It's actually misleading to compare apples and oranges like this.

CPU power efficiency is very non-linear. For example (made up numbers for example), it might require double the power to go from 3GHz to 4GHz and another doubling of power to go from 4GHz to 5GHz.

If you're designing a low-power laptop chip, you take advantage of this fact and operate it at the lower frequencies. You may be able to cut the power consumption by 1/4 and still get 60-70% of the performance.

If you're building a desktop for enthusiasts who are buying big liquid coolers, you go the other direction and push the CPU to the limit. That's what Intel did here.

This factors in at the design stage, too. It's not as simple as taking the same design and scaling it up or down. You need to target your timings around a range of clock speeds and voltages.

Drawing comparisons isn't as simple as dividing Geekbench scores by power consumption because the underlying math is very non-linear.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by ksec on Friday November 05, 2021 @01:47AM (#29115877)

>It's actually misleading to compare apples and oranges like this.

I never make the claim it scale linearly. And I have been very explicit in the node simply because I expect technical reader should know it doesn't scale linearly ( may be I should have wrote it down just in case ) and as I wrote in my another reply you cant even use the TSMC N5 and scale to 5+Ghz. It is not optimised nor tested for that clock speed.

To make the comparison on a low power node, Alderlake using 5W at 3.2Ghz, and scale linearly with GB5 score, it would get a result of 1140. On the same power, M1 is able to score 50% higher. Or 50% increase in IPC.

But that comparison in my view is unfair if not truly misleading. Because there are a lot of assumption involved, from scaling to design and performance characteristics. Where as the previous comparison was done with two actual product based on facts, and you should draw your own conclusion within the context.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by wmf on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:34PM (#29114867)

OTOH when Apple takes an M1 from a laptop and puts it in a desktop... the performance and power are exactly the same. So it probably is fair to compare M1 Pro vs. 12900K.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by fomine3 on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:32PM (#29114858)

Thankfully now we can set arbitrary power limit to my own CPU. I'd like to see benchmarks setup with same power usage.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by dirkg on Thursday November 04, 2021 @05:22PM (#29112694)

they are meaningless to oem's and manufacturers as well since they cant buy an M1 and build a system around it.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by oneplane on Thursday November 04, 2021 @07:12PM (#29113583)

Most reviews are meaningless as a whole in the global context; most people can't afford any of the high performance parts of the electricity to power them anyway, and those that can now have the problem of shortages making it hard to get the parts at all.

The only thing all of us get out of this is: context matters.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by oneplane on Thursday November 04, 2021 @09:25PM (#29114466)

Bummer, I made a typo.

> parts of the electricity -> parts OR the electricity

Quite the distinction there. I was referring to reviews in the global context where there are plenty of places on earth where even getting power is hard and you might be constrained to limited wattage or battery backups that drain very fast on high performance parts. All to build up an extra example context where there is no 'absolute' truth to some reviews out there.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by liuliu on Thursday November 04, 2021 @01:55PM (#29110416)

Sorry about my impulsive correction:

It is Intel 7 (formerly known as Intel's 10nm process).

There is also Intel 4 (formerly known as Intel's 7nm process).

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by ksec on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:32PM (#29110865)

Yes except I got asked again and again what is "Intel 7". So I am going to stick with a simple naming scheme that right now happens to be about the same across all three foundry working on leading node, Samsung, Intel and TSMC. And everyone can relate or understand.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by SahAssar on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:54PM (#29113439)

If that is the case shouldn't you call it "Intel 10nm" since that is what it was called when Intel was still using the same units as everyone else (even if those units are becoming meaningless)?

Not even Intel itself says that "Intel 7" means "7nm", right?

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by SirMittens on Thursday November 04, 2021 @07:27PM (#29113697)

Even if Intel was using "nm" like everyone else, Intel's naming was closer to reality then the rest of the industry. TSMC and Samsung's "nm" is more of a marketing term.

Intel's 10nm is relatively close to TSMC's 7nm in term of density. That's why Intel renamed it to "Intel 7".

Technically, even TSMC calls it N7, and not 7nm.

