Re:Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max, the most advanced c...
by hajile on Wednesday November 01, 2023 @09:30AM
(#38097907)
It seems like Apple is learning from Intel here.
Apple made their E-cores a lot faster the past couple generations. Despite being a tiny fraction of the size, they get nearly 50% of the performance (yay diminishing returns) while using around 10x less power.
If your task only scales to 1-4 cores, you need those cores to be fast, but generally speaking, if you can scale more than that, you can probably scale to a LOT of cores. From this perspective, 6-8 cores allow a couple of those lightly-threaded applications at the same time which is usually all the more you'll be running.
After that, putting 4-6 E-cores+cache in the space of just one P-core+cache means you're still using half the power, but getting a lot more performance in those very scalable applications.
AMD is headed this same direction with Zen 4c and 5c chiplets where you'll have one performance chiplet and multiple efficiency chiplets.
The area and power wins are just too big to ignore.
Apple made their E-cores a lot faster the past couple generations. Despite being a tiny fraction of the size, they get nearly 50% of the performance (yay diminishing returns) while using around 10x less power.
If your task only scales to 1-4 cores, you need those cores to be fast, but generally speaking, if you can scale more than that, you can probably scale to a LOT of cores. From this perspective, 6-8 cores allow a couple of those lightly-threaded applications at the same time which is usually all the more you'll be running.
After that, putting 4-6 E-cores+cache in the space of just one P-core+cache means you're still using half the power, but getting a lot more performance in those very scalable applications.
AMD is headed this same direction with Zen 4c and 5c chiplets where you'll have one performance chiplet and multiple efficiency chiplets.
The area and power wins are just too big to ignore.