But as you said, those units are more or less meaningless. Its just marketing.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by phire on Thursday November 04, 2021 @07:37PM (#29113765)

Intel have a different process that used to documetned and marketed as 7nm. That process since has been renamed to Intel 4.

Regardless of discussions about actual density and the meaningless, it's important to make the discussions between Intel 7 and 7nm (now Intel 4) to prevent confusion. Otherwise people might mistakenly think Alder Lake is on the process previously known as Intel 7nm.

Fortunately, once we get to Intel 4, it becomes unambitious again.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by vadfa on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:12PM (#29110635)

5x the power so you can run x86 32-bit and 64-bit code. I don't see the performance part as being that important

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by threeseed on Thursday November 04, 2021 @05:57PM (#29112990)

I run x86 code all the time on my M1 Mac.

And surprisingly well given it's being transpiled.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by acomjean on Friday November 05, 2021 @11:59AM (#29121114)

Apple ditched all the x86-32 code with Big Sur (one reason we can't upgrade at work..). So its a subset. They did the same with 32 bit iOS Apps. Apple is happy to leave old software behind.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nly on Thursday November 04, 2021 @12:11PM (#29108939)

Imagine what Intel could accomplish on the TSMC node!

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by marricks on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:21PM (#29110729)

Only 2.5x the power usage?

More seriously, there's always a few comments on threads like this claiming it's unfair to compare Intel to AMD or Apple because "they have a larger node size and are hamstrung by it." Which is Intel's choice, they were happy having a superior node all to themselves for decades and now it's a problem for them.

I don't remember people saying AMD was just as good as Intel but was just on a worse node either, did it matter to anyone but AMD fanboys?

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by gpderetta on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:56PM (#29111115)

For those that do not care just about the faster CPUs on benchmark and tribal fights, and like instead to nerd out about architectures, it is still interesting to know whether Apple superiority is due the ARM architecture, the Apple microarchitecture improvements or TSMC process.

It is likely a mix of all three and of course microarchitecture cant be easily disentangled from the process.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by noizejoy on Thursday November 04, 2021 @07:22PM (#29113666)

Unfortunately I’ve seldom seen discussions framed in that architectural curiosity context.

The drowning out discussion noise seems to be much more of the macho-tribal variety of shallow assumptions and absolutist conclusions.

And that’s really too bad, because I do really enjoy conversations framed in honest wondering and non-biased estimation of the future potential of various architectures.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by sroussey on Thursday November 04, 2021 @04:49PM (#29112385)

There are relatively large differences in performance between implementations of ARM X1, so yeah, there is more to it than microarchitecture.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by ksec on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:42PM (#29110973)

Yes. That is why I have been very explicit about node numbers and characteristics along with clock speed. Apple cant push to 5GHz without using another node and possibly some redesign. Intel using their own ultra low Power node or even TSMC 5nm low power node will not be able to reach 5Ghz either.

And let people make their own judgement. Again this isn't for consumer review, just for those interested in tech and how it all fits together.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by kube-system on Thursday November 04, 2021 @03:15PM (#29111360)

Well, it made less sense to make excuses about fabs back when Intel and AMD both ran their own fabs.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @03:59PM (#29111849)

When did they make these excuses? AMD hasn’t had its own fabs for about a decade way before Intel was stuck on 14nm.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @12:39PM (#29109331)

These biased sites will declare Intel the winner despite the higher cost in motherboard, CPU, power usage, cost to overclock, and heat creation. These tech sites are obviously nothing but product shilling sites with a cheap veneer that relies on their old reputation, but after seeing them all saying the opposite of reality with Ryzen, I won't give them clicks and I won't buy Intel again.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @01:23PM (#29109992)

lmao what?

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by formerly_proven on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:04PM (#29110531)

He's not wrong per se though he's wrong in this case, because many tech reviewers were overly enthusiastic about Ryzen parts and acted as-if they're much better than their Intel counterparts because they performed better in various benchmarks and productivity applications; this is kind of a meme in the gaming scene (where AMD's best CPUs generally still struggle with Intel's 10th gen offerings).

In tech your product has to be REALLY bad in order to receive critical reviews and manufacturers are basically smart enough to just not send these bad products to reviewers, so you basically get no or few reviews on them. Most reviewers are completely dependent on the manufacturers to give them stuff to review at no cost, and obviously when your reviews are too critical they're going to stop sending you stuff, which threatens the reviewer's business. There are very few reviewers who can do highly critical reviews, GamersNexus comes to mind. Notice how they're often not getting stuff from the manufacturer but buy it off the shelf instead.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:29PM (#29110814)

Lots of tech reviews will also not say anything bad, for instance anyone critial of Apple won't get access to their events, products, and will be blacklisted.

You can't trust these publications at all anymore.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by tomnipotent on Thursday November 04, 2021 @05:41PM (#29112858)

Can you show me one that is critical and doesn't get access?

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:20PM (#29113180)

https://techaeris.com/2015/01/29/have-i-been-blacklisted-by-...

https://www.cultofmac.com/255618/how-apples-blacklist-manipu...

> Yes, Apple maintains a press “blacklist,” a list of people in the media who are shunned and ignored — “punished,” as it were, for “disloyalty.”

>“Blacklisted” reporters, editorialists and media personalities are denied access to information, products and events.

>Once you’re on the list, it’s almost impossible to get off. (I’ve been on it for more than a decade.)

https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/07/reg_effort_to_attend_...

> It's been a number of years since an Apple PR staffer secretly admitted to one of our reporters that The Register was on a blacklist.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by rsj_hn on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:26PM (#29113232)

Dude, it's a company that makes consumer goods. It's not the government refusing to credential a reporter.

If you are actually an objective news company trying to evaluate a product, then do what Consumer Reports does and go to the open market and buy the generally available product for the full retail price, and then evaluate it. That is a requirement to be an honest broker not influenced by a vendor, which is why Consumer Reports does it. So make up your mind as to whether you want to be a journalist that is independent or whether you are willing to compromise and do P.R. work for apple in exchange for early access.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:32PM (#29113284)

You asked me for journalists that are critical and didn’t get access and I showed you. What’s your point in justifying exactly what I proved?

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by rsj_hn on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:39PM (#29113333)

Perhaps you are confusing me with another poster?

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:01PM (#29113028)

This is just a list of issues and articles that came to my mind. Every of these sites also criticized the thermal of the last intel macbook pros and all hated the touchbar and all of them are still reporting on apple on exactly the day the embargo lifts. wtf are YOU on about?

Macbook Keyboard Issues: 21x Apple critical articles on the verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=keyboard+macbook 10x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/Search?doctype=news&query=macbook%20k... 5x Apple critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com/search;_ylc=X3IDMgRncHJpZAN0NEMu...

iPad Jelly Scrolling: 12x Apple critical articles on the verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=jelly+scrolling+apple 1x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/Search?doctype=news&query=jelly%20scr... 4x Apple critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com/search;_ylt=AwrJ7FcGV4Rh6okADpZ8...

Mini LED Blooming: 4x Apple critical articles on the verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=apple+blooming 3x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/Search?doctype=news&query=blooming%20... 6x Apple critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com/search;_ylt=A0geKJBBV4RhUYAANg58...

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:25PM (#29113223)

iFixit doesn’t get access to Apple hardware.

What you’re linking to proves the opposite of critical articles. Let’s show some titles you linked.

> The saga of Apple's bad butterfly MacBook keyboards is finally over

>iPad mini review (2021): The best small tablet gets a facelift

>Will Apple’s Mini LED MacBook Pros avoid the iPad Pro’s downsides?

>Apple says the iPad mini's 'jelly scrolling' problem is normal

So where are these critial articles?

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:57PM (#29113467)

If you don't cherry pick there are enough critical articles and critical comments in every review (You said there aren't in your first comment.

You are totally right they must have a giant blacklist if blacklisting is for you not to send demo units of unreleased products to every outlet. THE BLACKLIST IS GIGANTIC DUDE.

If you ever look for help call here The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): 1-800-950-6264

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by dang on Friday November 05, 2021 @04:31PM (#29124411)

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly. You can't do that here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by jackorange on Thursday November 04, 2021 @07:23PM (#29113670)

Your comment is not in the spirit of HN and I hope it is deleted. You are asserting someone has mental illness just because they are claiming something which is well known.

Gamers nexus, which is a top reviewer, have mentioned they dont get some products due to their critical take. It's not an unreasonable or outlandish view at all. Its ridiculous to be so aggressive against another person just to protect a brand. Do you perhaps work for or have shares in Apple? I cannot fathom why someone would be so desperate to protect the image of a billion dollar company otherwise.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @08:12PM (#29114010)

No one is entitled to get early access to non released hardware. The outlets that do get access usually sign NDAs and they are not allowed to take demo units apart and you know what GAMERNEXUS also says in their videos that they don't sign these NDAs. If he had the chance to sign it it seems he decided to not do it not the other way around. The spirit of HN was that it's usually pretty good moderated against trolls and flamebaits like the guy above.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by dang on Friday November 05, 2021 @04:32PM (#29124426)

You also broke the site guidelines egregiously, and you've posted flamewar comments before this too. I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you continue to break the site guidelines, we will ban you. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.

That means thoughtful, substantive comments, curious conversation, and respect towards other commenters, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by merb on Thursday November 04, 2021 @08:53PM (#29114266)

actually you are either wrong or didn't even watched gamersnexus. because they rated the 5600x amd as one of the best gaming cpu for a long time.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:30PM (#29110839)

On pure performance metrics Intel will be the winner every cycle they bring one "enthusiast" CPU that tops the benchmark in gaming or creator CPU loads. they are expensive they are power hogs but they are the fastest. I don't get why you are so adjetated by it.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @02:48PM (#29111036)

>they are expensive they are power hogs but they are the fastest.

That is absolutely false and a lie for multicore processes, real world usage, and programs that I use. This is an enormous lie, unless your workload only consists of synthetic benchmarks that are Intel optimized and ignore the gains from other hardware like premium DDR5 they use to set these sythetic benchmarks.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @03:58PM (#29111839)

As I said in my other comments you are delusional. have a good one. You see a conspiracy theory without proofing it and you disregard the facts from several high regarded sources like anandtech, phoronix and everyone who has published their benchmarks today. It's the literal definition of a delusion.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @05:27PM (#29112745)

You think every benchmarking site, even the sites that use open source software to benchmark is getting payed by Intel? Phoronix and Anandtech have open benchmark suites you can go and check the results yourself. You are arguing that commercial benchmark providers, open source software developers, tech journalists and enthusiasts and hobbiest are in a conspiracy to favor Intel in performance benchmarks without providing a single source stating your acquisitions except yourself. Insane.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @05:36PM (#29112822)

Prove me wrong; you still can’t.

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by nyxaiur on Thursday November 04, 2021 @05:59PM (#29113012)

This is just a list of issues and articles that came to my mind. Every of these sites also criticized the thermal of the last intel macbook pros and all hated the touchbar and all of them are still reporting on apple on exactly the day the embargo lifts. wtf are YOU on about?

Macbook Keyboard Issues: 21x Apple critical articles on the verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=keyboard+macbook 10x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/Search?doctype=news&query=macbook%20k... 5x Apple critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com/search;_ylc=X3IDMgRncHJpZAN0NEMu...

iPad Jelly Scrolling: 12x Apple critical articles on the verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=jelly+scrolling+apple 1x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/Search?doctype=news&query=jelly%20scr... 4x Apple critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com/search;_ylt=AwrJ7FcGV4Rh6okADpZ8...

Mini LED Blooming: 4x Apple critical articles on the verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=apple+blooming 3x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/Search?doctype=news&query=blooming%20... 6x Apple critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com/search;_ylt=A0geKJBBV4RhUYAANg58...

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Re:Intel’s Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it’s a ... by GhettoComputers on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:28PM (#29113243)

Critical articles like “iPad mini review (2021): The best small tablet gets a facelift”? https://www.engadget.com/apple-ipad-mini-6th-generation-2021... You’re grasping at straws since ifixit doesn’t get Apple press invites, hardware and you linked to searches of Apple praise since you can’t find evidence to prove your point. Thanks you proved my point for me and linked to articles that prove I am right.

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